Digitalisation and innovation as saviours for sustainability? A critical discussion

In the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, digitalisation and technological innovations are regularly cited as the approaches with the greatest potential to solve the current climate crisis.

Unfortunately, digitalisation is currently having the opposite effect and is accompanied by rising energy consumption. Technological product innovations are shortening life and usage cycles, which in turn leads to increased resource consumption. The report "Our Common Digital Future" (2019) by the German Advisory Council on Global Change of the German Federal Government makes it clear, for example, that sustainability strategies and concepts must be fundamentally developed further in the age of digitalisation and that there will be hardly any sustainable solutions without active political and social design.

In this context, the breakout session on CSR Day 2021 discussed the role of universities in an open society and what contribution they can make in terms of a critical examination of the topic of "digitalisation and sustainability" in order to efficiently curb the negative effects on people and nature.

Speaker:

• Susanne Buck, Head of the Department for Technical Universities and Sustainable Development at the BMBWF
• Stefan BlachfellnerBertalanffy Centre for Study of Systems Science & Circular Economy Forum Austria
• ​Rania Wazir, Data Scientist & Advisor of the Circular Economy Forum Austria

moderated by Christopher KronenbergFH of the BFI Vienna & Advisor of the Circular Economy Forum Austria