Cross-cutting perspectives on the limits of the planet (environment, law, IT)

The study day ‘What to do with planetary limits?’ will be organized on 15 November in Grenoble by Clément Marquet and Florence Maraninchi as part of the CNRS ALDIWO project (see details below), with the support of the  CMA VerIT project.
The aim of this event is to bring together contributions from different disciplines to reflect on the challenges of operationalising planetary limits, with a particular focus on digital issues.

The study day is free but registration is required. Please register here.
The event will be held (in French) in the IMAG building on campus.

 

Study day program

9 am-9:10 am : Introduction

9:15 am-10:15 am: Théo Vischel, enseignant-chercheur en hydrologie à l’Université Grenoble Alpes au sein de l’Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement. Limites planétaires: concept et matière à réflexion pour un futur soutenable [Planetary limits: conceptualising and reflecting on a sustainable future]

10:15 am -10:45 am: Coffee break

10:45 am -12:15 am:

Claire Malwé (IODE, Univ. de Rennes), thème “les limites planétaires dans le droit” [topic: ‘planetary limits in law’]

Olivier Michel (LACL, Université Paris-Est Créteil), thème : “limites planétaires et enseignement de l’informatique” [topic: ‘planetary limits and computer science education’]

2:15 am – 2 pm: Lunch

Ateliers [Workshops]: around 2 pm - 2:15 pm

End: 5 pm

The study day

Over the last fifteen years or so, the trajectory followed by the digital sector has been regularly questioned in the light of its growing footprint on the planet, not only in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but also in terms of the strain placed on water and abiotic resources, ecotoxicity, etc. Faced with criticism, manufacturers have responded by highlighting the efficiency gains achieved by optimizing production systems, electronic equipment, computer code, buying back energy certificates, etc. These approaches implicitly perpetuate the idea of limitless growth, of a technical system that could free itself from resource constraints. In order to question this constantly renewed momentum towards limitless computing, we propose to turn to research that focuses on the limits of the planetary system. Since the 2010s, there has been a proliferation of work in this area, and more recently a body of work has emerged that aims to operationalize what at first glance appears to be a scientific research program. What can be done about planetary limits? To what extent can a new field of research with fluctuating results be mobilized for practical purposes?
The day-long event is divided into two parts. The morning session will bring together researchers working on the notion of planetary limits in several fields: environment, law and IT. In the afternoon, the sustainable IT research community will gather for workshops on the desirability and the practicalities of IT within the limits of the planet.

The ALDIWO Projet (Anti-limits in the Digital World)

ALDIWO is a research project led by Clément Marquet and Florence Maraninchi and supported by the Mission pour les Initiatives Transverses et Interdisciplinaires (MITI) of the CNRS.
Research on the environmental impact of digital technology has taken two main approaches: (1) so-called ‘Green IT’ approaches, which focus on optimizing the energy consumption of digital equipment during its use phase; (2) so-called ‘Green-by-IT’ approaches, which aim to reduce the environmental impact of non-digital sectors through the use of digital technology.
These current perspectives are not sufficient to cover all possible futures for the role of digital technology environmental upheavals of the present and the future.: (1) there is no example in the history of digital technology where optimizations have not been accompanied by massive rebound effects that cancel out the gains of these optimizations; (2) the theoretical gains hoped for by proposing a new generation of digital equipment are not always realized in practice, partly because one generation does not replace the previous one but adds to it, at least for a while; (3) The potential reduction in environmental impact in the other areas where digital technology is being used to optimize is very difficult to estimate. It’s a risky gamble to bet that these reductions will be significant enough to prevent digital technology from reducing its own impact.
If digital technology is to play its part in the necessary reduction of global environmental impact, it is imperative that we look beyond Green IT and Green-by-IT. There is a whole area of potential research in IT that constitutes “Undone Science” [1]. These topics can be explored from within the discipline of computer science, by systematically re-examining the design choices made for old or modern systems, by looking for potential optimization points that have not yet been explored, by assessing the fragility of digital infrastructures in the face of drastic external constraints, etc.
Nonetheless, thinking only in terms of digital research, we believe, has two major shortcomings: (a) it is inherently limited to the practical and technological aspects of the question, with no clear idea, for example, of how to take into account uses, rebound effects, the acceleration effects of all other sectors, etc. (b) It suffers, albeit sometimes unconsciously, from a mindset that sees digital technologies as one (or even the only) means of opening up possible futures, and any idea of limitations as an unrealistic pessimism or a reprehensible lack of confidence. However, in his paper “Predictions Without Futures” [2], S. Hong perfectly describes how the imaginary in the world of technology, far from opening up futures, completely closes them.
In this project, we therefore propose a multidisciplinary exploration of the notion of ‘limit’ in order to outline avenues for a research program that takes the project of digital sobriety seriously.

[1] S. Frickel, S. Gibbon, J. Howard, J. Kempner, G. Ottinger, and D. J. Hess, “Undone Science: Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting,” Science, Technology, & Human Values, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 444–473, Jul. 2010, doi: 10.1177/0162243909345836.

[2] S. Hong, “Predictions Without Futures,” History and Theory, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 371–390, 2022, doi: 10.1111/hith.12269.

The VerIT Projet

The VerIT Project is a training project as part of the ‘Skills and occupations of the future’ program. Learn more >