Digital sustainability
ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S)
The research and practice field on the two-way relationship between digital technology and sustainability — making ICT itself sustainable, and using ICT to enable sustainability.
Definition
ICT for Sustainability is the interdisciplinary field concerned with the interdependencies between information and communication technology and sustainable development. It spans two directions: sustainability *in* ICT — reducing the energy, material, and carbon footprint of digital technologies themselves — and sustainability *through* ICT — applying digital tools to problems such as energy systems, mobility, monitoring, and resource efficiency, while accounting for systemic effects like rebound.
References
field definition and critical stance
Overview
What it means
The field's founding insight is that "smarter" does not automatically mean "more sustainable": digital solutions can enable savings yet stimulate new consumption through rebound effects, and the ICT sector's own footprint is material. ICT4S therefore insists on life-cycle and systems analysis of digital interventions — efficiency and sufficiency together — rather than techno-optimism.
It has a dedicated conference series (since 2013) and overlaps with Green IT, environmental informatics, and sustainable HCI.
How it is used
The concept structures academic research, green-digital policy (such as the European Green Digital Coalition), and corporate digital-sustainability strategies.
Why it matters
Digitalisation is reshaping every sustainability domain; ICT4S is the field that asks whether the reshaping actually helps.
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