Dr. F J Radermacher, director of the Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, FAW/n in Germany, addressed the Geospatial World Forum in the opening plenary with a Club of Rome Perspective. He looked at service to people as central to a new global policy that takes every person seriously and creates conditions under which dignity of every person is served and respected.
There is the need for certain goods and services for everybody, and the fundamental question is whether this is compatible with scarce resources, the planet, and guaranteeing those services for 10 billion people for generations to come. We must care for the dignity and the resource base, balancing a globe that is at peace with the environment.
Technology is a key to neutral green growth in terms of climate, environment and resources. In particular, information technology can help deliver more goods and services for more people using less resources. Every two years we have a factor two growth of information technology use, with these services improving the living situation of people.
Often overseen is the rebound effect of technological success. While there is better technology with higher efficiency, we improve, but we always use resources faster, and destroy the environment more. We create more problems with the innovation than what we solve. For instance, the paperless office effect where we asserted that while we’d use more resource for IT, we’d use less use of paper has not come true as we use more paper than ever. We also suggested that we might travel less because of improved communication technology, but the more we communicate by distance, the more we travel. The boomerang effect is the real issue to deal with, if we want to have a better planet.
Innovations in governance are needed as much as we need innovations in technology. Freedom is the essential ingredient from the economy, but we need everybody to get education and healthcare. It’s not enough to have a free market system, we need a societal mechanism to take care of the needs of the people to make the best out of their freedom.
Climate is a good issue to understand the challenges we face. We need to significantly need to reduce emissions, but energy system are at the core of greater development. The question is how we address this where in the U.S. carbon emissions are 10 tons per person, Europe 7 tons, China 5 tons, India 1.5 tons. Who is the problem? The most important indicator is per-person rather than per-state emissions. Getting to a distribution that is fair will require global governance under equitable conditions, with the need to solve global issues with intelligent cooperation and compromise.
While frustrations have been expressed that outcomes of Copenhagen and Cancun were not more concrete, it’s a wonder that China and India are willing to limit emissions in proportion to their gain in GDP. Countries in development can increase emissions, but below the increases in GDP. Developed countries absolutely need to reduce to get to a reasonable global cap, and work toward a balance that is the right kind of sharing.
Rademacher asserted that the field of IT, and the geospatial industry, has a large role to play in the cooperation that is necessary for a reasonable future. The idea is not of exterior policy between sovereign nations, but global domestic policy as there is only a solution in consensus. Cooperation is the key even more than competition. We need an eco-social worldwide economy to be the counterpart to the micro-economic environment.
