To be sustainable implies that our actions are in balance with the environment in which we live. It is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future. Sustainability, in its broadest context, comprises not only the environment but it also embraces social and economic factors.
There is a delusion that we can simply scale up the renewables programme and, coupled with energy efficiency and some planetary engineering, we’ll reach a zero-carbon future. I personally feel that the laws of physics and simple arithmetic will work against this simple outlook.
Recent reports from the Committee on Climate Change indicate that we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero by 2050; this will require a minor revolution in how we drive, eat, fly and heat our homes. The committee further envisages that 60% of our emissions will require a degree of change hard for any of us to ignore. With the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), the good news is that this shift is technically feasible; people’s attitudes and support of technology have improved, so perhaps it’s now time for our politicians and legislature to make this possible.
However, real change requires experts to collaborate. As science advances and problems grow more complex, and as we increasingly live in a world of specialists, scientific and material progress; utilising 4IR towards a zero-carbon future demands complex collaboration. Yet, a practical problem remains: how do you reconcile technical expertise with the demands of policy and politics?
It is not enough to give political influence to a physicist, an engineer or economist: the corridors of power must ring to the sound of scientific informed debate. Good policy making is now a team effort of differing perspectives and ranges of specialist expertise.
Revolutions and consequences
Big cities, big data. Cities are becoming the graveyards of tech junk that no one could find a business case for. Many tech start-ups are focusing on smarter cities, the business model is one of ‘subsidise early users, achieve a dominant market position and then ramp up prices to create big profits’; this model has now backfired. Technology is often too hyped – real innovation happens beyond the engineering. We should ask: how does technology connect with people, institutions and our routines?
Rampant acceleration of eye-catching smart technology leaves little room for companies to design disassembly into their products. In China, some 77 companies supplied 23m bikes by 2017; many of which have failed. Beyond the colossal pile of rejected bicycle wheels and frames, consider the amount of basic IoT boards and supporting arrays of sensors and actuators. All are now discarded.
So, has ‘business as usual’ recycling failed? Has it become an excuse for companies to avoid designing disassembly into their products and services? Given that 4IR offers the future prospect of acceleration in the design for disassembly, recycling is currently promoted as the answer to our growing mountain of trash – but the trade is now in crisis after China closed its door to the world’s waste.
This decision has exposed a system plagued by pollution and fraud. The world has produced more than 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste since the 1950s, making plastic one of the largest manmade materials on the planet, behind steel and cement. Of that volume, more than half was produced in the last 16 years amid a global boom in single-use disposable plastic.
A systemic change is required if society and companies are to break the linear pattern of consumption of material which has become the norm: taking resources from the natural world, using them and disposing of them. 4IR offers the opportunity to move towards a more circular economy, which should enable the reusing of resources rather than the consumption of them. 4IR could allow us to reimagine the past: no single use items - mend and make do. After all, previous generations did just that and survived!
Mental and physical health
In reflecting upon the consequences beyond material sustainability, societal sustainability should not be ignored. Income inequality affects our mental health. Over the past decade, there have been a number of publications with thought provoking data on mental health. According to the World Health Organisation, in developed economies, between 10 and 25% of the population have (or are) suffering from mental stress. Why?
An anthropologist might attribute this to different cultural concepts of individualism, happiness and self-expression. An economist might point to differing commercial incentives. But there’s possibly another hypothesis: unequal societies are not just more physically sick, but are psychologically affected, too.
Reports now suggest that developed populations suffer more from issues ranging from chronic stress, anxiety and depression to bipolar disorder and addiction. WHO and Lancet Psychiatry report that the deterioration in mental health in unequal countries not only affects the poor but the rich, too. Despite unprecedented levels of physical comfort, we appear to suffer a huge burden of unhappiness and mental illness.
But how does this correlate to 4IR? There is a view in some developed countries that income inequality is a benefit insofar as it spurs competition, innovation and progress. However, there is growing discourse across society that solutions should be found to tackle the problem: the political right calls from stronger community ties; the left seeks economic distribution. The debates serve as a useful reminder, that as the pace of 4IR accelerates, it’s important that those advocating these new technologies and ways of working and engaging, recognise that the inequality debate is about more than just money.
Governance and oversight
75 years ago, governments met from around the world to create a framework for regulating the international monetary system. The IMF and World Bank were founded to enable a restarting of the global economy.
Governance and oversight were essential to ensure the proper monitoring of money and its movement. With the internet and the new digital economy, is it not time for policy makers to learn from the lessons of financial history and accelerate a mechanism for global coordination of the digital world?
With 4IR, who can individuals, society and companies rely upon to ensure that data is kept flowing around the internet in the face of geopolitical tensions and cyber terrorism? Presently, there is no global institution responsible for setting and enabling governance.
Given it is the large tech companies that have monopoly over data, future innovation is potentially at risk of being hampered. Needed now is a sense of common purpose across all governments to ensure that the movement of data, which now drives the global economy as much as finance, is not fragmented.
