GISWatch 2020 GISW SNEAK PEEK SNEAK PEEK GLOBAL INFORMATION atch 2020 SOCIETY WATCH 2020 Technology, the environment and a sustainable world: Responses from the global South ASSOCIATION FOR PROGRESSIVE COMMUNICATIONS (APC) AND SWEDISH INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AGENCY (SIDA) GISWatch 2020 SNEAK PEEK Global Information Society Watch 2020 SNEAK PEEK Technology, the environment and a sustainable world: Responses from the global South APC would like to thank the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) for their support for Global Information Society Watch 2020. Published by APC 2021 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Some rights reserved. Disclaimer: The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of Sida, APC or its members. GISWatch 2020 SNEAK PEEK Table of contents Introduction: Returning to the river.... ............................................4 Alan Finlay The Sustainable Development Goals and the environment ............................9 David Souter Community networks: A people – and environment – centred approach to connectivity ................................................13 “Connecting the Unconnected” project team www.rhizomatica.org; www.apc.org Australia . 18 Queensland University of Technology and Deakin University marcus foth, monique mann, laura bedford, walter fieuw and reece walters Brazil . .23 Brazilian Association of Digital Radio (ABRADIG) anna orlova and adriana veloso Latin America . 28 Gato.Earth danae tapia and paz peña Uganda . .33 Space for Giants oliver poole GISWatch 2020 SNEAK PEEK Introduction: Returning to the river Alan Finlay do not have the same power as governments or the agribusiness, fossil fuel and extractive industries, and that to refer to them as “stakeholders” would The terrain of environmental sustainability involves make this power imbalance opaque. contestation – for resources, for rights, for territo- In line with this demand, the UN refers to “major ry, for survival and for profit. This contestation is groups and other stakeholders” in its deliberations, ideological, and embroils, among others, notions a separation of language that is reflected in the ac- of public good, the value of memory and cultural tual separation of business groups and Indigenous practice, ownership and land rights, and decisions peoples’ groups in pre-events at UN forums (unlike, around what among our biodiversity is important, for example, at the UN’s Internet Governance Fo- and what can be discarded. rum, where there is a desire for a shared platform Language and what discourse analysts call for deliberation among business, government and “socio-cultural meaning structures” orientate us in civil society, even if it might not always meet this this contestation and have over the years provided multistakeholder ideal). much material for scholars to try to understand how Indigenous communities also insist on being environmental policy and practice are structured referred to as “peoples” rather than “people”, sug- and evolve. How environmental discourses are con- gesting the diversity and distinctness of different structed shapes the “shared imagination of feasible Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds. Similarly, in one and unfeasible policies, the demarcation of appro- report in this GISWatch edition, the author point- priate and inappropriate practices, or the shaping ed out that in their region they refer to Indigenous of social identities and relations through language, “knowledges”. non-linguistic communication and practice.”1 In a In contrast, many conservationists, who are of- practical sense, language makes visible what is ten dependent on the collaboration of governments governable, or can be governed. and business for their expensive and expansive In recent background research into environ- conservation projects, are more comfortable with mental activism conducted by the Association for the term “multistakeholder engagement”. While Progressive Communications (APC), it was clear organisations like the World Wildlife Fund have hu- that the use of language was important in how man rights policies and agendas that are important different environmental groups self-identified and to their work, conservationists might also talk about delimited their activities. It was also evident how the “human-animal” conflict and “fence building” these language frames had implications for how the when constructing reserves, terms and concepts groups positioned themselves in relation to natural anathema to environmental justice actors, who resources, people and human rights, and had be- centre communities and people as a part of – both 2 come an overt site of political and policy struggle. sustained by and sustaining – the environment. One of the most obvious examples is the impor- Even the term “environment” has produced tant refusal of Indigenous peoples’ organisations to its own linguistic battleground, to the extent that be considered “stakeholders”, in the language of the multiplicity of definitions in popular usage led multistakeholderism. Instead they insist on being referred to as “rights holders”. They argue that they 2 It is important to note that the different groupings and their approaches can be fluid. There have been many systemic changes in conservation over the years, and, for example, “landscaping” 1 Leipold, S., Feindt, P. H., Winkel, G., & Keller, R. (2019). Discourse is now promoted as a more inclusive, horizontal decision-making analysis of environmental policy revisited: traditions, trends, method of engagement. At the same time, conservationists are perspectives. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 21(5), also members of Friends of the Earth International, which has an 445-463. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1660462 environmental justice agenda. 4 / Global Information Society Watch / SNEAK PEEK GISWatch 2020 SNEAK PEEK academic David Schlosberg to argue in 1999 that What we did want to do, however, was to prob- “there is no such thing as environmentalism.”3 lematise the normative relationship that exists The focus of this year’s edition of GlSWatch, between environmental sustainability and tech- “Technology, the environment and a sustainable nology: the idea that technology, and the use of world: Responses from the global South”, is, in this technology, is necessarily and automatically a pan- sense, somewhat unstable when it comes to consid- acea to the various environmental crises facing the ering what it exactly means. planet. Instead we wanted to start to outline how This is partly deliberate. GISWatch is, for APC, technology could most productively be a part of the essentially a research process, rather than an end- complex and nuanced power relations that exist in-itself. Country reports suggest possible policy when we talk about environmental sustainability actions and priorities, offer examples of the use of and human rights in a holistic way, identifying both technology in different contexts, and explore the its potentials and its limitations. potential implications of these for enabling human The result is a diverse set of authors for this rights. But, beyond insisting on a human rights and year’s country reports that include digital rights social justice framework for analysis, we typically of- activists, Indigenous peoples’ activists, techies, fer few restrictions on the approach the authors take academics, environmental researchers, conserva- to the topic under discussion. By doing this we allow tionists, journalists and feminists. The topics covered for multiple perspectives, approaches and politics are equally diverse and range, for example, from a to become visible. Authors who may be new to the discussion on solar-powered lamps in the Democrat- issue under discussion are also able to talk through ic Republic of Congo and the use of ozone-washing the issue in a way that is relevant to their work. machines in jeans manufacturing to reduce water GISWatch provides a common forum where consumption in Tunisia, to marine conservation and these different perspectives can be contrasted entrepreneurship in the Seychelles and anti-poach- and compared, and new perspectives understood. ing efforts in Uganda. An overview of the efficacy of In this way it often provides the “raw material” for digital justice platforms for environmental lawyers advocacy and engagement, for learning and analy- in Bulgaria is offered, alongside an introduction to sis, and for catalysing new directions for advocacy open data “green” agriculture projects in Taiwan, and among many of those who write the reports. the benefits and challenges of a virtual sustainable This year was no different. While we offered a development poster competition in Lebanon. starting definition of “sustainability”, in line with The use of technology by Indigenous commu- the 1987 Brundtland Report, we invited authors nities is the focus of several reports, including in to critique or disagree with this definition if they Mexico and several other countries in Latin Ameri- wanted to. We also did not define what we meant ca, in Indonesia and India, and in the context of the by the “environment” and allowed authors to de- exploited oil fields of the Niger Delta. cide on the most meaningful topic for discussion. For example, in the Amazon rainforest, which Even our use of the term “global South” is relative- stretches across several countries including Brazil, ly fluid. It refers to issues of social justice and