[Event Review] Digitalization and Sustainability Transitions in 2050: Friends or Foes?

: 19 December 2018; Hits: 3855

[Event Review] Digitalization and Sustainability Transitions in 2050: Friends or Foes?

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Author / Mu-Xing Lin, Assistant Research Fellow, RSPRC, NTU ; Chien-Ming Hsu, Assistant Research Fellow, RSPRC, NTU
Translator / Jo-Shih Chiu

Faced with the urgent challenges of climate change and energy transition, different social systems need to cooperate and help each other, in order to facilitate and accelerate the transition of the entire society. Therefore, on 3 October, hundreds of attendees from all walks of life who were concerned about sustainability transition gathered at the Liang Kuo Shu International Conference Hall, the place which was in National Taiwan University, participating in the international forum organized and sponsored by The Risk Society and Policy Research Centre of National Taiwan University (hereafter referred to as RSPRC) and Fubon Cultural & Educational Foundation. RSPRC and Fubon Cultural & Educational Foundation invited Prof. Ortwin Renn, (Science Director of "International Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies" (IASS) ), Prof. Ilan Chabay (Senior research fellow of IASS) and Prof. Shiuh-Shen Chien (Department of Geography, National Taiwan University), to share their precious thoughts on the "Digitalization and Sustainability Transitions" issue.

The Forum was started by Prof. Hung-Jen Wang's (Dean of School of Social Science, National Taiwan University) opening remarks, and followed by the speech of Prof. Chang-Chuan Chan (Dean of College of Public Health, National Taiwan University) who was the Chair of the Forum, and then all the attendees were invited to take group photos.

The next section was started firstly by prof. Chabay sharing his thoughts about sustainability systems and society systems. Facing the social needs emerged from the unprecedented global change, we needed to continually learn and innovate through co-design processes, and the key point was changing human behaviors. Based on "The World In 2050 (TWI2050)" report, Prof. Chabay also described the relationship between digitalization and sustainability and gave some examples of digitalization transition to audiences. With regard to the sustainable digital revolution, Prof. Chabay pointed out the problems about income distribution data distribution, taxes and regulatory systems. On the social influence of digitalization, Prof. Chabay highlighted that the amount of information in the society nowadays was making it more difficult to verify its correctness. Hence, we needed to learn more and discuss more to improve the situation. Finally, Prof. Chabay concluded his talk with examples of two action plans implemented in Germany and Rome, discussing the possibility of mutual learning and creating.

The second speaker was Prof. Ortwin Renn, he first introduced the preliminary research results of IASS on the issues of "digitalization and sustainability transitions", and giving some reforming suggestions on the governing mechanism in terms of risk governance. Prof. Renn mentioned three aspects of global transition, which were globalization, digitalization, and sustainabilization, and the developments of these three aspects should be designed rather than let them go with the flow. Also, there could be some conflicts, as well as synergy among these three aspects. Prof. Renn also pointed out the controversies and conflicts derived from the global transition required the consensus of involved groups to deal with. Prof. Renn reminded us that we, as the designers of globalization, needed to engage in designing methods for transformation of these three aspects, such as supervising their transition and asking the government to take their responsibility, and developing new governance strategies in combination with effectiveness, resilience and fairness. Lastly, Prof. Renn concluded his talk with the words of Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the UN, and highlighted that the keys to transitions were innovation and development.

The third speaker is Prof. Shiuh-Shen Chien. His speech put an emphasis on how do different political systems respond to the contemporary wave of digitalization. According to Prof. Chien, we needed to face and paid better attention on the different results produced by the process of digitalization in different political systems. He used two political entities in Asia - China and Taiwan - respectively as examples of authoritarian and democratic regimes. The former is led by the state-party, while the latter is driven by citizens instead of the government. Prof. Chien addressed the results produced by different political systems in response to digitalization by comparing the two regimes. After comparing, he found out that in terms of sustainability and transitions, the democratic regime had become more and more connected and transparent, and its civil society had been enhanced, too. In contrast, the authoritarian regime had collected more data of a wide range from political issues to everyday life, from individuals to the network, then digitalizing the data, making the state become stronger. On the power shift during the digitalization process, in the democratic regime, mutual comprehension had become easier and more likely to approach the truth through digitalization, the civil society had thus been better developed, and the Habermas-type public sphere had been expanded. However, towards the Foucauldian type of self-discipline, the authoritarian regimed exerts its power by guiding the public to do anything that the state prefers.

During the Q&A section, an attendee posed a question that the development of globalization had brought unfairness to the world, is the inclusivity included in the sustainable development goals? Prof. Renn answered that developed countries should reduce trade barriers and allowed developing countries to join the market competition, while Prof. Chabay pointed out that small countries should make a good use of their proper political energy, it was always the small countries who push forward the issues on UN's Climate change summits. Besides, regarding the cognition of sustainability and Europe's communication media template for smart design, Prof. Chabay emphasized that the key point of smart design was to involve more interdisciplinary talents to take a part in the innovation, while Prof. Renn said we need to find out the way leading to broader participation. In the end, on the vision for 2050, Prof. Chien mentioned that there will be more robots in our future as well as cars flying in the sky, and the goods will be delivered by drones.In the future, people should participate in the Earth system as far as possible. Currently we are always dealing with issues of the land, but in the future, we will have to answer the questions about the sky.

Please refer to the speakers' presentation files and videos for more insightful and sparkling discussion!