Resource Consumption in the Information Society

Wealth and resource consumption is very unequally distributed on our planet. At the turn of the century, 20% of the world population consumed 80% of the resources. And while the industrialized countries have today a high level of protection of their local environment (air and water quality have improved) they hardly manage environmental problems which result indirectly from their population's lifestyles - like climate change. Many countries like China, India and Brazil are catching up, they increase their share of resource consumption and they start to contribute more and more to the global environmental problems.

In this situation we are entering the information age and the impact of the new technologies on the environment might be decisive for our future. But how will this impact on our lifestyles and our resource consumption look like?

Thanks to new information technologies, real products and services can be replaced by virtual ones. The virtual economy will be primarily a service economy which makes it possible to decouple economic growth from resource consumption. In this context, concepts of de- and even immaterialisation of consumption are discussed. A future in which the substitution is realised can be described by a cyberworld scenario. The life of humans is transferred more and more to virtual worlds and resource consumption in real life decreases. Data highways replace physical highways, virtual meetings replace physical meetings and most conferences will be done as videoconferences. These assumptions are supported by research which shows that people in all industrial countries tend towards post-materialistic attitudes and values. Clearly, information technologies offer the tools for the realisation of such a scenario, no other technology before provided a similar potential of dematerialisation.

On the other hand, there is reason for scepticism. The industrial society had for example replaced the agricultural society mainly with respect to the workforce. People moved from agricultural work to work in industry. On the material level, the industrial society did however add to the agricultural society. Via a positive feedback, even more agricultural products could be produced in the industrial society than in the agricultural one. In 1840 Justus von Liebig had published his findings about the application of chemistry in agriculture which resulted in the broad use of fertiliser and an increase of the cereals production. In parallel, even though IT workforce substitutes industrial workforce, the information society may produce even more industrial goods than the industrial society - again due to a positive feedback. Such a pattern of development would lead to an ecological disaster.

One of the mechanisms that prevent information technology from realising their potential for the reduction of the global resource consumption is the Rebound Effect. Increases in resource efficiency result in lower prices for products and therefore consumption increases to such a high level that the relative resource savings are compensated by the general growth. For example, some centuries ago only very privileged people could afford an orchestra. The resource consumption of the individual orchestra was high, but there were not many of them. Today information technology makes it possible to enjoy music with devices like CD or MP3 players which consume much less resources than an orchestra. But they have become so cheap that millions of people can use them and the overall resource consumption has increased (obviously it is not easy to bring the social and the environmental dimension of sustainability together).

Some areas, in which the increasing resource use is directly visible are:

• Energy consumption: A contemporary PC with a monitor has an energy consumption during use which is comparable to the metabolic turnover of a human being;
• Paper consumption: The paperless office is realized only slowly and for the time being restrictions to printing in the offices or at home are mainly due to cost of toner and ink cartridges and paper.
• There is a "mountain" of electronic waste that grows every year and contains still quite a variety of hazardous chemicals.

The Political Agenda: The Lisbon Strategy

Whether or not the huge dematerialisation potential of the new information technologies will be realized depends on the political frameworks. Unfortunately, these frameworks have not been set adequately during the IT-boom. The Lisbon Strategy1 was agreed upon by the Lisbon European Council in March 2000 and was designed as a new political strategy for the European Union "in order to strengthen employment, economic reform and social cohesion as part of a knowledge-based economy".

The Council stated that a "radical transformation of the European economy" was required as a consequence of globalisation and the challenges of a new knowledge-driven economy. The strategic goal for the European Union according to the 2000 Lisbon Strategy can be characterised by the most frequently cited phrase from the document. The Union wanted "to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion". Aspects of the strategy were an information society for all, establishing a European area of research and innovation and creating a friendly environment for starting up and developing innovative businesses, esp. SMEs. "Sustainable" did not mean in this context that economic growth should not occur if it resulted in higher burden for the environment, it meant just permanent and high economic growth. Political measures for environmental sustainability were missing in the 2002 Lisbon Strategy. The focus was just on growth itself (3% were indicated as a realistic prospect). An explanation may be derived from the Council’s understanding of the corresponding causal relationships at that time: "The shift to a digital, knowledge-based economy, prompted by new goods and services, will be a powerful engine for growth, competitiveness and jobs. In addition, it will be capable of improving citizens' quality of life and the environment." The knowledge-based economy was not only regarded as the tool that provided economic growth, it was also supposed to lead to a better environment.

It is helpful, to have a look at some documents which had been prepared before the Lisbon Strategy was decided upon, because they reveal the spirit and way of thinking at that time. For example, the DG Information Society of the European Commission published 1998 a status report "Towards a Sustainable Information Society", in which there was a very positive prognosis: "No other technology than IST offers such a high potential of “Dematerialisation”, that is, the same value added with much less resource input and environmental burdens, ..... It is clear that with the Information Society, new opportunities are emerging which will help to achieve both global environmental sustainability and continued economic growth; to achieve social goals of employment growth and local community development within a free market framework; and to enable greater access to work, services and mobility without congestion. This new opportunity for a triple win-win development is in stark contrast to the current debate on sustainability, notably in Rio and Kyoto, where the goals of sustainability are seen to be in conflict with economic growth, employment and industrial interests.“

Revised Strategy and the Long Way to Environmental Sustainability

The 2000 Lisbon Strategy was no success story. It became soon obvious that the European Union did not reach the economic growth it aimed at and in the area of sustainable development negative trends continued. The Lisbon Strategy has been revised in 2005. Ecological aspects have been taken into account. An essential step towards sustainability in the renewed Lisbon Strategy was the inclusion of environmental technology as a potential engine for growth and jobs: "The European Council reiterates the important contribution of environment policy to growth and employment, and also to the quality of life, in particular through the development of eco-innovation and eco-technology as well as the sustainable management of natural resources, which lead to the creation of new outlets and new jobs. It emphasises the importance of energy efficiency as a factor in competitiveness and sustainable development"

It was a long way from the original Lisbon Strategy 2000 to the inclusion of ecological items in 2005. And it will be still a long way until the ecological problems related to information technology will be solved. The EU directive on electronic waste (WEEE) has been a milestone. There are initiatives for the reduction of energy consumption by electronic equipment. Consumers are now more aware of the problems and industry is improving their products. The direct environmental consequences of information technology are more and more under control. Hovever, the indirect ones need further efforts. How to deal with the steadily inreasing mobility and the resulting environmental burden? How to deal with the structural changes induced by e-commerce? More and more small vans are on the way, delivering products that have been purchased online.

And we have lost time because we did not manage to take the problems generated by a new technology into account early enough, being influenced by the idea that a technology that has such a tremendous potential of dematerialisation would automatically solve our problems of resource consumption. Could we have known better? Perhaps yes, but the belief in the potential of technology to solve our problems is always seducing. If technology does the job, consumers do not have to change their behaviour, the economy needs not to change production and politicians can avoid unpopular decisions.

Symposium "Information Technology, Competitiveness and the Environment" in Helsinki, November 20, 2006
Website Management and Contact:
European Support Centre of the Club of Rome
http://esc.clubofrome.org