Telecommunications Networks and Earth Sustainability

What result will the deployment of telecommunications networks have on the sustainability of the planet?

Sustainability is a very complex concept made up of a multitude of environmental, economic and social aspects that interact with each other directly or indirectly, following intricate causal routes that are not always well known. These interactions act in some cases synergistically and in others antagonistically. An example of synergistic interaction is the improvement in social welfare indicators (for example, health, education and employment) that can derive from a situation of economic growth. An example of an antagonistic interaction could be the environmental deterioration derived from said economic growth. This complexity sometimes makes it difficult to predict the final result on the global sustainability of certain agents that act transversally, such as digitization or energy technologies.

What net result will the deployment of telecommunications networks have on the sustainability of the planet? This is the question that has been raised by a multidisciplinary team from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in which researchers from the area of ​​telecommunications, health, energy and environmental technologies participate. Some previous works seem to indicate that access to the Internet and digital systems allows the development of more efficient, dematerialized systems with a lower carbon footprint. For example, a virtual meeting avoids the environmental impacts associated with transporting the participants and an e-book avoids cutting down the trees necessary to produce the paper used in a conventional book print run. However, the use of these networks implies energy consumption and the consumption of electronic devices and, in turn, generates changes in the behavior of individuals and organizations that are not easy to predict and quantify with precision.

The study carried out by the team led by Jorge Pérez-Martínez, from the UPM, consists of a rigorous statistical analysis of the associations observed between the digitization indicators reported in the Information and Communication Technologies Development Index (ICT). ), the sustainability indicators associated with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index and other economic indicators published by the World Bank. The objective has been to analyze the relationships that exist between these indicators so that, without the need to understand the causal relationships that may exist between them, it is possible to define synergistic or antagonistic associations that favor or harm the achievement of certain sustainability objectives.

The results of the study show that there are strong correlations between the composite indices of digitization, sustainability, and economic growth. In other words, an increase in the aggregate digitization index implies an increase in the aggregate sustainability index.

The new study has been aimed at finding out the most probable result that the deployment of telecommunications networks will have on the sustainability of the planet. The image is an artist’s recreation of the concept of planetary digital telecommunications networks. (Illustration: Amazings/NCYT)

However, the analysis of the lower level indicators offers a more ambiguous picture. Although synergies are generated between digitization and sustainability in aspects related to social development and material well-being, there are antagonistic relationships between digitization and most of the indicators related to environmental protection, such as emissions that promote global climate change. , the depletion of natural resources and the generation of waste. It is inevitably observed that the countries that have higher levels of digitization coincide with those that have greater economic development and, in turn, have a worse performance in each of these environmental indicators. These observations are masked when an analysis of higher order indices is carried out, where environmental sustainability problems are offset by the social and economic benefits associated with digitization.

As Guillermo San Miguel, one of the researchers who has been part of the work team, points out, “these structural obstacles must be recognized and managed properly to guarantee harmonious progress towards a comprehensive sustainability system that takes into account human needs and their natural environment”.

The study is entitled “Analyzing associations between digitalization and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”. And it has been published in the academic journal Science of The Total Environment. (Source: UPM)