Environmental justice is digital justice
EDRi works with a diverse group of civil society organisations on the impact of digital technology on our environment. This group’s work is propelled by a vision of our world where the values of justice, care, belonging to thriving communities, and living in harmony with all forms of life are paramount. Technology, built by communities for collective needs and co-owned by all, is a tool we can use to achieve this world, but it is not seen as the only solution to this end.
What is our biggest obstacle?
Our rights and planet are being painfully sacrificed at the altar of corporate and tech profits. This is the result of big and powerful corporations exploiting for profit, and EU lawmakers failing to stand up to them.
Corporations like Shell, Meta and Google are selling us the lie that technology is the solution to the ecological crises we’re facing. In the same time, corporations drain our water, resources, energy, and spy on us for the sake of their profits.
EDRi works with a diverse group of civil society organisations on the impact of digital technology on our environment. This group’s work is propelled by a vision of our world where the values of justice, care, belonging to thriving communities, and living in harmony with all forms of life are paramount. Technology, built by communities for collective needs and co-owned by all, is a tool we can use to achieve this world, but it is not seen as the only solution to this end.
Our lawmakers dance to their tunes. Politicians create laws that protect corporate interests above all, based on the logic that tech is the silver bullet that will save us from the ecological crisis.
What does this mean in practice?
Public and private money is being poured into tech growth, which drains investment in actual solutions.
At the same time, EU lawmakers are aggressively pushing for a deregulation agenda. Why? To eviscerate any accountability for corporations. They are razing hard-won environmental and human rights protections to the ground, allowing companies to make the ecological crisis worse, as they pretend that they will be our saviours.
Meanwhile, groups working on human and environmental rights are stuck in a hostile environment. They are forced to work on short-sighted solutions, constantly forced to justify their existence and only able to scrape the surface of these complex problems rather than supporting transformative change.
This complex entanglement of issues needs us to be be creative, radical and in solidarity with each other, which we hope to achieve through our working group.
The Environmental Justice x Digital Rights Working Group
Our goal is to advance understanding, foster collaboration, and catalyze collective action about technology’s impact on environment.
This group is committed to:
- Enabling cross-field coalitions and movement building to catalyse collective action and change
- Co-creating visions and strategies that center social and environmental justice, and counter techno-solutionist narratives and approaches
- Push for socially and environmentally-just legislation and practices, recognising the full range of global material and social consequences of technology
To achieve these aims, we convene workshops and meetings, share skills and knowledge, collaborate to further our understanding of this intersection, identify opportunities for advocacy, and engage in coordinated advocacy to drive systemic change.