Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age

Digitalization – the use and adoption of digital technologies – is driving massive economic, social and environmental changes. The future of humanity and the health of planet Earth depend to a large extent on how we undergo this digital transformation. We have an opportunity to drive this transformation in a manner that helps build a healthier, safer, cleaner and more equitable future, rather than one of exacerbated environmental degradation, inequality and social division. However, achieving global sustainability is not an inevitable or an obvious outcome of digitalization. Indeed, digital technologies, through their energy and material requirements and influence on consumer demands, have accelerated the exponential rise of the human impact on the natural environment that now threatens the resilience of our ecological systems, alongside worsening societal inequalities and escalating social injustice. Digitalization has the potential to help transform society and business models to a more sustainable and equitable world but only if there is a conscious and deliberate effort to steer it in that direction. This Action Plan offers a vision on three systemic shifts needed to achieve this goal together with a set of 9 Impact Initiatives to spark immediate collective action and multi-stakeholder collaboration.