Science, Innovation and Digital Technology

SCIENCE AND INNOVATION

Despite a half century of efforts to address the environmental and sustainability crises with ambitious commitments and governance mechanisms, conditions have only worsened due to failures in implementation. A lack of political will, putting national interests ahead of the global good, and powerful economic forces benefiting from business as usual and blocking change, are some of the reasons for the catastrophes now unfolding and the existential risks we now face.

One difference between governance of the environment and of human society is that environmental realities, processes and limits are largely defined by science, which can provide a more objective basis for policy and decision-making. The planetary environment extends to those dimensions and processes beyond the capacity of any nation to manage independently, including outer space, the electromagnetic spectrum, the atmosphere and climate system, the water cycle, the oceans, the biosphere and its ecosystems and genetic resources, the sustainable exploitation of natural resources, chemical pollution, wastes and their disposal, and many conditions necessary for human health and well-being.

Science is revealing how accelerated environmental changes are impacting human and collective security, from extreme heat, drought, flooding, crop failure, water shortages, desertification, disease, food insecurity, famine, forced migration, and unprecedented disruptions. These impacts are disproportionately affecting regions and countries that are the least responsible, many of which also suffer from conflict, fragility, violence, and other instabilities. It is the poorest and least-able to respond who bear the brunt of these changes.

The Earth’s Planetary Boundaries indicate the maximum human-induced disruption each environmental dimension can sustain before the Earth system becomes unstable, with irreversible changes and cascading effects. Transgressing these boundaries may lead to tipping points triggering abrupt and non-linear environmental shifts with significant threats to human well-being and survival. Keeping human development within the safe margin for each boundary should be an essential goal of international policymaking. To guide decision-makers, new and enhanced scientific advisory processes will be needed to monitor and advise on Earth System governance.

Since the Earth System is a single complex dynamic entity, the observation and assessment of its components and processes and human impacts needs to be similarly integrated. This will become a major support of global environmental and sustainability governance, coordinating global data collection, timely integrated assessment, and delivery in forms relevant and accessible to the institutions of governance. Risk assessment needs to feed directly into policy and decision-making at all levels from global to local.

AN INTEGRATED SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY PROCESS

A strong scientific advisory capacity is a necessary foundation for environmental governance, as already demonstrated in the environmental conventions. An independent International Panel on Earth System Science, advisory to the Earth System Council, with functions similar to the Science-Policy-Action Network proposed by HLAB and International Panel on Planetary Boundaries called for by the Climate Governance Commission, would bring together experts from the natural and social sciences and other knowledge systems including Indigenous knowledge, to prepare regular reports and assessments of the state of and changes in the Earth system and essential planetary boundaries, as the basis for policy, legislation and management. It would coherently link the present sectoral scientific advisory mechanisms (IPCC, IPBES, etc.) and fill gaps for other planetary boundaries (water cycle, land use, etc.), at multiple levels from global to local.

This scientific advisory process should consolidate information regarding the planetary limits into a coherent, constantly updated, actionable assessment of risks to the planet; provide strategic foresight; trace environmental impacts; use behavioural science to generate global shifts in our policies and practices; and track a range of environmentally harmful activities, including pollution of air, water, soil and the seas; deforestation; desertification; destruction of protected habitats; and violations of international environmental commitments.

The Panel should coordinate the collection of data, provide an independent review and analysis of environmental parameters and trends, prepare projections and scenarios, recommend the building of capacity in all countries to contribute to the science, and provide reports and recommendations for policy and decision-making. Environmental data collection should be institutionalised, coordinated, and properly supported at the global level to ensure effective and transparent coverage of all countries and planetary systems, to assist underserved regions, and to facilitate access by all users to scientific data.

In application of the principle of precaution, the lack of scientific certainty should not prevent regulation or prohibition of activities or substances likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment. Information about environmental damage or the likelihood of such damage, and the possible need for preventive action or emergency response, should immediately and publicly be made available.

Scientific information should be freely accessible to all. The system should also ensure the conservation, preservation, and dissemination of Indigenous knowledge, and its inclusion in policymaking processes. Communities depend on the timely production and dissemination of accurate and impartial data to support sustainable development and monitor and respond to global change. Research and data initiatives can contribute to improving transparency and accountability and must remain free of political influence. These capacities are one of the most effective ways of countering disinformation, and guaranteeing impartiality in statistics.

This scientific foundation should enable a system of accountability that holds all actors responsible and generates behavioural change at the global level, including and holding accountable major industries and the private sector, setting globally enforceable targets for industry, and making it possible to globally limit/prohibit dangerous activities, such as solar radiation modification, deep-sea mining, forever chemicals, biological weapons/risks, etc. Accompanying this should be a reform of today’s intellectual property system to prevent the private monopoly of crucial knowledge and technologies.

Women and girls are often disproportionately affected by environmental harms, resource scarcity, and resulting tensions and conflict. But they also possess vital knowledge, skills, and capabilities for effective environmental protection and conflict mitigation, including environmental changes. The participation and leadership of women and girls, in all their diversity, in the development, design, testing, monitoring, and evaluation in science, technology, and innovation fields is imperative to reap the benefits from the full range of human skills and insights, contributing to the elimination of the gender-science divide to fulfil the wellbeing and rights of all.

INTEGRATING GLOBAL SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT WITH LOCAL JUSTICE

Innovations are needed to create institutions and processes for integrating global systems management with local justice, founded on principles of justice, equity and solidarity, and including long-term perspectives and the needs of future generations. They should apply multilevel governance in the public interest linking the justice dimensions of crossing planetary boundaries with local action and natural regeneration of resources, empowering local learning and application.

This addresses the fears of many developing countries and disadvantaged groups about what should be done and by whom, in returning within planetary limits. There are five obvious injustices: (1) some regions and populations are far more vulnerable to climate and environmental impacts; (2) the same people have contributed least to the problems; (3) in the process, their fair share of natural resources and services has been appropriated by others, limiting their available pathways to development; (4) this reduces their access to the benefits of progress, leaving them poor; and (5) they are often vulnerable locally well before global limits have been reached. A ‘just’ limit has already been crossed in the last decade, as demonstrated by millions of people already impacted by climate-related hazards, with some countries facing inevitable drowning by sea level rise from historic emissions.

Certain of the planetary boundaries are actually expressed partly at local levels, not global, such as land-use change, biodiversity loss and pollution. These challenges thus cannot be addressed only at the global level. Agenda 2030 and the SDGs require that no-one be left behind, that the benefits of nature and global society be shared with all people on the planet. Well-documented scientific advice is a key tool for protecting all people from global risks, using platforms that integrate sciences and knowledge relevant to specific risks to influence policy. Beyond that, what is needed is a global ‘safety net’ that integrates knowledge and addresses risk across all countries, and down to local levels.

The global challenges need to be made relevant to the lives of the most vulnerable people, in highly diverse local spaces. A bottom-up process should both enable and require engagement and inclusion, assuring the right voices and rights-holders are engaged from the beginning. It should incorporate three main elements: (1) minimize exposure of people to any hazard, and reduce their sensitivity; (2) determine the state of locally-expressed planetary boundaries through local assets within the control of local actors dependent on them; (3) address the five dimensions of justice: unequal vulnerability among people, unequal contribution to the problem, unequal consumption of fair shares, unequal access to benefits, and unjust exposure at local levels that can precede the crossing of global limits. Nature-based solutions can meet these needs, and for the locally-determined benefits, the rebuilding of nature can provide these solutions across all local spaces, addressing multiple dimensions of justice.

Equity must drive decision-making, identifying the fair direction of resource flows, and turning nature- negative activities to nature- and people- positive ones. Where there are places and contexts with a justice deficit in any of the five dimensions, resources should be redirected to redress these, with a focus on natural assets as the foundation for resilience and welfare in all local spaces.

Far from placing limits on the future development of disadvantaged countries or sectors of society, this perspective strengthens mechanisms for integrating resource flows in economic and policy processes, to raise people out of poverty and establish a more level international playing field. Nature-based solutions implemented through a planetary boundaries lens provide a critical perspective to accelerate actions towards true sustainable development. Scientific advice about the Earth System and planetary boundaries would feed into this, and complex systems science combined with digital tools could help to integrate and interlink the multiple levels.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

The use of the internet has expanded exponentially, re-shaping all facets of our lives. Digital tools increasingly serve as the foundation of society’s communications, commerce, infrastructure, and governance systems. Digital transformation is also accelerating in countries that have previously lacked access. As more than 60% of the world’s population is now online, digital spaces are crucial to how political systems, economies, and societies will function. This rapid expansion offers great opportunities for inclusion, but also comes with challenges to democratic societies due to inadequate digital governance systems, and innovation driven by profit rather than service.

Priority should be given to close the Internet digital divide in order to leave no one behind. Global digital communications should be declared as a global public good freed from private sector corporate control and political influence, with global governance protections for security and human rights. The introduction of new digital technologies spearheaded by major corporations in the private sector has often outpaced the establishment of national institutions and regulatory capacity to manage this innovation. The multilateral system trails even further behind. The benefits of the digital age cannot be captured by a few at the expense of the public interest. Improving public capacities to adequately participate in, facilitate, and regulate the digital age will ensure that individuals, businesses, and States can safely and fairly engage and benefit from digital innovation. There is a need for a multi-stakeholder forum on the governance of generative AI and other emerging technologies to mitigate the risks of their potential negative impact on freedoms, livelihoods, and security (e.g. UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and OECD AI Principles). The private sector and governments in collaboration with the UN should guarantee oversight of the biases that feed into generative AI such as gender inequality and lack of information about vulnerable populations such as undocumented immigrants and refugees.

A central focus should be to empower individuals by democratization of mobile technology, the internet and eDigital technology while using sustainable, renewable energy. New technologies create a direct relationship between citizens and the state and between consumers and providers of goods and services that never existed before. These can be used to strengthen participatory processes and to implement the SDGs after the Summit of the Future. They also put data and tools in the hands of citizens for early warning of disasters, conflict, and health emergencies. However, technology democratization requires addressing the root causes of gender and socio-political inequalities. Implementation of science and technology and digital policies must go hand in hand with ending unequal access to energy sources and ensuring use of sustainable, renewable ones such as solar and wind power.

Another priority is safeguarding data privacy and security. Digital cooperation is needed in access to the internet and in data protection to apply human rights online. This means applying universal standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights law and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in the digital space at national and local levels to serve as guidance for legal protection of consumers. Information and education on how to protect oneself against cybercrime and online abuse needs to be made widely accessible to vulnerable populations such as older women and adolescents, indigenous and rural communities, and persons living with disabilities. In particular, women, children, adolescents and other vulnerable groups are exposed to new forms of danger, including cyber crimes, disinformation, misinformation, cultivated dependence and addiction, surveillance, online abuse, harassment, and sexual and gender-based violence amplified or perpetrated through the use of technologies. We need gender transformative policies to bridge the digital gender divide, ensuring that women and girls, in all their diversity, have equal opportunities and agency to safely and meaningfully access, use, co-lead, and design technology and innovation.

The goal is to ensure a global online space where individuals feel safe to participate and the risk of abuse is responsibly managed, while closing the digital divide by investing in digital infrastructure, improving digital literacy, and providing affordable access to the internet. This should address the root causes of the lack of access to digital technologies and systemic inequalities that underpin this problem, and the potential for new technologies, if applied uncritically, to exacerbate existing inequalities and exclusion. Attention is needed to issues such as data and consumer protection, as well as rules and safeguards about the use of AI, internet of things (IoT), and other emerging technologies. The energy consumption of the massive data centres required to create and operate AI and similar technologies also needs to be constrained. The unregulated growth of transformative artificial intelligence (AI) poses massive risks.

The HLAB proposal for a Commission on Just and Sustainable Digitization might be the instrument to take this issue forward, including a global legal framework and a responsible institution, probably an empowered International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The Digital Global Compact may be a starting point. There are already a number of aligned initiatives such as the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) to help connect the dual goals of digital and green transitions and related SDGs. It should be possible to leverage civil society’s mobilization around UN entities such as the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) commissions that also focus on monitoring the impact of S&T, digital and mobile technologies. Examples include the Commission on the Status of Women and on Social Development, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the Joint Inspection Unit of the UN System. One step would be to create digital and other spaces to promote partnerships– including for civil society–around diverse UN entities engaged in science and technology. These include the World Health Organization’s Digital Health, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), as well as the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF), exploring an IGF Plus model, with regional/national IGFs. UN programs in science and technology, digital and data/research programs should also partner more with human rights NGOs like WEDO, ASH and the NCD Alliance that engage with human rights treaties. Examples include their shadow reports on the SDGs to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

SOURCES

Interim People’s Pact chapter 3 on Global Digital Compact

HLAB Report: A Breakthrough for People and Planet: Effective and Inclusive Global Governance for Today and the Future, https://highleveladvisoryboard.org/breakthrough/pdf/highleveladvisorybo…

Proposal for an integrated scientific advisory process in Arthur Lyon Dahl, Call for an Earth System Council, International Environment Forum, February 2024, https://iefworld.org/ddahl24a

Climate Governance Commission Report, 28 November 2023, recommendation 4. Enhance International Scientific Capacity for Earth System Governance: https://ggin.stimson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Governing-Our-Plane…

David Obura, "Equity in action: global to local", published in Global Catastrophic Risks 2024, Global Challenges Foundation https://globalchallenges.org//app/uploads/2024/01/Global-catastrophic-r… or https://iefworld.org/dObura24.html