This year’s Internet Research conference in Göteborg / Sweden has a special focus on sustain

ability, thus one of the key note speeches is dealing with Green IT.

Peter Arnfalk from the International Institute for Industrial Environmental

Economics at Lund University presents the concept of how we might ensure sustainable development by ‘greening’ of and greening through IT. This includes all three pillars of sustainability - environmental, social and economic interests.

As the electric energy used for IT will double within next 5 years and we are already producing millions of tons of e-waste a year, some of those valuable, some hazardous, some both, it is absolutely time to make our IT related patterns more efficient. There are several concepts concerning Green IT, reaching from greening IT products, over de-materialization (e.g.: ‘paper-free office’), to new functional solutions in society (e-banking, e-care, teleworking, online meetings,…) and environmental applications of IT (measuring air/water quality,…). These concepts partially are picked out and instrumentalized on various political levels: supranational (OECD), international (EU) and national (in Arnfalk’s example: Sweden). But there hasn’t been enough research on Green IT (partially due to a lack of funding and related funding policies) so it is not always sure that such environmental policies really improve our usage patterns… or did you know that the total CO2 emissions from e-mail are 7-20 times higher than postal mail?

There is another issue Arnfalk singles out as major challenge of the Green IT idea: What happens after we rationalized our processes, made our energy usage perfectly efficient and are able to save a decent amount of resources? It is obvious that we would use these resources to produce more goods and increase consumption… So in parallel our consumption patterns should be adapted to be sustainable as well!

Links:

IR 11.0

Keynotes @ IR 11.0 ||  The presentation slides will be put online soon!

Peter Arnfalk @ IIIEE at Lund University

The Green IT Report ||  Related blog

In the run up of the biggest ICT4D / ICTD conference this year - ICTD2010 in London - we have been supporting the organizers in setting up a pre-conference platform.

The aim of this platform is to give people who can’t participate at the conference the possibility to share their ideas and to “raise the voice of the South“, listening to the needs and critical voices of people affected by ICT4D / ICTD.

People can send in one-pagers which will be posted and then discussed - first on the platform and finally also at a session of the ICTD2010 conference.

The main facilitator of the platform is Ineke Buskens, a gender, research and facilitation consultant living in the Western Cape, South Africa. Her introductory text to the platform - Bridging the Divides - is well worth a read. In there she states that the

lack of shared understanding of the main thrust and purpose of the ICTD or ICT4D project could be the main obstacle towards seeing the ICTD community evolve in such a way that we are all able to ‘celebrate one another’s unique strengths’

Furthermore she raises the question

what does development actually mean in ICTD? Does ICTD mean development of ICTs for the developing world? Does it mean developing markets for ICT products and tools in the developing world? Or does it mean engaging development with and through the use of ICTs in and with the developing world?

To contribute to this question and to bring in an often ignored perspective, she asks everybody

to contribute by sharing what they really and passionately want to share, having a southern perspective in their focus and the interest of the South in their heart, whether they are located in the South, in the North, or in both.

These contributions should be small texts - approximately one page. Two questions which she raises to kick-start this whole process are:

1) What are the ICT4D Research Needs in the developing world from a developing world perspective and why would you think so? Please be concrete and specific and go beyond general categories such as ‘health’, education etc.

2) What action projects have taken place in the developing world that were actually successful research projects, in the sense that they met a real need in a real way (and hence acted on valid and appropriate tacit knowledge) but did not have the ‘knowledge quest component’ worked out enough in their narrative to be recognized as research? Can you come up with examples and sketch what you think the knowledge quest would have been if it had been made explicit from the start?

So if you have answers to the questions and if you have something to say about these topics, please send in one-pagers to Ineke Buskens (ineke@researchforthefuture.com) or Florian Sturm (florian.sturm@ict4d.at) and join the discussion on the platform (the Discussion section is open for everybody). We are looking forward to your input.