Sustainability Technology (SusTech)

This research group examines the ‘technological turn’ in sustainability governance initiatives to promote equitable development, justice as well as both human and collective security across the world. 

Artificial intelligence, blockchain and other digital technologies are increasingly being harnessed in order to address a wide range of sustainability challenges, such as reducing greenhouse emissions, poverty, wildlife poaching, combatting human trafficking, and managing pandemics like COVID-19. 

However, the experimental nature of these and other applications of novel digital technologies, as well as the fact that their implications are emerging in ‘real-time’, raise numerous questions and concerns for development, security and justice that interdisciplinary research is only beginning to grabble with. 

How do unfolding technology-centered initiatives overcome, or extend and reinforce, existing disparities of power, resources, and access in global sustainability governance? What debates, disputes, and conflicts of interest are elided in the turn to what are often presented as simple and elegant technological solutions for intricate global governance challenges? Which barriers to participation and equal opportunities in sustainability governance might be surmounted and which may be reinforced in the process of applying novel technologies? 

This research group explores these and other questions raised by the growing deployment of sustainability technologies (SusTechs) for addressing global development, justice and security challenges. The group engages and aims to inform policy and practitioner debates on balancing the possibilities and pathologies digital technologies can present for addressing sustainable development challenges.