ICTs, the Internet and Sustainability: Where Next?

The report examines how ICTs impact sustainability across first, second, and third-order effects. It criticizes the Rio+20 summit for failing to systematically address the information society and calls for a new, multistakeholder approach to bridge the paradigm gap between the ICT and sustainable development communities.

• The impact of ICTs on sustainability is categorized into four levels: first-order (direct physical impacts), second-order (indirect impacts from use), rebound effects (behavioral changes), and third-order (long-term aggregated societal outcomes).
• First-order effects of ICTs are generally positive for economic prosperity and social equity but strongly negative for the environment due to waste, short device life cycles, and rising greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and data centers.
• Second-order effects offer potential for large-scale carbon reductions through 'smart systems' in energy, transport, and manufacturing, though adoption is hindered by the cost-effectiveness of investments in those non-ICT sectors.
• Third-order societal effects involve profound structural changes to human experience, including the globalization of labor markets, the virtualization of goods, and altered relationships between citizens and states through automated surveillance.
• The Rio+20 summit and its outcome document, 'The Future We Want', failed to systematically recognize the impact of the information revolution on sustainability, treating ICTs only as incidental tools for specific applications.
• A significant 'paradigm gap' exists between ICT professionals and sustainable development practitioners, leading to a failure to adapt sustainability notions to the characteristics of the Information Society.
• Mitigating the environmental impact of ICTs requires addressing 'churn'—the short 2-3 year life cycle of devices—and improving the energy efficiency of data centers and cloud computing.
• The report argues that traditional UN summit processes are no longer effective for achieving breakthroughs, as they prioritize lowest-common-denominator consensus in outcome documents over meaningful progress.
• To bridge the gap between ICTs and sustainability, the report suggests moving toward multistakeholder models, such as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) or small expert commissions, rather than large-scale diplomatic summits.

APA

Souter, D., & MacLean, D. (2012). ICTs, the Internet and Sustainability: Where Next? International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/icts_sd_where_next.pdf

Chicago

Souter, David, and Don MacLean. ICTs, the Internet and Sustainability: Where Next? International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2012. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/icts_sd_where_next.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Souter |first1=David |last2=MacLean |first2=Don |title=ICTs, the Internet and Sustainability: Where Next? |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=October 2012 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/icts_sd_where_next.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{souter2012icts, author = {Souter, David and MacLean, Don}, title = {{ICTs, the Internet and Sustainability: Where Next?}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2012}, month = oct, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/icts_sd_where_next.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }