Digital Sustainability
What is digital sustainability?
UN CODES (Coalition of Digital Environmental Sustainability) defines digital sustainability as the design, development, deployment, and regulation of digital technologies to accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable development while mitigating risks and unintended consequences.
What is digital sustainability all about?
Digital sustainability simply means adapting existing software infrastructure or introducing new digital initiatives to help reach sustainability goals. There are two dimensions
Sustainability “By” technology is the practice of enabling technology to meet sustainability goals.
Sustainability “IN” technology is the practice of creating and using environmentally sustainable computing.
Why should we care?
Hardware can consume energy only as much as the software allows. Hardware and software are inexplicably linked. As businesses set ever more ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, their sustainability and technology strategies need to become more tightly aligned.
Most organizations aim to achieve their net-zero ambitions by 2030. To meet this tight timeline, they want to embed sustainability throughout their supply chain, reducing carbon emissions while also addressing issues like human rights and ethical sourcing. Technology is a vital enabler across the five key areas that are most important to corporations:
- Achieving net-zero
Value chain transformation
Sustainable brands
ESG
Overall sustainability profile in the short, medium and long term
