TERRA is a response to the pressing need to align the creation of a networked, information and knowledge-based, society (and its accompanying New Economy) with the requirements for achievement of sustainability generally and of sustainable development in general. Specifically it will create (by the use of formal analytical methods) the insights necessary to inform and guide policy-making leading ultimately towards the optimisation of ISTs contribution to sustainability.

The IST Proposition

The new technologies of the Information Society (ISTs) seem likely to offer scope to enable economic growth, and to allow a more equitable distribution of wealth, without necessarily increasing consumption, pollution and energy use.

TERRA is a multi-disciplinary, multi-national research project that utilises scenarios and models to achieve insight into the reality of the contributions made by the technological and scientific developments of the Information Society (for better or for worse) in the environmental; social; cultural, and economic domains. In doing so, it tests the truth of the ‘IST proposition’ that ISTs can indeed contribute to sustainability. Because we are only now beginning to see the first signs of these new characteristics of the gradual maturing of the Information Society, hard proofs are not always readily available – but analysis of previous waves of innovation tends to support the expectation that IST-derived innovations will prove of sufficient importance to form the primary basis of our answers to sustainability questions for the next quarter century or more. TERRA not only tests this fundamental ‘IST proposition’ it also offers guidance on how the proposition may be made a reality. Its outputs are firmly geared to the needs of policy makers and cover, in consequence, not only the technicalities of IST’s impacts, but also the levers, the actions, and the actors involved in turning the IST proposition into reality. TERRA is a research project, but one with very specific positive outcomes in mind.

TERRA’s Understanding

The relationship between the Information Society Technologies (ISTs) themselves, and their wider societal impact in the shape of the New Economy is being elaborated by TERRA’s linked series of narrative scenarios and numerical models concentrating on identifying and expanding the most crucial aspects of the picture –the TERRA approach of Dominant Relationships Modelling (Dominant Relationship Modelling is the subject of TERRA Concept Sheet 4.)

This combines, on the one hand, the preservation of scientific integrity (by modelling only that which may be evidenced and thus may confidently be modelled) with, on the other hand, a high degree of transparency (since policy recommendations will not normally be accepted if they cannot be confidently understood by those to whom they are directed). The wider picture is, in its totality, quite complex: ISTs, like all revolutionary technological advances, extend out into the real world in ways that, although profoundly influential, can seem at first glance erratic and arbitrary. By detailed analysis of the environmental and socio-economic effects of ISTs it is possible to come to a better understanding of such issues as network effects and the spread of innovation, and thus to deduce the matching areas of public policy interest and possible intervention points, which will enable positive impact on sustainable development.

Key features of this include:

•          ISTs offer vast scope for innovation – but not unique scope. Radical changes in scientific and technical understanding (often accompanied by ‘New Economies’) have taken place many times previously and we therefore have good prior examples to guide us.
•          The first socio-economic effects of radical technological changes (such as ISTs) are frequently adverse (as with, say, the Luddites or the mass unemployment of the 1980s). This is sometimes known as ‘Schumpeterian growth’ or ‘Creative’ Destruction.
•          It is only later that the secondary effects of innovation follow and reveal their potentially large socio-economic benefits. These necessarily lag (perhaps by years) behind the primary effects. Such secondary effects have outcomes that include both the benign and the malign (the latter frequently called rebound effects) TERRA distinguishes between the two, and provides guidance to maximise the benign and minimise the malign.
•          Ultimately, however, the benefits of technological advance follow strongly and may extend over very long periods of time.
•          It is necessary to see this rather tortuous developmental progression of IST innovation in its entirety in order to understand its effects. In particular, a clear understanding of the operation of the various rebound effects and of the means of harnessing; controlling, and perhaps benefiting from them is vital if the full potential benefits of the Information Age are to be realised. Equally, TERRA recognises that sustainable development is concerned with people as well as with things: questions such as income distribution; globalisation, and the Digital Divide are accorded equal weight with those of environmental sustainability.

Unpacking the Important Issues

Three specific issues are used in TERRA as an organising device by which the project focuses and manages its work on the meeting of policy challenges. There are, of course, far more issues involved in the subject – but these three span the field well and allow links to many of the other key issues.

1.      Human capital in the information age “Knowledge and information is being produced today like cars and steel were produced earlier.  But just as the importance of land in production changed dramatically as the economy moved from agriculture to industry, so too does the movement to a knowledge economy necessitate a rethinking of economic fundamentals.  In the Information Age intellectual rights, rather than physical products, are being transacted.  The cost of developing new products far exceeds the cost of production. Skilled, talented, innovative and fulfilled people constitute human capital, which fuels economic growth. All people everywhere have the potential to contribute. One of the major policy dilemmas already facing decision makers is how to secure the supply of human capital with the declining and aging population.

2.      Equity and growth –“Social capital is the glue that holds a society together.”
Inequality undermines social capital, fuelling illegal acts, crimes, terrorism, etc.  ISTs put a premium on highly educated labour as a source of economic growth, while globalisation supported by information technology has a tendency towards the “winner takes all” phenomenon.  A major dilemma for the 21^st century will be how to balance the economic growth needed to reduce unemployment with the reduction of inequality needed to secure social capital.  Without a sustainable society there can be no sustainable development.  

3.   Information Age sustainability – ISTs profoundly affect the environmental, economic, societal and cultural dimensions of sustainability. In particular, environmental impacts may have positive or negative effects on ‘sources’ (life support systems and resources) and ‘sinks’ (human domination of nature from biodiversity to climate change). On the one hand, ISTs bring a burgeoning middle class (increasing consumption loads) and, on the other, ISTs allow more efficient extraction (accelerating exhaustion and delaying development of substitutes). Rebounds and secondary and tertiary effects are already well understood in some circumstances – but by no means all. Policy issues can include informational approaches to enhancing efficiency of resource use, corrective taxation, support for development of alternatives, etc. Click here for more info.

These are not the only issues under examination – but they do allow TERRA to focus, and to bring some clarity to the complex issues concerned. Having unpacked these themes, it is then necessary to bring the themes, and the generality of work in TERRA, back into a common framework of integration and this re-integration in itself is a major area of activity in TERRA (TERRA’s treatment of integration and interconnection is discussed in TERRA Concept Sheet 6. Human Capital; Equity; and Information Age sustainability in 7, 8, and 9.)

From Insight to Policy

Underlying the TERRA work of expanding and testing the ‘IST Proposition’ and of optimising ISTs contribution to sustainability is a progression of the development of understanding that allows the movement from the development of insight to the creation of policy.

The TERRA backbone