I wrote this review in June 2010 as request from the Journal of Industrial Ecology. In the end it wasn’t published, so I thought it will be relevant to publish it as an online review:

Greening through IT: Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability. Bill Tomlinson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010, 210 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-01393-2

The use of information technologies as tools for solving environmental issues is a growing area. Bill Tomlinson’s book can be seen as the first comprehensive effort in this area being published for the broader audience. This is a welcome publication and it will help in consolidating this growing interdisciplinary research.

The book starts with an overview describing the research area. The author chose to use the term Green IT as an umbrella term for all the interactions between IT and environmental issues, and with focus on the proactive use of IT for helping in environmental issues. This choice of terminology is not an obvious one as Green IT usually refers just to the greening of IT itself. The subtitle “information technology for environmental sustainability” is less catchy than Green IT and it is not used throughout the text, but in my opinion it describes better the research area.

The book’s central discourse is introduced in this first chapter. The author argues that environmental problems are caused because there is a gap in the time, space and complexity scales. Environmental problems are broad, big and slow while we humans have a narrow, fast and small scale for them. IT is presented as the opportunity of bridging this gap, as it compresses time space and complexity. This argument will be used as a core idea trough the whole text.

The next three chapters are an introduction to the problem area from three different perspectives: Environmental, Human and Technological. Starting from a standard but necessary introduction to today’s most important environmental themes, Tomlinson discusses the role of humans and technology in these problems. The author takes a social constructivist position, arguing the position that technology is value free and it is just a multiplier of human intent, while  it is also pointed  out that technologies are designed, providing affordances to the users.

Next, the author proceeds to analyze the impact of IT on the environment. The first order negative effects are presented: GHG emissions, e-waste, resource depletion, toxic substances, and the multiplier effects in other emissions. This analysis lacks a bit of depth and it’s weak in references. The positive effects are then argued, followed by a comprehensive survey on existing examples, going through most of the existing discussion and projects on the use of IT in agriculture food, energy, manufacturing, transportation, buildings and IT itself.

The next three chapters deal with specific areas and are developed around the author’s own projects. The first explored opportunity is education, and focus on the informal acquiring of environmental skills. The example presented is Ecoraff, a simulation tool for learning about restoration ecology in a rainforest environment. The author presents the point that simulation broadens the horizons of the users in time and space, letting the users experiment without consequences. The second area is personal change, where the possibilities for changing behavior are explored. The author presents the project Trackulous, a tool for tracking personal behavior. Having accountability is argued as the first step for behavioral change. It encourages the users to live a “well informed life” basing their decisions on quantitative information. The third area is collective action. It develops the idea of using IT for helping people to get together to reduce their impact. The project presented is GreenScanner, a community driven database of sustainability ratings accessible through the mobile phone. The book is then wrapped up by bringing together all the presented ideas using the concept of horizons and expanding the ideas from the first chapter.

In conclusion this book provides a good introduction to the emerging field of IT for environmental sustainability. The main criticism is its lack of a broader selection of references. Most cited projects and texts are coming from computer science, human computer interaction and other technical fields, and the text misses references to much of the interesting work coming from fields such as sustainability studies, environmental analysis or ecological economics. In any case the text that Tomlinson have put together is comprehensive, and it has the potential of becoming a reference book for this research area. I would say is a recommended reading for everyone interested on the possibilities of IT in sustainability.

I presented two full papers at Enviroinfo2010 in Bonn (International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection).

1. Carbon.to: Improving the understanding of carbon dioxide information

About carbon.to

2. Greenalytics: A tool for mashup life cycle assessment of websites.

Presenting Greenalytics.org

Information and communications technologies and sustainability are two areas that seems quite unrelated. But it is not so and there is a growing interest in their interplay. As a very interdisciplinary and new area there is still not a consensus on a research field definition nor very defined boundaries between different parts of the research area. I was going to write a longer scientific papers on this, but I found more appropiate to publish it as a short scientific blog post hoping to get more interactive response.

I will present my view on the subject, dividing the current research into three areas, one of them (ICT4D) that is quite established, while the other two are a bit more blurred together. As presented in the graphic below I do believe that there are common ground between these three.

ICT4Development

ICT4D refers to the application of information and communication tools for social and economic development, usually focusing on developing countries. [1]
Some of the topics ICT4D works with:
•    Providing ICT infrastructure in low income countries.
•    Developing digital literacy and closing the digital divide (technological access gap).
•    E-learning, e-health, e-government, e-commerce for developing countries.
•    Increase awareness in social and ethical issues.
ICT4D can be seen as the study of the positive second grade impact of ICT in social and economical sustainability [2].
Interesting literature can be found in: [1, 3, 4]

Green IT
Green IT (or green computing) refers to the quantification and reduction of the ICT equipment environmental impact. It can be defined as the study of reducing the negative first grade impact of ICT in environmental sustainability [2]. Some of the topics included in Green IT are:
•    Virtualization of equipment
•    Materials recycling
•    Design for disassembly
•    Energy management
Interesting literature can be found in: [5 ,6]

ICT For Sustainability

With Information and Communication Technologies for Environmental Sustainability I refer to the research that studies the use of ICT in solving the environmental challenges of sustainability. It focuses on the possibilities, on the positive indirect impacts of ICT in environmental sustainability and the positive structural and behavioral effects [2]. It looks at ecological problems that undermine sustainability such as climate change, eutrophication, biodiversity loss, acidification, water scarcity, air and water pollution.

•  Optimization and savings using computers
•  System changes due to use ICT that reduce energy and material uses
•  Society and behavioral changes due to ICT use

Interesting literature can be found in: [2, 7,8,9,10]

Conclusions

I find it is important to clarify the vocabulary and have a common ground when speaking about a research area. The terms green IT and the work studying the use of ICT for reducing ecological challenges as global warming are usually mixed. Conferences and reports get ambiguous titles, and the different terms are usually part of the discussions. I would like to put my  small contribution and point out my views in the differences between those areas. The focus of green IT in reducing the impact of ICT hardware is in my opinion a needed condition if we are to use ICT as tools for sustainable change. But it is just a part in the broader study of the complex relationship between information technology and sustainability.

References

[1]    United Nations. 2007. GAID Series 1: Foundations of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Edited by Aliye P. Celik. New York.

[2]    Berkhout, F. Hertin J. 2004. De-materialising and re-materialising: digital technologies and the environment. On Futures 36 (2004) 903-920.

[3]    Development divides and digital bridges: why ICT is key for achieving the MDGs (Shoji Nishimoto and Radhika Lal, Commonwealth Finance Ministers Reference Report, 2005.)

[4]    The Case for Technology for Developing Regions. Eric Brewer, Michael Demmer, Bowei Du, Kevin Fall, Melissa Ho, Matthew Kam, Sergiu Nedevschi, Joyojeet Pal, Rabin Patra, and Sonesh Surana. IEEE Computer. Volume 38, Number 6, pp. 25-38, June 2005.

[5]    Haris, J. 2008. Green Computing and Green IT Best Practices on Regulations and Industry Initiatives, Virtualization, Power Management, Materials Recycling and Telecommuting.

[6]    Kuehr, R. Williams, E. (2004). Computers and the Environment – Understanding and Managing their Impacts. Kluwer Academic Publishers & United Nations University. Dordrecht/Boston/London.

[7]    Global e-Sustainability Initiative. (2002). Industry as a partner for sustainable development: Information and communications technology. United Kingdom 2002. ISBN: 92-807-2186-0

[8]    Hilty, L. Arnfalk, P. Erdmann, L. Goodman, J. (2004). The future impact of ICT on environmental sustainability. EU-US Seminar: New technology foresight, forecasting and assessment methods. Seville 13-14 May 2004.

[9]    Fuchs, C. (2006) The implications of new information and communication technologies for sustainability. Springer Science.

[10]    Alekson V. Et al. (2004) Making the net work: Sustainable Development in a Digital Society. Xeris,  ISBN: 9780954621605