 Hi there. As mentioned, my name is Becky. I come from an organization called the Engine Room, which is, I work with colleagues on almost every continent. I myself am based in Amsterdam and I'm very happy to be in Berlin today. And I want to take you through a project that we finished up recently, which was commissioned by Mozilla, Ariadne, and the Ford Foundation. And the aim there was to understand how do digital rights, climate justice, and environmental justice intersect, what kind of opportunities exist to support the work that's already in that space, as well as to grow work that is exploring connections between movements and sectors, and to kind of way find a little bit about how we kind of see and envision future collaboration. A note about who worked on this research. I led the research project. I worked together with my team and with an anthropologist named Madhuri Karak, who studies land rights defense in India. So it was a really wonderful opportunity to work on this and truly a collaborative project. And our report was released recently in July, actually. You can check it out at the link there. I also included a link in the program of Bits and Bomb, in case that's a little bit of an unwieldly URL to type into your device right now. So when I'm talking about digital rights, what do I mean? I think this conference is really fascinating because the framing is obviously digitalization and sustainability. So that's a pretty broad frame. When we're talking about digital rights, I feel like we're then honing in on one particular set of practices, ideas, beliefs, and systems to address what digitalization means for our society and for different groups of people. How do we make sure that it respects human rights, technologies, internet governance, and a lot of traditional areas there include, for example, digital security, privacy, data protection in recent years, automated decision making, and more. So the field of digital rights is always expanding, but it's a particular orientation towards this idea of digitalization. The same goes for climate justice and environmental justice. So as other speakers today have already pointed out, sustainability, it can't necessarily be conflated with environmental or climate justice. Climate justice and environmental justice have very particular histories as movements. Environmental justice is older. It came about in conjunction with social justice and civil rights groups who were fighting against environmental racism and trying to bring justice to supply chains and labor rights and a number of different issues that intersect in important ways. Climate justice is a slightly newer term. It particularly concerns itself with the climate crisis ongoing, which has been building up for many centuries as people have noted today. It's entwined with questions of colonialism and it seeks distributive justice and reparations for parts of the world, which are feeling the effects of climate change, some much more acutely already than others. So in mapping the intersections of climate justice and environmental rights, I think what we heard from the people we spoke to, because this was qualitative research and it involved having conversations with a very diverse group of people that, you know, this is a huge space. It's not just one space, it's many spaces and it's important to know the limits of your own worldview when you're looking for connections between sectors and thinking how people can collaborate. Who did we speak to specifically? We held a number of community calls with practitioners coming both from digital rights and more on the climate and environmental side. We spoke with funders because this was a funder commissioned project to understand how funders can support these sectors. And we held 20 interviews with practitioners and researchers just to give you a small example of who we spoke to. This involved people working on the questions of AI in relation to precision agriculture, algorithmic disinformation as it perpetuates climate disinformation, environmental data specialists who work on a community level, people focused on a sustainable internet and decarbonizing the internet, environmental lawyers, divestment campaigners. So this is really a very wide cross-section of people but who are all very passionate about moving forward on climate justice. And in our research we identified a number of cross-cutting themes and I'll just take you through a few today. The first is something that has come up a lot today already, the question of growth and continuous expansion. What does it mean basically to continue to pursue an economy based on growth when we know that our planet cannot necessarily support it? This was a theme that came up over and over both in discussions with people coming from climate and environment as well as digital rights. And there a lot of frameworks, very generative and controversial frameworks came up in thinking about alternatives to what we think of today as the kind of economic growth system that we're used to. This includes degrowth, post-growth, post-extractivism. And indeed people feel very differently about these ideas of what it might mean to have a completely different kind of economy. We didn't find any agreement there but what's clear is that it's a really generative area of thinking and discussion right now. The next one is that extraction is a theme that really cuts across discussions of technology currently and environment and climate. Extraction is one of these frames that when we think of it in relation to digital rights we might be talking about the big data business models of big tech firms that are premised on continued surveillance, analysis and often a lot of this done without the consent of data subjects. And on the other side in relation to climate we think of mineral extraction and all of the kinds of extraction that have led up to this day and to the economy that we have now. And at the intersection of these fields we see concerns around data centers and how they use water, how they contribute to desertification of certain areas of the world. One example that comes up a lot is about AI and how AI is actually used to help extract oil more efficiently. So this is extraction and extractivism as a frame that unites these very different movements. And the third one is this idea that we have to grow the commons as it relates to alternative kinds of platforms, shared resources and on the environmental and climate side this has long been discussed as a way of thinking about conservationism and on the digital rights side with those who we spoke to it was really about commoning technology and thinking about alternatives to Facebook etc. So in relation to these themes we also in our research wanted to identify some key areas related to particular issues that have come up over and over and where people really expressed a sense of risk, concern but also opportunity for new work. The first is around sustainable internet and technology. In our research we surveyed a number of different initiatives both corporate and non-profit tackling sustainability currently and there really the focus we saw was transitioning infrastructure to renewable energy sources and increasing the efficiency of technical infrastructure. When it comes to big tech firms we've seen that in the last few years a number of big promises have been made around sustainability and at the same time a lot of greenwashing. So people who we spoke to from across these fields expressed concern with the fact that some of the tool sets that technologists and companies currently rely on for sustainability aren't necessarily addressing the root cause of the problem. So one example would be carbon offsets and the way that oftentimes carbon offsets don't work as intended or actually are displacing harm onto ecologies and communities that they are intended to help protect. In this arena we also saw a number of areas that deserve support and where a lot of really important work is already happening. In terms of challenging big tech there are efforts to push for greater transparency and accountability in terms of sustainability plans. We also see a number of social justice groups that are already pushing and challenging big tech companies but which don't necessarily fit neatly within to the digital rights sphere and here I'm talking about groups like Amazon employees for climate justice, Athena coalition, etc. There are many of groups already working on this. Another issue is where there's much opportunity is in promoting circular approaches to technology, advancing the right to repair and fighting against the planned obsolescence that has become baked into a lot of big tech business models. We also saw a really interesting area of inspiration around the fossil fuel divestment movement which has had many victories in recent years with managing to get institutions with lots of money to take their money out of investments in polluting companies in oil companies and in companies that have been implicated in environmental damage. So there are some interesting questions to think about in terms of how can divestment be an inspiration for the digital rights movement which is so concerned with big tech and harms created by big companies and there seems to be a lot of opportunity there to think about this. I'm going to move on to our next issue of cross-cutting concern. For many years now the digital rights movement has done very important work pushing for more internet access and pushing for the accessibility of technology and here we wanted to call attention to the fact that this actually remains a persistent problem that even though so much work has been done to bring more people online so to speak there is so much more work to be done in terms of infrastructure and equity and on that front yeah we see that some of the interesting projects we surveyed include creating inclusive new kinds of platforms to teach literacy and community networks which I know I've already been discussed today so these are a couple of the important areas of work that continue on this even as the problems that we're facing and the crises that we're facing change. Another area of persistent concern is around digital safety and security for movements and here we really saw that the current priorities are around thinking about security not just as something that an individual is responsible for on their computer but about something at a community level about infrastructures that support people to work together not just in organizations or in isolation but across decentralized networks because when we think of the climate movements and environmental movements that are most active today they often don't fit into traditional ideas of organizations and therefore don't fit into a traditional IT infrastructure either. And so on that front it's very important to think about digital security in terms of how you can transition from ad hoc support to thinking at a systemic and long-term perspective for environmental and climate groups. Another issue area of cross-cutting concern is about the use of data. What we looked at was a number of different initiatives and we're talking about environmental data groups who have been active for over a decade collecting data about the ecosystem tracking changes but on the other hand much more recent developments where actually commercial actors come in and want to harness the data collected by communities and to use it to be able to predict future climate events basically future harms related to a climate and environment. And here a lot of the concern came up around questions of just data governance. What does it mean when a corporate actor from another country comes into a local context and says oh the data you've collected on your local ecosystem is so valuable we want to use it now to create a product or to drive our intelligence in a certain area and so here one of the big opportunities that we identified was the need to connect data governance discussions in the digital rights realm with data governance discussions that have actually been happening for quite a long time now in relation to indigenous data sovereignty and local decentralized approaches to data stewardship. Another natural area for the digital rights sphere which came up a lot in our interviews was the needs to challenge the data practices of smart cities and living labs where again a lot of data is being collected from citizens with the idea that there is citizen participation but then for example not a lot happens with that data down the line and there is a sense that perhaps the participation didn't lead to the democratic outcome that people wanted. So that connects to concerns with again commercial extractive data governance models and a final area that I'll touch on today is around migration justice and border technology. In this area we see currently that a number of different states have been excited to embrace AI data driven technologies to with more precision track migration patterns to track people on the move and to preempt border crossings in many cases by people who should have a right to cross a border and in this area what people really identified as important areas to grow is to really support the number of coalitions that already exist that are focused on bringing more justice to border technology to dismantling and abolishing border technology and engaging in strategic litigation that to challenge the kinds of non-transparent data practices that come into play. So these are a number of areas that we identified and the goal of our research was to inform people who want to fund this space and support and grow these areas. So I will very quickly take you through our recommendations on that front but then I want to open up the discussion back to the many opportunities that I have already identified which were highlighted by the movements and practitioners that we spoke to. The first is that funding institutions if they are interested in climate and environment this is a really right moment for them to actually take stock of their strategies of investment and perhaps see how the divestment movement can be inspiring on that front to consider where to take their money out and where it can be reinvested and another big priority in terms of funding strategies that meet movements and communities where they are is finding a way to effectively support informal networks and small groups the kind that often don't have the resources to apply for funding but who needed very badly and are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the climate movement. Another area or avenue to explore is about helping civil society scale up and have more resources to focus on these issues because many of the digital rights practitioners who we spoke to felt yes the climate crisis is super crucial but I don't know how to bring it into my organizational strategy because at the moment we're already strapped and we're trying to put out all of these different fires already so how do we make this a part of our work. So for that reason we recommended that there be support for many more collaborative projects and chances to develop a climate related strategy. Here's a really crucial one I think for the tech infrastructure focused people if there are any in this room today the issue of maintenance. Maintenance is an issue that came up over and over with the people who we spoke to I'll give you a couple of examples. One area around maintenance is with regards to environmental data and data collection. At the moment the field and the resources and infrastructures available for this kind of data collection are often in commercial hands and again relying on extractive data business models. There are many groups in the world who want to create their own alternative infrastructure and indeed have already which is a great achievement but maintaining that over a year, two years, three years becomes exponentially more difficult and finding funding to support that also does. So we think that supporting the maintenance of these kinds of community processes is actually essential in that regard. Another example I'll give this is perhaps a more obvious one is in relation to digital security and defense for movements. I think that technically focused security people in this audience will say immediately that security advice will become obsolete before you know it. Well some security problems remain the same and others change all the time and so in order to really effectively support an organization again we come to this word, the M word maintenance. I think I'm going to end there. There are many more recommendations that you can explore in this report. There's many areas where we highlight a lot of important work already happening at the intersections of digital rights and climate justice so I invite you to explore it again here and please feel free to write to me, tweet at me and check out our work because we really want to continue working on climate and environmental issues. So thank you so much. Okay a big thanks to Becky and Team at Engine Room. If there's any questions this is the time to ask. Thank you. Thank you Becky for your presentation. I would like to ask you the role of the energy sources I mean the fossil fuel and in the climate justice of the digitalization. Thank you for your question. Let me know if I understood this correctly. It's you're interested in energy sources and the right the role that they play in relation to climate and digital rights. Yeah that's a really essential topic absolutely. I think one place where that came up a lot in our research I'll take you back to where we investigated the big tech practices at the moment and the sustainability transition and sustainability plans that they've been putting in action in recent years. What we saw there is that there's a lot of emphasis on this idea that they are moving to renewable energy and while this is a really laudable and important effort to even move in that direction we also saw a lot of criticism from climate justice advocates and from people who have been taking big tech to task who say that renewable energy doesn't necessarily mean sustainable energy and if it's if it continues to exist within this framework of always creating larger business models using more data analyzing more data using more AI then that renewable energy runs out very quickly. So even with renewable energy it has to be coupled with new kinds of ideas about the economy and what it means to to be a business that handles data. Yeah hi thank you so much for the input. I'm just curious in the report you sometimes touched a bit about on feminism also like on feminist initiatives at least and I was just curious do you have any thoughts on how this angle can come into it or if we are at the moment still trying to map out this intersection and it gets too complicated I don't know I'm a bit struggling with this so I'm curious what your thoughts are. Yeah feminism is a central part to efforts to enact a just transition so a just societal transition to to greater sustainability. One example of a feminist framework working on this is the feminist New Deal so that's a coalition of explicitly feminist actors who do map out the importance of feminism and thinking through questions of colonialism extractivism environmental racism and how but what this means for the kinds of climate solutions that we as a society decide to invest in yeah absolutely. Hi thanks for the presentation you mentioned that you had only six months to put together the report which is still like mind-blowing to me so what if you had like another six months or a year like what are the topics that you would like to do some more deep dives what were things that you discovered and didn't have time to like do too much research or interviews on. And that's a great question thank you. I think what's really interesting is the meta process of this research because we were we were so thankful to have the chance to work on this and obviously we spent these months interviewing lots of really amazing people doing important work. For us this was also you know we talked about the importance of organizational strategies beginning to address climate more explicitly. I think that for the engine room is becoming a priority as well to think about climate and how it fits into the strategy. So I think there's so many important areas that I touched on like big tech practices supporting for example labor movements that are currently taking big tech to task. I think there's a lot of research a lot of organizing that that is happening and that needs to be supported to happen more. I think one particular area we've discussed within the organization is the engine room has a long-standing line of work around what it calls responsible data and this is kind of a constellation of work focused on exploring more just data governance models. And it's focused a lot on the humanitarian and development sector in the past and I think now with all of the the new kind of round of AI for good projects in relation to climate and environment this is an important moment to think about how responsible data principles for example can play a role in thinking questions around AI and climate. So that's just one example but yeah thank you. Okay if there's no further questions then this is a good time to end the talk. Let's have another big round of applause for Becky and the team at the engine room.