At the “Summit for the Future” in 2023, the UN, together with civil society and the private sector, are expected to agree on shared principles for an “open, free and secure digital future for all”.
This includes promoting a “trustworthy Internet” with accountability criteria for discrimination and misleading content as well as regulating Artificial Intelligence to be consistent with “our shared global values”. However, what this means in practice is that the “values” must correlate with the beliefs held sacred by the UN and WEF (see The Ministry of Truth).
Secretary-General António Guterres writes in Our Common Agenda that one of the risks of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is “the use of digital surveillance and manipulation to influence behavior and control populations.”
This very legitimate concern, however, is more about the fact that the UN does not want this technology to fall into the hands of forces that they themselves or their partners do not control. This is because the whole idea behind the “Global Digital Compact” is to be able to control the world’s population and align its values to be in line with the UN’s and WEF’s interpretations of the 17 Global Goals of Agenda 2030.
A concrete example is the initiative Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES), which was formed after the launching of the UN Roadmap for Digital Cooperation in March 2021 with the aim of promoting “digital sustainability”.[3] The coalition currently gathers around 1,000 stakeholders from over 100 countries.[4]
ounders of CODES are UNEP, UNDP, International Science Council, The German Environment Agency, Kenyan Ministry of Environment, Sustainability in the Digital Age and Future Earth. The latter organisation has a key role in the agenda and are part of the Global Commons Alliance initiative, which I will return to in the last installment of this series – Be Prepared.
CODES works to implement collective system changes and remove any obstacles standing in the way of the total digitization that they believe is needed to implement the sustainability goals (70% of the goals can be achieved through the application of digital solutions according to a study that CODES refers to).
During the environmental conference Stockholm +50 in June 2022, CODES presented its action plan which aims to inform about the priorities included in the Global Digital Compact. The report describes three system shifts, eighteen strategic priorities and nine “global impact” initiatives that will give rise to the “desired” change.[5]
These systems shifts are:
- Enable Alignment – Align Values Visions Objectives
- Mitigate Negative Impacts – Sustainable Digitalization
- Accelerate Innovation – Digitalization for Sustainability
In order to achieve the goals, the establishment of a “World Commission on Sustainability in the Digital Age” is proposed with the aim of conducting research and offering scientifically oriented information on how sustainability should be achieved in the digital era. Their conclusions, in turn, will form the basis for a global platform (Clearing House for Digital Sustainability Standards) that develops digital and financial sustainability standards. This knowledge is then to be disseminated through decentralized education programs.
In order to deal with the negative environmental and social effects from energy use, greenhouse gases, material use, consumption, digital divides, violations, and “incorrect information”, it is proposed, among other things, that platforms for reporting and comparing companies’ greenhouse gas emissions and that digital product passports be introduced with the aim of being able to follow a product entire life cycle. The latter is part of the circular economy and will eventually also be used on us humans. It is a new ecosystem in the making where everything is to be connected in order to measure degree of sustainability. A World Brain that analyzes and keeps track of everything and everyone.