Authors: Alessio Gerola (corresponding author - alessio.gerola@wur.nl), Bob Kreiken (b.e.kreiken@tudelft.nl), Jaco Appelman (guest author - j.h.appelman@uu.nl), Paulan Korenhof (paulan.korenhof@wur.nl)
Commentary by the speakers of the panel Dreams of eco-technics. Critically examining technical answers to ecological problems, held at 4TU.Ethics ESDIT Conference, University of Twente, 2-4 October 2024.
The world is facing rapid ecological decline. The key drivers of biodiversity loss, namely habitat conversion, pollution, climate change, invasive species, and exploitation (IPBES, 2019), are closely related to technological developments in industrial and digital innovation. However, these same technologies hold great potential for conservation and restoration, for re-envisioning our relationship with nature, and create more sustainable designs (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy, 2016). Consider, for example, monitoring technologies such as the AI model Forest Foresight that can predict where deforestation will occur.
At the 4TU ESDIT conference, we gathered a panel of experts to discuss the potential and limits of technology use in the biodiversity crisis. A critical examination of such technologies reveals that human values and assumptions embedded therein influence the meaning, valuation, and measurement of notions such as what nature is, how we live sustainably, and how we live with nature. At the same time, technologies also shape our current understanding of these fundamental questions. Far from being neutral tools, innovations that are developed for the environment embody values, hopes, and visions of sustainable and more ecologically just futures.
A first objective of the panel was to explore how bio-inspired, nature-based technologies and other biotechnological and digital innovations reshape notions such as biodiversity, sustainability, and ecological transitions (Whitesides, 2015). Regenerative design, for example, challenges the adequacy of common notions of sustainability as environmental neutrality. Jaco Appelman of Utrecht University asked what technological future we wish to pursue, making a case for drawing technological inspiration from nature and aligning design with nature’s needs. Currently, the emulation-paths sketched by Bio-Inspired approaches can still deliver technologies that have a negative impact on eco-systems, while, instead, the aim should be to try to enhance their regenerative capabilities. Technological design approaches that would internalize the value of regeneration, integration and dynamic balances or similar concepts such as restoration and reconciliation would lead engineers in a more nature-positive direction (Mathews, 2019; Frase, 2016).
A second objective of the panel was to assess the values embedded in these technologies and their broader societal implications. Biotechnologies like assisted evolution and de-extinction lead us to ask how benefits and risks are distributed, who is empowered to decide how technologies are used, and whose knowledge systems are promoted (Pritchard et al., 2022). Without consideration of these concerns, existing inequities in conservation are exacerbated by a widening digital divide, particularly in the Global South (Mc Cartney et al., 2022).
To guide this discussion, Bob Kreiken of Delft University of Technology applied Hadot’s (2006) differentiation between dominating, instrumental and scientifically reductionist so-called Promethean attitudes towards nature, and Orphic attitudes which describe the respect, ecological sensitivity, and reciprocity towards Nature often found with Indigenous peoples (note here the capitalized ‘‘N’’ to recognize its intrinsic value). Fire as the most ancient form of technology, and what inspired Delft University’s logo is both used to destroy forests for industrial agriculture and by Aboriginals to prevent uncontrollable wildfires and to regenerate vegetation. Although the people who develop and employ biodiversity technologies have good intent, unchecked Promethean attitudes in science obscure other worldviews and conservation pathways, particularly when ‘crisis’ tendencies overrule deliberation with stakeholders and restraint in their application. More involvement of ethicists in conservation debates and scholarly cross-pollination will help to ensure just use of biodiversity technologies.
The panel continued with Paulan Korenhof of Wageningen University, who critically examined the socio-technical imaginaries underpinning the "Destination Earth" project. DestinE, for short, is a project of the European Commission to develop a Digital Twin of the Earth: a highly accurate data-driven representation that monitors and predicts the interaction between natural phenomena and human activity. DestinE is expected to inform Europe's environmental governance. However, every representation reflects a certain approach to reality, thereby giving certain actors power over claims to knowledge and the materialisation of worldviews. Because DestinE will gain a prominent role in environmental governance, it is important to scrutinise the worldviews underpinning the project to avoid lock-in of future pathways. So far, DestinE seems driven by three main narratives: Europe's Twin Transition of the Green Deal, Digital Strategy, and the Digital Twin narrative. Unfortunately, the current imaginaries seem to direct the project towards a Eurocentric and one-directional reductive future. However, as DestinE is still under development, these insights into the boundaries of the imaginaries shaping DestinE can help to question and recalibrate the project as it develops.
Finally, the overarching goal of the panel was to discuss normative concepts and frameworks that could guide technological developments towards more nature-positive and just futures (Dicks, 2023). Alessio Gerola, also based at Wageningen University, presented an analysis that moved from the contradiction sustainable and nature-based technologies are premised upon: how can technology undo and repair the harm to an environment that it has caused in the first place? From this perspective, sustainable technologies risk becoming yet another instrument in the techno-solutionist toolkit (Sætra, 2023). Techno-solutionism is an ideology that treats technology as a neutral instrument for the achievement of practical solutions to social problems, often replacing complex political deliberation with more efficient technological fixes, contributing to support technocratic forms of governance. If sustainable technologies are treated as such techno-solutions, they may exacerbate the problems they are supposed to address, while also reshaping sociopolitical landscapes and human-nature relations. Inspired by the work of Ivan Illich (1975), the notion of conviviality can help assessing the limits of sustainable and nature-based technologies in addressing ecological challenges, and inspire more democratic and community-focused modes of deliberation and production.
After the panellists’ interventions, we engaged in discussion with the audience. One discussion point dealt with the existence of power relations, for example in the context of transitions to more sustainable modes of energy production. Another theme we touched upon concerned the impact of digital monitoring systems on the way in which we know and make sense of nature and biodiversity. Does the quantification of nature contribute to frame ecological problems as controllable and solvable, opening the space for techno-solutionism? We also examined the assumptions of techno-fixes, whether they imply a reductionist construction of the problem, an anthropocentric focus, or both. In terms of knowledge systems, we wondered which ones are enforced or erased when digital technologies are used for biodiversity conservation. Lastly, the panellists and the audience reflected on how philosophy can inform science and engineering to support the education of more critically aware technology makers. Engineer’s passion for solving challenges through technologies should be given ample room on the condition of participatory or value sensitive design approaches.
From left to right: the authors of this blog, Bob, Alessio, Paulan and Jaco.
Further reading
Ceschin, F. and Gaziulusoy, I. (2016). Evolution of design for sustainability: From product design to design for system innovations and transitions. Design Studies, 47: 118-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2016.09.002
Dicks, H. (2023). The biomimicry revolution: learning from nature how to inhabit the earth. Columbia University Press.
Frase, P. (2016). Four Futures: Life after Capitalism. Verso.
Hadot, P. (2006). The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature. The Belknap Press.
Illich, I. (1975). Tools for Conviviality. Fontana.
IPBES. (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Version 1). https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.3831673
Mathews, F. (2019). Biomimicry and the Problem of Praxis. Environmental Values, 28(5), 573-599. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327119X15579936382400
Mc Cartney, A. M., Anderson, J., Liggins, L., Hudson, M. L., Anderson, M. Z., TeAika, B., Geary, J., Cook-Deegan, R., Patel, H. R., & Phillippy, A. M. (2022). Balancing openness with Indigenous data sovereignty: An opportunity to leave no one behind in the journey to sequence all of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2115860119
Pritchard, R., Sauls, L. A., Oldekop, J. A., Kiwango, W. A., & Brockington, D. (2022). Data justice and biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology, 36(5). https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13919
Sætra, H. S. (2023). Technology and Sustainable Development: The Promise and Pitfalls of Techno-Solutionism. Routledge.
Whitesides, G. (2015). Bioinspiration: something for everyone, Interface Focus, Vol. 5, No. 4, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2015.0031