Social and Environmental Dilemmas in Capitalism.

SPECIAL EDITION

#SE5 JUNE 2022

Collaborative publication on the sustainable development goals - WWW.SDGZINE.ORG

Social and Environmental Dilemmas in Capitalism Critical Perspectives from Students

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Social and Environmental Dilemmas in Capitalism.

Are critical approaches to capitalism useful for today’s sustainability challenges? For long, I wasn’t entirely convinced. Worried about the perceived gap between armchair theory and the risks of disconnected academic posturing, on the one hand, and the wickedness, specifics and complexity of sustainability challenges, on the other, led me to keep a certain distance. I opted for speaking and working from within, rather than what I saw as remaining critical from the outside. This position, however, no longer holds.

In fact, there is today, on the contrary, a growing urgency for bringing critical approaches into the mainstream concepts of sustainable development ever more present and part of state, corporate and civil society vocabularies. The global community is failing miserably in solving contemporary sustainability challenges despite the growing volumes, toolboxes and education programs tailored to solve them.

Not only the global pandemics, but equally and, perhaps even more, so the deepening challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and global contamination demonstrate the clear need for different thinking, forms of action and cooperation. While there is no doubt that much sustainability innovation is taking place, it is equally true that many initiatives repeatedly fail to address the very structural drivers leading to social inequalities and environmental degradation in the first place. The same may, of course, be argued about critical theory. Where then does it leave us?

For one, there is a need to bring in analytical concepts and tools that go beyond and challenge omnipresent

This SDGZINE issue is a special edition authored by the students of the class Social and Environmental Dilemmas in Capitalism, led by Professor Peter.B.Larsen, University of Geneva.

university contact Xinyu.Zhan@unige.ch

sustainability language and tools tinkering. Secondly, there is need interrogate capitalism critically at multiple levels head-on not from the heights of abstract theory, but rather in terms of how they enable us to explore contemporary practices of financialization, new forms of accumulation and their socio-environmental implications. Thirdly, in consequence, there is a need to abandon win-win language and become far more articulate about trade-offs involved.

The following essays are written by students, who joined the class on social and environmental dilemmas in capitalism in late 2021. Written during the global COVID 19 pandemic, their essays demonstrate the potency of critical thinking about green economies, social inclusivity and wider transformation. Ranging from the global hunt for lithium and water to the digital and material infrastructures, the essays showcase the diversity of challenges with the critical perspective so essential for shaping the building blocks for actual paradigm change.

I am grateful for the financial support from the The Master’s program in Innovation, Human Development and Sustainability allowing this collective writing project to come into being. Particular thanks to Mallory Xinyu Zhan, Gautham Varada Narayan and Jan Van Mol of AddictLab for helping out with preparing the publication.

Peter Bille Larsen, Senior lecturer, University of Geneva.

editorial team Peter Bille Larsen Mallory Xinyu Zhan Gautham Varada Narayan

SDGZINE.ORG is an initiative from the ADDICTLAB ACADEMY and partners contributing to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations.

G E N E VA TSINGHUA INITIATIVE

for the Sustainable Development Goals

The Precarious Geneva: Tackling the Precarity of Domestic Workers

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The Cost of Going Green: The Dilemma of Lithium Mining

page 10

Water Privatisation and Renationalisation in Bolivia: Two sides of the same coin?

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A Nigerian Port taken in the Turbulences of the Logistical Revolution

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Energy Consumption and the Information and Communication Technologies : A Sustainability Dilemma?

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©cover image Snowscat- Unsplashed La Paz, Bolivia.

Captured by Nikon D80 in 2018.

About the Innovation, Human Development and Sustainability Master Program

The MIHDS stems from a partnership between the University of Geneva and organizations from International Geneva in the framework of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This highly multidisciplinary Master’s degree aims to train students to analyze problems and identify innovative solutions in terms of the governance of sustainability. The curriculum contains a high proportion of practical courses (project workshops), but also fundamental courses on sustainability development in all its dimensions (social, economic, and environmental). This Master’s programme was created in partnership with Tsinghua University (Beijing). Students can apply either to the Dual or the Single track. The Dual track links two complementary programs, one in Geneva and the other in Beijing (minimum 1 year each), to earn two diplomas after two and a half years of study. Students of the Single track (UNIGE diploma) are required to do an exchange semester at one of the partner universities (currently Tsinghua, Bogotá, Dakar, Exeter, Lund, Medellín, Pisa, Sydney, Yonsei).

contact info@sdgzine.org publisher Jan Van Mol ©LAB.002 sarl, 2021, 2022.

All rights reserved

LAB.002 sàrl SDG Solution Space Campus Biotech Innovation Park Avenue de Secheron 15 1202 Geneva Switzerland

The Precarious Geneva: Tackling the Precarity of Domestic Workers Clément Kervegant and Janine Rey

In May 2020, hundreds queued for food packages in the wealthy city of Geneva.

Low-income earners and undocumented migrants were waiting in line to get basic supplies. The COVID 19 pandemic shed light on a situation that has been there long before. Even in Swiss cities, there are many workers living in precarious situations, illustrated by the fact that putting food on the table became a challenge during the crisis. But what circumstances led to this precarity in a wealthy country such as Switzerland, and how is Neo-liberal Capitalism fuelling it?

This article aims to show the nature and causes of these precarities by identifying and presenting the people who requested the services of food packs.

Furthermore, policies drawn to tackle those precarities will be analysed on whether they improve the situation and eliminate the precarities.

often result from insufficient labour regulation which allows the employer to adapt the conditions easily.

How Informal Jobs in the Domestic Sector are Fuelling Precarity Instability, uncertainty, and fragility – those are the characteristics of precarity. In employment, precarity is visible in the form of the work contract, designating legal forms that differ from the norm of a full-time permanent contract with a single employer. The precariat is furthermore defined as people who lack control over their employment, resulting mainly from undeclared work. The International Labour Organisation sees the informal sector as activities that are intentionally unregistered or partially registered: the workers concerned are “excluded from the scope of labour legislation”, and are often hired “without clear terms of employment”. This exclusion is often undesired, and is due to the rigidity of the conditions to access work permits. In Geneva, around 62% of the people employed without a formal labour contract are working in the domestic sector; which includes services such as childcare, home care and cleaning. Also, around 11’000 households in Geneva have a demand for external help for domestic services.

As people suddenly had to stay at home due to the COVID regulations in Spring 2020, the demand for services from domestic workers decreased significantly.

Introduction

The instability and fragility of the informal work contracts led to a sudden loss of employment for many. The domestic care industry in Geneva provides great insights into the precarity faced by workers, emphasising the daily uncertainty they are living in.

The food distribution in the city of Geneva is operated by the foundation “Colis du Coeur” and has been studied by the Institute of Sociological Research of University of Geneva in the context of COVID-19. The study analyses the living conditions of those who receive the food packages and picture their work and housing situation. Several key aspects have been highlighted by the researchers: 24% of the respondents they interviewed have lost their job during the first wave of the pandemic. Among those who are still employed, the majority of the respondents said their work time and wages have decreased significantly. People already struggling with poverty have suddenly been put in an even more precarious situation. This is either due to flexible work contracts or missing work permits, which

People migrate in the hope of gaining access to better economic, political, or social conditions, or to improve the living situations of those who have not left. So how did many of them end up in informal or flexible jobs with a high exposure to vulnerability? Domestic work provided by migrants used to be seen as social “stepping stones”, which would help them integrate in society and bring future benefits. However, even then this was an empty promise, used as justification for the precarious conditions inherent in these jobs offered. Recent studies regarding this matter compared the situation across different generations of domestic workers and highlighted the absence of intergenerational mobility. For most immigrant women, domestic work rather represents social chains than a springboard.

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Global Care Chains influencing the Domestic sector in Switzerland

Switzerland encourages entrepreneurship and self-organisation of society.

On the other hand, the traditional role of and within the family is also actively encouraged. The extent of family policies such as financial benefits, external childcare and maternity leave are on the one hand influenced by a liberal ideology. The childcare system for example is still operated mainly by private sector companies. Meanwhile, social policies still slow down women in their integration into the labour market. The cultural and ideological context leads to insufficient development of integrated programs of childcare Those circumstances explain why the rising employment of Swiss women eventually leads to the outsourcing of the three c’s “Cleaning, Cooking and Caring” to immigrant women, this phenomenon is also known as the “Global Care Chain’’: as the state does not provide the necessary support, the response is instead provided by a new labour class - immigrant women or descendants of immigrated persons. They are hired to alleviate Swiss women from the burden of the domestic chores, allowing them to pursue a professional career. In this process, the immigrant workers’ may hope that their caring duties could lead to a better economic position.

Over the last three decades, Switzerland has seen a growing proportion of women entering the labour market. Between 1991 and 2021, the number of working Swiss women increased by 41%7.

During this shift, domestic care work was poorly supported: there has not been sufficient redistribution of care work and family tasks between spouses, and the state could have enhanced its efforts to provide more and better care facilities.

What could be the cause for this lack of support for care work in Switzerland?

However, they remain in situations characterised by a limited potential for social progression, meaning that these immigrant women have very few chances to observe improvement in economic, social, or career position.

Through the global care chain and through geo-political inequalities, wealthier states can distribute their domestic labour among poorer regions.

This transfer is driven by a neo-liberal global economic order. It is therefore not surprising that 75% of the domestic workers in Geneva migrated from Latin America.

The reasons behind the limited potential of social advancement at the end of the migration process are to be found in the socio-political structures that govern the living and working conditions of migrants and immigrants.

Those structures generate discrimination based on class, gender and race, the most obvious expressions of which can be seen in the policies of regularisation of work and citizenship. Political leaders, policy makers, employers and the Swiss population contribute to policies that limit the potential for social advancement of migrants. The transnational division of labour is shaped by the system of global capitalismm, and based on the discrimination of both gender and race that lead to accumulating and overlapping precarities. Precarities that domestic workers face are compounded by the various sources of vulnerabilities they experience due to their intersectional identities. Therefore, understanding the issue of precarity requires an intersectional approach , which brings us to another important topic in the domestic sector.

To understand the mechanisms, one must look at the interactions between state, economy, and the family. The Swiss domestic care model is atypical – combining liberal and conservative ideologies. On the one hand,

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SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DILEMMAS IN CAPITALISM.

Capitalist Mechanisms The inequalities of gender and race surrounding domestic workers are products of a capitalist society. To exist, capitalist societies need to be based on a political and economic hierarchy.

The logic of capitalism is one of an endless accumulation of surplus value, the so-called « law of value ».

Accumulation leans on the differentiation among social groups, assigning to each of them a different status.

From the 16th to the 18th century, the major distinction of political and economic status was the one between free workers integrated into the economic production system by the means of a social contract on one hand, and the colonial subjects on the other. The foundations of this distinction were the racist ideologies and theories that classified human beings according to biological differences, while legitimising, allowing, and bolstering capitalist imperialist ambitions. These hierarchies were thus formalized by the state, owning the monopoly of the legal classification of individuals, of free citizens versus slaves.

Nowadays, these differentiations appear to be less obvious, because we do not have such a clear distinctions as paid-workers-free-citizens on one side, and slave on the other. But in the end, the same mechanisms remain. In the case of domestic workers in Geneva, we have on the one hand the legal citizens, involved in formal and legal work contracts, and the others, who on their basis of being “illegal” regarding their status of residence, are working informally. What these people are fighting against is the political and economic status they are assigned – the origin of their precarity. Political status refers to a situation of illegality , and accordingly the impossibility of access to citizenship in a given country. The economic status is informal, under-paying, undeclared work, which does not entitle them to any form of social protection or upward mobility; in other words, they are designated a different position in the overall system of wealth production.

Opération Papyrus To address the precarities the migrants face, the canton of Geneva introduced a programme called “Opération Papyrus”, which ran for roughly 2 years from 2017-2018. It aimed at regulating and standardizing the situation of undocumented workers: if they fulfilled certain criteria, they would be granted access to formal employment, a right which has

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been previously denied to them . Furthermore, a campaign was launched to incentivize households to declare the domestic help that they receive so that workers could obtain the social securities they are entitled to.

The programme was analysed by various scholars and was widely celebrated in the media. But has it really tackled the root causes of the problem?

Having established the conceptual background of the precarity surrounding these workers, one must clearly say no.

First, it is important to note that nothing new has been created here, the Papyrus Programme is not a change of law. The existing regulations have simply been implemented, now granting work permits to a specific group of people that have not yet been regularised. And second, looking at the criteria, however, we can easily observe the underlying logic that favours integration over justice integration. Notably, five criteria must be fulfilled to be eligible for a regularisation through Papyrus: 1) One must have no residency status, 2) be in Switzerland for at least 5 years for families and 10 years for others, 3) be financially independent, 4) possess elementary French language skills and 5) have no criminal record. Only the first one actually focuses on the vulnerability of a person, when the four others emphasise the importance of the capability to integrate. It is important to note that one must fulfil all criteria to be considered as eligible for regularisation under Papyrus. On the policy maker side, the major issue is that all these criteria imposed on undocumented migrants are based on a selective logic that favours the most integrated people. However, migrant care workers tend to have a lower propensity for integration for a variety of reasons, tied to both more structural (e.g. social stigmas tied to illegalized work) and more context-specific factors (e.g. lack of wider social interactions of domestic work).

Placing this legal framework in the general context of social policy further shows the ineffectiveness of the programme. After World War II, the ideological victory of Neoliberalism, forced the transformation of the welfare

Tackling the Precarity of Domestic Workers in Geneva

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states. With the gradual spread of neo-liberal ideology, mentalities are changing, and new conceptions of social solidarity issues are crystallising.

To illustrate the state of mind regarding those, it is worth looking at the results of a survey on “the assistance provided to those who fall through the cracks of the social net”. The answers revealed that the Swiss population considers people with a foreign nationality and undeclared workers as less deserving of state support than Swiss people with a steady declared job who fall through the net of social security. The authors of the survey note that “It is striking that the crisis situation has not really had an impact on the way we decide who is more or less deserving of public assistance.”

A Societal Shift is Needed Like migrants’ and womens’ organisations demand, the issue must be tackled by improving the system as a whole. This includes, amongst other, to provide more formal jobs, regulate informal jobs, extend state protections to informal workforce and increase the income of those. How this is best to be done is yet to be discussed with all actors. However, it is obvious that solutions developed by a Capitalist mindset have the tendency to improve the situation only for a few individuals valued by the predominant system Precarity is created through various circumstances. In the case of domestic workers in Geneva, the most forefront reason is the inability for migrants to be regularised and obtain formal employment with decent payment and proper insurance. This is what the Genevan authorities tried to tackle with Opération Papyrus. However, the dilemma is not solved by simply regularising a small fraction of the migrant population. Further, The systemic issues leading up to it must be addressed beyond the local scale.. Global migration streams and care chains created by the current neo-liberal capitalist system enable more exploitation and accordingly greater precarity.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals offer goals and targets to create a more equal and just world. Specifically, Goal 10 “Reduced Inequality within and among countries” offers measures to achieve more equality in our societies and tackle dilemmas such as the precarity of domestic workers in Geneva. This includes promoting the social, economic and political inclusion of all (Target 10.1); ensuring equal opportunities by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices (Target 10.3); adopting new social protection policies (Target 10.4.); and facilitating orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies (Target 10.7). Implementing these targets can only be done through major adaptations in current social security and migration legislation. And again, this shows that whilst Opération Papyrus did bring improvements for some groups, it is not enough to bring the change needed.

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This leaves us with the question: Does a developed country like Switzerland have the courage to reflect on its powerful state in the world, and the far-reaching implications of its legislation? Actions based on such reflections would significantly alleviate the precarious situation of domestic workers in Geneva.

References BONOLI, G., Fossati, F., Gandenberger, M., Knotz., C. (2020). Quelle solidarité pendant la crise sanitaire ? Résultats d’un sondage sur les aides prévues pour ceux qui passent à travers les mailles du filet social. IDHEAP – Unil BONVIN, J.-M., LOVEY, M., ROSENSTEIN, E. & KEMPENEERS, P. (2020). La population en grande précarité en période de COVID-19 à Genève : conditions de vie et stratégies de résilience. Rapport final de l’étude sollicitée par la fondation Colis du Cœur. Genève : Université de Genève.

FLÜCKIGER, Y. et PASCHE, C. (2005). Rapport final « Analyse du secteur clandestin de l’économie domestique à Genève ». Genève : Observatoire universitaire de l’Emploi, Laboratoire d’économie appliquée.

FLÜCKIGER, Y. , FERRO-LUZZI, G., URANTOWKA, W. & Observatoire Universitaire de l’Emploi (2012).

Analyse du travail clandestin et de son évolution à Genève. Genève : Observatoire Universitaire de l’Emploi, 39 p FRASER, N. (2019) «Is Capitalism Necessarily Racist?» in Politics Letters ROMERO, M. (2007). «Conceptualizing the Latina Experience in Care Work », in Juan Flores et Renato Rosaldo

Tackling the Precarity of Domestic Workers in Geneva

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The Cost of Going Green: The Dilemma of Lithium Mining Gautham Varada Narayan, Samuel Ugo Ringier, Vanessa Klemm, Xenia Anaïs Harder

From black gold to white gold, many believe that our societies are finally stepping on to a more sustainable path with the green energy transition. Although, in a world of capitalist exploitation and greenwashing, is the extraction of lithium actually sustainable or just a facade to exacerbate Indigenous rights violations and environmental degradation?

populations are given its relevant importance, for a tomorrow that does not repeat the same exploitative history of the black gold, propounded by capitalist institutions, we have written this article.

Booming Lithium Demand Twenty years ago, it was not common for everybody to have a mobile phone, much less a smartphone, laptop, tablet, and definitely not an electric vehicle (not even a hybrid). Today, approximately 7.26 billion people own a mobile phone, which is almost 92% of the world’s population. While owning a mobile phone may not constitute part of the transition to the green economy, switching from diesel and petrol operated vehicles to electric ones does. The sales of electric vehicles increased by 67% between 2019 and 2020, which accounts for more than a quarter of the global sales for the year. The market and consequently the demand has grown exponentially over the past 20 years, and it will only continue to multiply as governments try to phase out petrol and diesel vehicle

The 19th-century discovery, petroleum dictated our global economic and social drive for decades. Seen as the tool to a prosperous tomorrow, black gold has dominated our paradigm of development. However, the history of the black gold as we know it is one that has created monumental ecological imbalances and displacement of Indigenous communities. We have reached a point at which the destructive socio-ecological footprint of this black gold cannot be reversed.

Yet as the beacon of hope rose what is now considered the key to a sustainable future: lithium. It is used in storing renewable energy, and making batteries for electric cars and our most prominently used electronic products such as laptops and mobile phones. It did not take long until Lithium found its new nickname - the white gold. The increasing demand for the strategic resource stems from its necessity for the transformation to electromobility in the Global North but has considerable economic, social, and environmental impacts. Lithium is seen as the future for our intense new need of storing energy in batteries. With about 70% of the world’s exploitable reserves located in the salted flats of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, this new “goldrush” puts intense pressure on the governments of those countries. With the Chilean Atacama region including Indigenous communities, the Atacameño, and the Flamencos National Reserve, this article aims to capture the implications of this new white gold by examining from several theoretical viewpoints, critically analysing its historical existence and evolution, and offering solution sets for a better and less exploitative future.

This work’s underlying desire for a shift in perspective and a statement to take a step back and guarantee that the land and people of Atacama are given a better chance to enjoy a better life will always be relevant and must be immediately addressed. For a tomorrow where the voices of the Indigenous

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Figure 1: McKinsey lithium demand model (2020) The Lithium Dilemma A high adoption level of electric cars by 2050, would mean the reduction of 71% of CO2eq per vehicle-kilometre-travel in comparison to 2013 levels. A well needed reduction on constraint on the atmospheric GHG level.

The good news is that global lithium resources comprise about 39 tons of lithium, which is almost twice the estimated amount needed until the year 2100. Further, lithium has also a much smaller carbon footprint compared to other battery cells putting it before its competitors for energy storage.

The carbon footprint of the raw materials of a lithium iron phosphate bat-

Picture : Matias Opazo

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tery is a tenth, and the life cycle footprint is around half of a nickel-metal hybrid battery. All in all, the resources are available, and the production and usage of lithium batteries have far less environmental impact concerning the carbon footprint.

On the other hand, poisoning the natural resources that benefit the Indigenous communities, Lithium mining causes grave social and environmental impacts.

Left behind are habitat destruction of species such as Andean flamingos, the depletion of freshwater resources impacting the accessibility for the 18 Indigenous Atacameño communities and health concerns due to the increased lithium concentration.

The social dilemma unfolds further with Indigenous communities which do not have the resources to mature into formal organisations with significant enough power to oppose the government of corporate interests.

In order to understand the dilemma, three frameworks can be applied: The Green Economy, Dispossession by Accumulation, and, vice versa, Accumulation by Dispossession. The Green Economy foresees a transformation to “zero-carbon lifestyles” in the Global North achieved by, among others, a shift to electromobility to achieve the commitments of the Paris Agreement. This not only leads to a shift of environmental costs to the ecologies of the Global South but also, leads to rendering lithium as a commodity extracted and traded by private corporations, which can lead to primitive accumulation defined by Marx.

Green Economy The green economy has been a concept evolving since the 1950s and was later characterised by the Rio+20 conference as the pathway to sustainable development. Pushed by the OECD, UNEP, and the World Bank, the green economy is seen as a substantial solution to the financial and climate crisis.

UNEP has defined the green economy to be “low-carbon, resource-efficient and socially inclusive” on one side while preserving natural ecosystems and resources and minimising environmental risks and ecological scarcities on the other side. The implementation of green economy strategies and

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policies differs on a national level. Countries of the Global North have the green energy transition at the heart of their green economy strategies. This transition is based on the switch to renewable energies, improvement of electromobility systems, and low-carbon renewable energy production.

Environmental economics and ecological economics are two important theoretical approaches to the green economy. In the theory of environmental economics, natural capital is substitutable, with man-made capital.

That means if a certain activity poses a cost or benefit for a third party - in our case, the mining operations on the communities in the Atacama Desert - the implementation of economic instruments as, i.e., taxes, subsidies, tradable permits, or payments for ecosystem services should influence the responsible actors in their decision making as the payments substitute environmental damage. In contrast, ecological economics suggests that natural and man-made capital are, unlike environmental economics, not substitutable. Therefore, limit the possibilities of growth in the economy to the biophysical boundaries of our planet. Whilst growth is limited according to ecological economists, it does not contradict the green economy.

On the contrary, green growth is often used interchangeably with the green economy. Green growth aims for continuous economic expansion with ecological compatibility through technological change to achieve the decoupling of environmental degradation. That makes lithium a key material to enable green technological advancements.

One aspect of the green economy is the shift to cleaner production and resource efficiency, the first coin with two contradicting sides in this dilemma. First, clean production implies the prevention of pollution rather than treating it post-production, and second, the crucial advancement of technology for efficiency. But technology needs batteries - whose production is accompanied by a number of toxic chemicals that can be found in traces in the process water, tailing piles, waste storage, and certainly in the evaporation basins. As lithium is a highly mobile metal, it risks being released to the surrounding environment and neighbouring communities due to its

The Cost of Going Green: The Dilemma of Lithium Mining

exposure to wind and storms during the evaporation process. The evaporation ponds are lined with PVC barriers that can fail and leak dangerous chemicals. The resulting pollution of the soil and water system, as well as the evaporation itself, poses health risks to humans and biodiversity, with lithium concentrations above 20mg l-1 being deadly. Whereas the Global North eagerly pursues its carbon targets, the Indigenous communities of the Atacama have to live with the exposure to health risks in their day-today life.

A study by Liang and colleagues in 2016 showed that lithium batteries are produced with a smaller carbon footprint than other batteries. Even with the increase in the use of lithium batteries, methods of recycling for these still unconventional rechargeable batteries have not been adopted by the industry yet resulting in large amounts of chemical waste. One aspect of the green economy is to improve the waste hierarchy with the most preferred option of waste prevention. This can either be achieved through long-living products or the ability to recreate a new product with the old materials. Instead of “waste”, a second-degree material forms, turning back into the life cycle of a product, increasing the circularity of products. Lithium batteries today only have low recyclability, putting them on the lowest end of the waste hierarchy and therefore not an ideal product through the lens of the green economy. The low recyclability of lithium batteries results from the difficulties to recover the liquid electrolytes and lithium salts with the use of toxic chemicals making the process more hazardous and complex. Scrapped batteries only contain about 2-7% of lithium while the recovery process is very costly and energy intensive. Even though first attempts of batteries “designed for recyclability” are being made, the urgency to find a solution only increases with increased demand.

Accumulation by Dispossession/ Dispossession by Accumulation Harvey has added to Marx’s notion of “primitive accumulation” with his discussion on “accumulation by dispossession”. Privatisation is one of the main mechanisms of accumulation by dispossession and, hence, a process in which something that prior has not formally been owned, gets transferred into private ownership. Taking the example of Chile, many water resources in the Atacama region, unlike in many other parts of the country, are managed by communities. For the Atacameños, water not only has an economic value but also contributes to the spiritual and social values of keeping a community stable in one of the driest regions in the world.

Babidge described how water use is a carefully planned and social activity between the members of the community. In an excerpt of her journey, she wrote: “Margarita was gulping down her breakfast. ‘I’m in a hurry’ she explained to me, ‘I watered in the closest garden [yesterday] and now it is my turn to irrigate below as well’. A few minutes later, Don Bruno arrived.

Margarita chatted with him as the water-filled her fields. They talked about where the water was flowing to and will be flowing across in the following

days, and who needed to be present”.

Yet, according to a study of Jerez and colleagues from 2021 Chile’s water authorities hand water rights to mining companies often without regard to their environmental impact and social status. Due to the increased access to the technology of the mining companies, the Atacameños often have no measure of the actual quantities the mining companies take out of their aquifers, which disturbs a water management system that in some places was developed as early as 1500 BC. This water scarcity issue translates into a question of value which defines who may judge, have greater rights, and access to the resources. Perreault has extended Harvey’s idea in his work to the mining practises in the Bolivian Altiplano arguing with nature’s materiality in dispossession processes. Acknowledging that accumulation of capital is barely comparable to the accumulation of water rights and land, Perreault accentuates that the correlation of land and water rights accumulation leads to state led capitalist accumulation and ultimately the dispossession of Indigenous communities of those assets. The Bolivian Altiplano holds an estimated half of the world’s lithium reserves, which is why Perreault’s discussion can be related to the case study of the Chilean Atacama region. His main points are the accumulation of toxic sediments in formerly fertile floodplains; the accumulation of water and water rights; and the accumulation of land. Through the intensive water withdrawals during the mining operations and the spatial expansion, the local communities are dispossessed of their livelihoods.

The land use is expanding year by year by approximately 7% adding to the degradation in several ways such as decline of vegetation, increase in temperatures and increasing drought conditions of bigger and bigger areas. The rights to lithium mining properties are constituted by the stateowned Production Development Corporation (CORFO). Lithium mining requires large areas mainly for the spreading of shallow evaporation ponds.

Responsible for the mining activities in the Salar de Atacama are the North American holding company Albemarle and the Chilean company SQM. Albemarle was given an expansion agreement in 2016 in collaboration with the local communities “to prevent conflicts”. The second expansion was given to SQM in 2018, even though there had been contract breaches concerning anti-union practices and environmental damages. This process met the rejection of Indigenous communities which note that the lithium companies “do not understand that they are in an indigenous territory and that they have to consult first with the communities regarding everything they want to do inside” [Atacameño leader, Council of the Atacameño People, San Pedro de Atacama]. The appearance of new mining projects such as the Canadian company Wealth Minerals and the company Lithium Chile add to the accumulation processes. They are exploring new areas of the Salar de Atacama, regardless of the overlapping with Indigenous territories, protected wetlands, and the Los Flamencos National Reserve.

The Chilean Committee of Non-Metallic Mining has stated that the

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pumped water in Salar de Atacama has increased by 21% between the years 2000-2015. This has led to the sinking of groundwater to up to 1m per year, affecting the water accessibility of the local population of one of the driest deserts in the world. Many of the communities held the water rights on their land which they sold to corporations for revenue. While this may be interesting for some of the communities, as it offers some shortterm increase in the living standards in the not only environmental but also economically harsh environment it also comes at a cost. Minera Exar found agreements with six communities in the Atacama region for the use of their water and land rights in exchange for payments. While the corporation is creating revenues of 250 million USD per year, the communities receive payments from 9’000 USD to 60’000 USD. This merely represents 0.0036% - 0.024% of the revenues of the companies. Other one-off agreements above 2 million USD including water source protections led to divisions within the indigenous communities as they are made to choose between ‘the little-amount of money or protecting their sense of earth’. Some of the communities faced more severe droughts due to the increased water extraction in the regions and so had to ship drinking water to their areas.

This adds an increased expenses and dependency on the Indigenous communities given up for a fraction of the profits made by the multinationals.

Conclusion Consumerism and technological advancements have driven the global economy to the unquenchable thirst of all that is in sight, to the point of climate destruction. While it is crucial for the world to transition to the green economy, the exponential growth in demand for electric vehicles and other battery-powered technologies is putting significant strain on lithium mining operations and the environment at large, and more importantly, the local communities inhabiting the area. But does lithium mining allow green growth to decouple from environmental degradation or is lithium mining the frontrunner example for greenwashed capitalism?

With our current scientific progress, lithium is a means to move into a greener transition. Lithium was and is never the end to achieving a sustainable tomorrow. However, our world today including its global environmental conservation agencies and political messiahs believe for lithium to be the absolute answer to transition rapidly into a greener tomorrow.

Furthermore, the wealthy technological and automobile companies have got on to this bandwagon to capitalise on the growing demand for lithium battery-powered appliances and vehicles. With an emphasis on lithium as the answer, lithium’s resource efficiency has been focused on and facilitated for the price drop in lithium-powered commodities. Regions rich in raw materials (usually developing countries) are doing the dirty work, extracting finite resources at the cost of their social environment and local ecosystems. This has produced an impact of only growing demand for lithium, increasing neglect of the safety and rights of Indigenous communities.

Mining corporations and community groups in Chile have clashed, with

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locals claiming that lithium mining has left the countryside blighted by mountains of wasted salt and canals brimming with tainted water with an artificial blue tint. There’s also the presence of the risk of harmful chemicals leaking from the evaporation ponds on the Atacama salt flats, into the water supply. These include compounds such as hydrochloric acid, which are employed in the conversion of lithium into a marketable form, as well as waste items sifted out from the brine at every phase. The triangular region has always been environmentally fragile and the growing unsustainable mining practices are harming its land and its people beyond saving. For the Global North the question of recyclability remains unanswered and should urgently be addressed.

This article has been an attempt at capturing the impacts of this new white gold by looking at it through the lens of various theoretical perspectives, critically analysing its historical existence and evolution and recommending solution sets for a better and less exploitationary future. Going into a new tomorrow, some of the theoretical connections and critical outlooks of this article might become redundant or contested. However, the shift in thought and the declaration to take a step back and ensure that the land and people of Atacama are given a better chance to lead a better life that this article has fundamentally yearned for, would always be relevant and has to be urgently discussed. Technologies come and go, if our history with finding ‘the next best thing’ has taught us anything, it is that without the natural world and its faunas and humans who make it beautiful, it is no more a world to live for.

“This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.”

- Guillermo Gonzalez, University of Chile Recommendations Any recommendations would require a transdisciplinary involvement, with its stakeholders encompassing the government, the civil sector, private sector (lithium mining corporations), municipalities, and citizen groups.

For an inclusive solution it is critical that citizens, especially Indigenous people, have a platform to voice concerns and issues surrounding lithium mining and its effects on their land, water, and social systems. These concerns should be monitored and addressed to prevent tensions and conflicts between actors and to give a voice to the people who are impacted by the white gold addiction of the world.

The first proposed recommendation is the creation of a global framework for equitable lithium mining practices, wherein the sole purpose is to ethically regulate lithium mining to reduce the socio-environmental impacts.

It is important for relevant countries and lithium extraction corporations to participate in industry dialogue that addresses operational, industry, and third-party monitoring concerns.

The Cost of Going Green: The Dilemma of Lithium Mining

The structuring of the stakeholders involved in the formulation of the global framework of equitable lithium mining practises is heavily inspired by the stakeholder engagement concept of the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. The transdisciplinarity that was inspired by the 2030 Agenda would be injected into the global framework for equitable lithium mining practises, wherein, the forum would be composed of representatives from the world governments, lithium mining corporations, and the major groups’ division which would be composed of a delegation from the local mining communities, human rights and environmental NGOs, several key social activists actively involved in the field of discussion, mining workers’ trade unions and representatives from the scientific community. Although the member states would be responsible to decide the modalities by which to invite the various major groups’ representatives, the article urges for the voice of public opinion to be integral in the decision-making process of who represents whom in the major groups. Third-party monitoring and enforcement of regulations are critical to ensure neutral, unbiased, and non-corrupt practices. This global forum should make certain information publicly available, such as the quantity of lithium extracted, the impacts on the environment (water use and contamination, CO2 emissions, etc.), as well as the estimated remaining quantity of lithium. Stakeholders need to be aware of the situation to proactively react and prevent social and environmental devastation.

The second recommendation mandates that Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile develop and implement a regional grievance council for the local population, concerning lithium mining in the whole lithium triangle as it is a connected ecosystem. The pre-existing Chilean body of ‘Council of Atacameños People’ is an instrumental push, however we would propose the need for a trans-boundary grievance council with an expanded roster of actors involved. The grievance council would prioritise input, feedback, and concerns from citizen groups, municipalities, and scientists. It provides a critical opportunity for citizens from the region to lodge complaints and concerns regarding mining activities, the mining companies, and environmental impact.

the impacts of lithium mining operations. NGOs play an important role serving as watchdogs and when possible, providing services to help reverse some of the devastating effects of past and present mining practices. Last but not least citizen groups are absolutely vital to the functioning of the grievance council. Citizens must be able to voice their concerns regarding access to employment, livelihood, water for domestic use, and be able to participate in sacred social and spiritual practices on their land and their environment.

References Liang, Y., Su, J., Xi, B., Yu, Y., Ji, D., Sun, Y., Cui, Chifei., Zhu, J. (2016). Life cycle assessment of lithium-ion batteries for greenhouse gas emissions. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 117: 285-293. Doi: 10.1016/j. resconrec.2016.08.028.

Babidge, S. (2013). “Socios”: the contested morality of “partnerships” in indigenous community-mining company relations, Northern Chile. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 18 (2): 274-293.

Jerez, B., Garcés, I., Torres, R. (2021). Lithium extractivism and water injustices in the Salar de Atacama, Chile: The colonial Shadow of green electromobility. Political Geography 87 102382. Doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102382.

Perreault, T. (2012). Dispossession by Accumulation? Mining, Water and the Nature of Enclosure on the Bolivian Altiplano. Antipode 45 (5): 1050-1069.

Frankel, T. C., & Whoriskey, P. (2016). Companies are making billions in lithium mining. but these indigenous people are being left out. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2022 Jerez, B., Garcés, I., & Torres, R. (2021). Lithium extractivism and water injustices in the Salar de Atacama, chile: The Colonial Shadow of Green electromobility. Political Geography, 87, 102382. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. polgeo.2021.102382

Alongside the representatives of the three countries, the council should compose of local communities’ representatives, eminent individuals with a background in the legal field and the environmental science discipline. It is critical for the private sector to be present and to acknowledge receipt and understanding of the grievances from other actors. In order for the private sector to operate in the lithium triangle, it should be mandatory to protect the livelihoods, environment and ecosystems, and social structures of Indigenous communities.

Civil society organisations, including IOs, play a role in enforcing adequate responses to grievances. IOs such as the United Nations possess enough legitimacy to put pressure on governments and the private sector to act on

15

Water Privatisation and Renationalisation in Bolivia: Two sides of the same coin?

Maxime Badan, Vincent Hediger, Lauréanne Lam, Flavian Pichonnat, Danielle Sousa (authors listed alphabetically)

As climate change disrupts environmental conditions at an unprecedented level, the management of common goods such as water is crucial. We focused on how this resource was managed in Bolivia, as it has been privatised and then renationalised within a short timeframe. The Bolivian experience in the last 25 years helps us to understand the impacts of water privatization on its population; it also illuminates how renationalization propelled the country to adopt a third path to water management - community governance.

Introduction In this article, we explore the impacts of the privatisation and then the renationalisation of the water service on the access to water for the poor in La Paz, El Alto and Cochabamba. All of them were subjected to privatisation in the late 1990s due to the push of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which made liberalisation a condition for continued lending to local governments on the grounds that public management was inefficient. As a result, the government of Hugo Benzer handed over the responsibility of providing water to the three cities mentioned above in 1997 and 1999 to two foreign multinationals: Bechtel and Suez. It resulted in violent protests known as the water wars and the subsequent renationalisation of the water service. To analyse the privatisation process and renationalisation, we use David Harvey’s “Accumulation

by Dispossession” theory as a theoretical framework. Indeed, this theory provides an interesting line of analysis to understand the privatisation of common goods or services in globalised capitalist societies such as water services. This allowed us to highlight the various dilemmas created by the neoliberal agenda to push for the commodification of common goods such as water.

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Political context In the 1990s, Latin American countries experienced many neoliberal policies to access loans from the World Bank and the IMF. Neoliberalism can be described as David Harvey wrote: “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade.” (Harvey, 2005).

The access of loans passes through such reforms resulting from the Washington Consensus formulated by J. Williamson in 1989 and sought solutions to retrieve the economic growth of the global South, which was experiencing difficulties in repaying sovereign debts. Indeed, Bolivia was not an exception. The country went through several structural changes in its economy towards reducing the state size and letting the market forces allocate the resources, aligned with the neoliberal agenda, as a requirement to continue accessing loans to finance its public debt. Under Hugo Benzer’s government, the privatisation of water supply services in Bolivia took place by the end of the 90s, through two major private concessions and replacing the resource’s community-based management from the previous years. The first one, in 1997, in La Paz and El Alto, the water supply service was bought by the company Aguas del Illimani S.A., a subsidiary of the French multinational, Suez. And the second one, in 1999, in Cochabamba, the concession was made to the Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of two North American companies, Biwater and Bechtel. Water management was before these events the duty of the public company Servicio municipal de agua potable y alcantarillado (SEMAPA).

A popular resistance There were many concerns about building pro-poor solutions; the main goal was to quickly expand the network and grant supply to the marginalised populations and mainly reach the rural territories. However, water privatisation did not go without obstacles, and a large part of the population was against such a reform. In Bolivia during the nineties, this situation led to conflicts violently repressed by the government, causing deaths and wounded. These episodes are known as the “Water Wars”, which we explore within the two cases of Cochamba and El alto. In these two cases, we have decided to talk about the performance requirements and how they were responsible for the frustration of the population, which eventually caused the end of the privatisation in Bolivia.

First, in Cochabamba, to achieve the performance requirements, Aguas del Illimani S.A. decided to reduce its distribution costs in several ways.

families in El Alto, and approximately 52 % of El Alto residents lacked essential water and sewer services. Carlos Mesa, the Bolivian president at the time, finally began the necessary actions to terminate the concession contract with the company. Aguas del Illimani was the second transnational water company that was annulled in Bolivia.

Pink wave in Latin America

The connection systems were shared as much as possible between the different households. The quality of the equipment and infrastructure was reduced, maintenance was sometimes delegated to the customers, and microcredit solutions were proposed. These solutions put a heavy burden on the customers, and with the increase in tariffs, sometimes exceeding 100%, the population’s frustration reached its maximum. The situation has the features of a private monopoly that prevents many small local water services. The struggle against the commodification of water led to two major demonstrations, in January and February 2000, both aiming to review the tariffs. The government tried twice to circumvent the problem by making promises without acting. The population’s discontent reached its peak, and a more violent conflict broke out. The state had to call in the army to control the protesters. As a result, one person was killed, and several people were injured or imprisoned. Despite this resistance from the government, the population continued to protest strongly and eventually had the last word. The concession had been annulled, and the water service was handed over again to SEMAPA. The Second Water War occurred in El Alto with several social conflicts.

Aguas del Illimani’s contract with the Bolivian government ended prematurely. However, the company met the Bolivian government’s demands, the redistribution of water was so unequal between rich and poor that it led to a protest. Thousands of El Alto residents led by a militant territorially based organisation, called “Federaciòn de Juntas Vecinales de El Alto’’ (the Federation of Neighbourhood Councils of El Alto, FEJUVE) started to pressure the authorities to meet several demands, including the cancellation of the private contract between the government and Illimani.

This strike resulted from an accumulation of poorly delivered services and deprived the right to water to poor people. For example, water prices were raised by 35% as it was pegged to the U.S dollar, and for a single household, the cost of connection could reach $445 a year, while a Bolivian earns about $2,50 per day.

Furthermore, the company did not extend its services to the indigenous

Furthermore, the arrival of leftist parties in the 2000s to the government of Latin American countries known as the pink wave has pushed to move away from neoliberal policies. These new parties were not as radical as the communist parties from the last century, but they were built among the workers’ class and social movements and classified as centre-left or social democrats. Their arrival to power brings a new way to make politics in the region, diverging from the neoliberal agenda from the previous decade, the 1990s, which grant the name of post-neoliberal governments. In this political context in the region, Evo Morales was elected in 2006 in Bolivia.

As the first indigenous president, among a population of 62% auto declared indigenous, the most significant percentage in the region. Morales is part of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party and was elected to represent Bolivia’s workers and native people against imperialism, as they auto proclaim.

To better compare the two sides of the coin, we have decided to go over the renationalisation of the water. Indeed, after the protest of the population and the arrival of leftists in Bolivia, the precedent concession of the water supply services to private actors in Cochabamba, La Paz and El Alto resulted in the renationalisation. The governance of autonomous communities accompanied renationalisation. However, there are limits to water governance for community autonomy. There has been a contradiction between the ideal of post-neoliberalism and the persistent role of natural resource extraction. Even with the leftists’ government, there has been continuing extraction overriding indigenous territories, the water’s pollution, or constructions in protected areas. It rings a bell with the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, who argued in the early 20th century that indigenous in Latin America needed a socialist model specifically with the communally governed landholdings and built its own path.

Empirical evidence about performance of water systems Even though there were large protests against the privatisation of water services, it is still interesting to look at different indicators to assess the performance of this episode which occurred between 1997 and 2005. We used various indicators from an econometric study that compares the period pre and post-privatisation made by Hailu Degol et. al., 2012. The indicators are the following: (1) water delivery, (2) equity, and (3) affordability. From the data provided, we can establish that the coverage rates

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SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DILEMMAS IN CAPITALISM.

Empirical evidence of water supply

increased (water delivery), the concentration decreased (equity), but water expenditures mainly increased for the poor. We cannot establish a direct relation between privatisation and these trends since the same happened in Santa Cruz, which publicly managed its services. Although we can argue that even though the private sector did not handle this city, it followed the same market logic as its counterparts of reducing costs and increasing profits aligned with the neoliberal agenda. It should be an argument for further investigation that this paper might not be able to provide. Therefore, there was no reason for the population to rise against privatisation, but the reality was more complex than that. First, we cannot base ourselves on three economic indicators to analyse a complex discussion. Second, the tariffs in some cities were raised just before the private concessions, and it seems that the government was willing to take the blame, so the company did not have to do it. Since it was only some months before and it did not have the expected effect, the population made a bad connection between the rise in prices and the change in the management. Third, as mentioned above, there was a broader context of resistance against the neoliberal reforms in the region, so not everything can be explained by the case of the water itself. But also by the hydrocarbon privatisation, labour reforms, increase of inequalities and poverty and other social issues boiling historical tensions.

Due to this social pressure and a breach in the contract, the concessions were revoked, and a certain number of new connections never saw the light of the day. But rather than a legal issue, we clearly can see a political process pushed by the population against its government. It was a self-organisation process in social organisations, unions, parties to fight back not only the water case but the general tendency of accumulation by dispossession through the neoliberal reforms.

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To go beyond the theoretical framework, we also used data provided by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) to analyse the evolution of water supply in

Bolivia. The first analysis is backed by the literature in which more affluent people have better water supply access than poorer populations. It is rather difficult to assess whether it was due to Evo Morales policies and the work of SEMAPA. Moreover, we draw from the empirical evidence that in the year 2020, most people in urban zones have access to basic water supplies, which is excellent for a country that experienced the Water War in the 2000s. Considering the share of the population living in urban areas, which was 70% in 2020, it can be said that most Bolivians have fair access to basic water infrastructures. It seems that Bolivia is on a good path to

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its autonomy; also, they can improve their technical level through hosting training sessions to members.

Conclusion

reaching the SDG target on improved water access. Also, evidence showed that the increase in coverage during the private and co-managed systems was mainly the same, except for the last period (2015-2020) due to already high coverage, touching 100% in urban areas and still with space for improvement in rural areas.

Community governance – not the panacea Moreover, the new hybrid water management system was criticised since only giving back the management to the public sector did not seem to solve the problem of water access. In restoring SEMAPA, things went back to the way they were before the privatisation. It was not ideal to substitute multinationals with a technocratic structure that used international loans to finance projects and was constantly accused of fraud and inefficiency.

Nonetheless, the third option, not private and not state-owned, emerged directly from the social movements that took to the streets to reverse the privatisation putting together different groups such as urban water users, peri-urban, rural irrigators, religious, non-profit and international aid organisations. Already Elinor Ostrom suggests such collective self-organisation of water uses. For her, the mode of governance for such common goods, such as the capacity of auto-organisation for allocating the resource and monitoring the uses, was necessary. The socio-economic reality of water distribution in Bolivia limits the water committee’s autonomy. Their technical and financial lack makes them dependent on the government, the market, or NGOs. To address these deficiencies, the committees organise themselves in broader associations so they can have more power when negotiating with the state or big organisation without giving away

As already mentioned, the autonomy of water committees was limited due to financial, political, technical, and environmental constraints. So the first dilemma we can point out is the contradiction between having a developmental State and at the same time preserving natural resources; second, giving administrative autonomy to social movements, but not giving them the practical conditions to do so, depending on the financing from the government, NGOs and other institutions; finally, the water shortage and pollution bring setbacks for the post-neoliberal policies and require broader actions from the State and the international community to address the climate crisis. Nevertheless, from 2009, the social organisation which works explicitly with water’s infrastructure initiated a process to create a law for giving access to water to everybody, enabling adding it in the constitution. However, the law “Ley de Agua para la Vida” is still debated in the assembly.

Finally, in terms of trends for the future, we can observe that if the law “Ley de Agua para la Vida”, which would give a legal framework for the universal supply of water as a common good, is approved. It may have a significant impact on fighting against dispossession and better distribution in Bolivia. For the Bolivians, it would be of great importance whether the assembly will implement this law in the Bolivian constitution, giving a legal framework for the universal supply of water a common good. With a solid legal framework, Bolivians with communities will have, perhaps, better governance of water along with the State and private actors. The transformation in Bolivia concerning the water services is excellent learning for the consequences that can occur with the privatisation of a common good.

Not only does it show unwanted results of such a reform, but also that massive mobilisation of civil society can reverse a specific trend. With the call of many to reappropriate the common goods, it might seem legitimate to ask how such goods must be managed.

References Harvey, David (2005): A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press

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A case study about the capitalism-induced social and environmental dilemmas in Tin Can Island

A Nigerian Port taken in the Turbulences of the Logistical Revolution Thomas Arduin, Guillaume Dreyer, Pierre Patelli, Daniel Schenk (authors listed alphabetically)

‘The warehouses of Amazon, Uber cars, Deliveroo backpacks and Airbnb apartments are all symptoms of the logistics transformations at work. However, if we insist too much on the immediate metamorphoses taking place before our eyes, we easily miss another fundamental aspect of the logistics organization: its global scope.”

Mathieu Quet, 2022, p141 As pointed out by the quote opening this discussion, logistics seems to have radically transformed the face of contemporary capitalism. While it is frequently understood in an apolitical fashion, as the mere organisation or management of flows (of commodities, goods or even populations), the point of view defended here argues, on the contrary, that it is crucial to look beyond a purely technical framing that would construct it as an impartial and socially neutral technology. Rather, it is necessary to try to understand the specifics of how it shapes the economic, social, ecological and political dimensions of the way our societies are organised, that is, how logistics operates as the support of socio-political relationships of domination.

Traditionally, logistical concerns tended to be expressed and operationalized within a single unit of production, which comported the totality of the value chain – there is only to think of the large and integrated paradigmatic firms of the Fordist era. Optimization of the flows between nodes of the production process largely took place according to the plans of a single organisational entity. This state of things, as anyone in the global North might intuitively detect, seems to have been quite radically transformed. A broad sketch of the itinerary of a pair of Nike sneakers or of a smartphone might serve to illustrate this point: Apple, for instance, does not own any assemblage plant; the company is principally responsible for the design of its products, buy materials necessary to build them, and ship those primary goods to formally independent firms in China where the famous iPhones are put together according to plans whose intellectual property belongs to the American high-tech firm. Said phones will then be moved back to Apple, before the final product, having been ordered by a customer on the Internet, is transported to its destination by a further indepen-

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1

Mathieu Quet (2022:14, translated from French)

dent shipping company. Of course, each of those stages might, and often does, take place in a distinct country. It is hard to conceive of the level of coordination required, if this elaborated choreography of global trade is not to be perpetually troubled, and goods lost in translation.

Indeed, the level of “global interconnectedness” (Pooch 2016, 16) has reached heights never attended. With the second industrial revolution, the systematic application of science in industry (Levitt, 2005, 519), and subsequent further developments in traffic, transport, and communication systems (Hirsch, 1995, 103), the previous limitations of geographical reach due to the respective current state of technology was able to be lifted completely (Wallerstein 2002, 37f.) and usher in a third wave of globalisation, “in which there genuinely is a shrinking of the planet.” (Levitt 2005, 524) Of course this “shrinking” of the planet should not be understood literally but figuratively, meaning the transfer of goods, information, etc. has become massively facilitated and increased in speed compared to earlier periods.

Hence, in the wake of this economic and financial globalisation – effectively an international fragmentation of the division of labour and an extension of the chains of production across political and productive formations –, the securing and management of seamless flows of goods around the planet became an imperative for capitalist interests. Therefore, whereas, during the period of ‘Golden Age’ capitalism, state officials, bourgeoisie, and managers traditionally focused on the sphere of the production of value – embodied in commodities whose proliferation had been one of the main features of the industrial society -, which was deemed the main node of modern capitalist economies, the subsidiary dimension of the realm of circulation – that is, the social (between categories of population) and geographical (from one location to another) movement of value – became more and more relevant. In this respect, it is all too understandable that issues surrounding the construction, the ownership and the power over the conditions of possibilities of the motion of capital became ever more and more salient – a trend that is referred to in the literature as a kind of ‘logistical revolution’, not only as a hitherto relatively poorly explored source of profit extraction, but more importantly as a novel principle of structuration of the social reality.

Thus, the present paper tries to deal with the specific forms taken by this logistical order, not only in respect with its economic dimension, but also by interrogating its social, ecological and political consequences. In order to reach such a comprehension of those various stakes, the most heuristic research strategy implies to engage with the specifics of a spatially circumscribed experience. By doing so, the ambition is not to write the chronicle of an irreducibly idiosyncratic phenomenon, but rather to be able to grasp

the local instantiation of some macroscopic logics that would otherwise not be identified, nor general conclusions drawn. In this spirit, the case of West and Central Africa (WCA) in general, and of Tin Can Island in Nigeria in particular, appear to be privileged fields of investigation, both insofar as this part of the world is paradigmatic of the way patterns of uneven development reproduce under an apparently unprecedented global economic configuration, and because of its becoming an increasingly strategic node in the network of commodities transportations.

The Insertion of Tin Can Island in the Realm of Global Circulation As noted by Chilaka and Olukoju (2020, 118–119) the position of this region within the world maritime economy remained one of considerable marginality during most of the 20th century, even after countries in the region gained their political independence, since “between 1970 and 1992, the African continent accounted for an average of nine per cent of the throughput of the world’s seaports”. To stick with the Nigerian situation, it should be kept in mind that, as the authors explain, that the port of Lagos became after the civil war, in 1970, a crucial element in the reconstruction of the country planned by the authorities, allowing them to massively increase crude oil exports – the major source of revenue for an economy overly dependent on importations;

In spite of the sudden wealth triggered by the oil crisis of the 1970s, most of it was spent in ‘conspicuous consumption’ rather than invested in infrastructure expansion Only when confronted with the growing congestion in the main port did the authorities decide that a second port, situated in Tin Can Island, had to be hastily constructed in 1976. With only two major seaports in Lagos (Apapa and Tin Can Island) responsible for almost 90% of the overall domestic shipping of the whole country, the congestion problem is a perduring one. The peripheral status of WCA in the world economy has been disrupted by more recent trends, for instance, a UNCTAD report from 2013 stated that Africa was hastily evolving, “from being a niche market

for shipping operators to gaining mainstream status,” (quoted in ibid., 854). In the same vein, CGM communicated in 2014 that Africa “is at the heart of our strategic priorities.”

It is propitious, then, to look at the specific case of interest by shedding the light on the firm in charge of the operations on Terminal B of Tin Can Island Port, this multinational company has acquired the concession in 2004, and its major shareholders comprise Bolloré Africa Logistics (BAL), a branch of the conglomerate Bolloré SE– whose former CEO by French tycoon Vincent Bolloré left the place in 2019 for his son Cyrille - as well as a consortium formed in 2015 by Chinese Merchant Port (CMP) and China-Africa Development Fund (CDAF) to buy back the shares from the Israelian company Zim. The respective weight in terms of shares are as follows: the absolute majority (52,5%) lies with BAL, while CMP owns 28,5% and CDAF 19% (Pairault, 2018, 65).

The concession contract was signed for a duration of 20 years, and comprehends heavy investments in infrastructures and development of the port’s capacities. For now, it can stock up to 20’000 containers for a yearly capacity of 650’000 containers. Although the owners are foreigner investors, they employ 600 Nigerian workers to operate the site. It is thus puzzling to wonder what are the real benefits for the local Nigerian community to have one of their biggest seaports exploited by foreign parties. If one is to believe journalistic reports, BAL participation in TICT is typical of the group’s strategy: Vincent Bolloré famously “spent decades building up influence in French-speaking [sic] west Africa so as to be able to secure lucrative long-term concessions from governments there to run ports and transportation routes.’’ so much so that the African logistics subsidiary company reaped €2.1bn of profits in 2020, and is a key player in the WCA shipping sector, being present in 42 ports and operating 16 container terminals (Abboud and Dempsey, 2021).

In parallel to this economic dynamic and the infra-visible relations of power underlining it, which a firm-level analysis is able to uncover, it is equally important to be attentive to the geopolitical rivalries acutely unveiled by particular arrangements around TICT. By the end of 2021, indeed, talks about the possibility for Bolloré to relinquish his African assets echoed in the press (Pigeaud, 2021). In the same time, businessman Lafont (2021) voiced the concerns of French elites by sharing that “il serait souhaitable qu’Emmanuel Macron ou Bruno Lemaire [the French Minister of Economy and Finance] mettent tout le poids de l’État dans la balance pour que les activités logistiques africaines du groupe restent bien dans le giron français”. In a conjuncture where Chinese state-owned enterprises FDIs in Africa soar, notably in the former French zone of influence in the continent (so-called “Françafrique”), private actors’ shares in port terminals are not only of commercial importance, but also a question of national interest.

The Rise of Terminalization as a Class Strategy A crucial dynamic, that of terminalization, is “the transformation of ports into sets of interconnected terminals that operate within a global network that is structured by the strategy of a small number of international operators” (Debrie, 2012). It has to be emphasised, in this respect, that those operators have recently become more and more private corporate actors, which have transferred their culture and technical know-how in the governance of what had until then largely been publicly managed facilities.

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SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DILEMMAS IN CAPITALISM.

The growing importance of TNCs as main actors shaping the reality of WCA seaports constitutes a rupture vis-à-vis former patterns, rather than an organic continuation of those. Studying the specific case of Nigeria, Chilaka and Olukoju remind us that port administration had been under state control since the colonial period, and that the popularity of terminal concession schemes is a quite recent phenomenon, which they interpret in a economist fashion: the post-1970 era in port development in the Gulf of Guinea witnessed the changes in port administration in response to the pressure of economic recession, necessitating the introduction of Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) from the mid-1980s onwards.

The mobilisation of alternative theoretical traditions in order to grasp the logic of the insertion of the private sector in the seaport and terminal realm becomes a valuable research strategy. More precisely, in the opposite of the aforementioned Panglossian, positive-sum game view, more critical accounts have demonstrated how international financial institutions, such as the IMF or the World Bank, have used the “indebtedness” of low-income countries as a political tool enabling the de facto reproduction of the exploitation of former colonies, among others ways by giving the opportunity to impose (more often than not with the consent of local politicians) to those populations SAPs, whose propositions regarding the governance structure of terminals is to be viewed as a subtle form of expropriation from their national assets.

Dispossession of Logistical Infrastructure: a “Fix” against Overaccumulation?

Following Harvey (2013, 88), it is possible to identify “a chronic tendency within capitalism […] to produce a crisis of overaccumulation”. One solution to avoid said overaccumulation that is specifically relevant in our case, is investment in logistics infrastructure like the Tin Can Port Terminal, and its biggest container terminal, the Tin Can Island Container Terminal (TICT) in Lagos, Nigeria, is owned by a MNC, meaning that the

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major operators of it are not the locals, but French and Chinese interests, that invested their capital abroad. Such an investment can be seen as a “spatial” as well as a “temporal fix” to the problem of overaccumulation in said advanced economies. By investing abroad, in Nigeria, the capital is spatially displaced – “opening up new markets, new production capacities, and new resource, social and labour possibilities elsewhere” – and temporally displaced – “trough [being a] long-term investment […] that defer[s] the re-entry of capital values into circulation into the future” (ibid., 109).

An adequate framework to analyse possible imperialist practices in the process of ‘capital bondage’ in the case of the TICT in Lagos is the principle of accumulation by dispossession by David Harvey. To understand this, it is appropriate to look at Marx’ understanding of primitive accumulation since some call Harvey’s “phrase ‘accumulation by dispossession’ […] a substitute for Marx’s term in order to empathise the contemporary relevance of the process” (Kloppenburg 2010, 368).

Conclusion In definitive, the economic globalisation and its implications, most importantly the facilitated utilisation of absolute factor advantages to produce goods as cheaply as possible, gave rise to the contemporary form of capitalism in which the circulation of goods has higher relative importance to the prices of goods than in former periods where the cost of production were the only main factor constituting prices. This change transformed the role of logistics and logistical infrastructure from solely being useful as means to transport goods from their location of production to the region of consumption to an instrument of contributing to the value production through enabling the use of said absolute factor advantages of certain regions.

An argument along the lines of the mainstream view of globalisation points out not only the potential of investment in logistical infrastructure as a spatio-temporal-fix to overaccumulation for developed countries but also the potential gains for the developing countries at the receiving end of said investments, for example, job opportunities, the possibility of becoming an important hub in global transactions, etc. However, given the power asymmetries that were observable throughout human history and the experience of how those were utilised by the advantaged parties in the past, logistics as an emerging sector of capital accumulation equally gives rise to renewed opportunities to exploit said asymmetries, for example through accumulation by dispossession.

All this has allowed us to go beyond what we have called a Panglossian view about the win-win rhetoric associated in mainstream discourses around globalisation, unveiling in so doing the power asymmetries supporting it. As a similar attitude is now perceptible vis-à-vis the necessary ecological transition that has to be implemented in the shipping industry – that is, an attitude excessively optimistic about the virtues of corporate

A Nigerian Port taken in the Turbulences of the Logistical Revolution

responsibility and the compatibility of simultaneously realising a transformation towards sustainability and satisfying the capitalist aim of profit maximisation - the present analysis should contribute to alert against such lenifying discourses.

Moreover, as it has been pointed out that recent shifts towards terminalization and the association of corporate actors have not materialised in promised gains, and have merely privatised what were previously public assets, a key policy recommendation suggested by our study would be to reinstitute a strong public presence in the TICT. As Bolloré is currently trying to sell its shares of the company, an implication of the Nigerian state, if it is implemented with a respect for transparency and democratically associates civil society and local stakeholders in the management of the firm, could prove a successful reform.

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Chua, C., Danyluk M., Cowen D., Khalili L. 2018. “Introduction: Turbulent Circulation: Building a Critical Engagement with Logistics”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36 (4): 617–29.15 Danyluk, M. 2018. “Capital’s Logistical Fix: Accumulation, Globalization, and the Survival of Capitalism”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36 (4): 630–47.

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Harvey, D., 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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Energy Consumption and the Information and Communication Technologies : A Sustainability Dilemma?

Rugova Miranda, Kipiani Maka, Pimentel Ana, Sullivan Salvador & Guyot Julien

According to the World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency in 2021, even with the continuous increase of renewable sources of energy and the economic slowdown caused by Covid-19, this year had the second-largest annual increase in CO2 emissions ever, with nearly three-quarters of emissions originated from the energy sector.

With the world’s population expected to grow by 2 billion by 2050 and reach an estimate of 9,7 billion inhabitants, the environment and the energy system will continue to be under pressure.

Introduction It is crucial to denote in which way high-income countries are participating in the increase of carbon footprint due to their higher standard of living and the way they use intensive energy through fossil fuel (with trips, vehicles, etc.) and electricity (with ICTs, warming, etc.). In October 2021, the Swiss President Guy Parmelin warned the country to be ready for electricity shortages by 2025 that could last for weeks or months. It is the result of not producing enough energy and an import reduction from Germany, which is phasing out nuclear energy. This is due to the 2025 policy changes regarding EU and energy sharing incentives which are already under negotiations for some time, with no consensus being reached.

A major transformation that reorganizes social interaction domains happened through digital communication and infrastructures. This digitalization puts pressure on natural resources by the increase in energy consumption and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) production. On one hand, there is a demand to produce more energy through fossil resources (coal, gas, or petroleum), renewable energy (hydraulic, wind, solar, or biofuel) and nuclear. Where two out of the

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three options listed are harmful to the environment in terms of pollution, carbon emissions and the gradual exhaustion of natural resources. On the other hand, ICT production is not carbon neutral. We can think about raw material extraction (especially rare earth), transportation, production, distribution, and even recycling. With these two statements, we can see that

ICTs are not neutral for the environment and we should care about them deeply because of their broad diffusion into society.

Digital platforms have emerged as a new business model within capitalism; as a primary resource of data. This shift into ‘platform capitalism’ also impacts the environment. Because the primary resource is data, platform enterprises have huge data centers that consume tremendous amounts of energy to function but as well to be cooled. All this process is relatively energy intensive, hence we need to find more sustainable alternatives. The goal of this research is to focus on data centers and their energy consumption.

The focal point towards a greener solution is Green Cloud Computing. It proposes to make the use and the production of ICTs sustainable through efficient and fewer energivore solutions. Additionally, some private initiatives are undergone, especially with The Natick Project from Microsoft.

This project tries to deal with data center cooling systems to use the least possible energy. Our case study is present at the end of this article with some remarks and critics on the issue.

This research aims to understand the nexus between the rise of platform capitalism and energy use and consumption. Through ICTs and platform capitalism concepts, we want to focus on data centers’ problems and question how sustainable data centers are or could be? Forthcoming, we

will present solutions being studied and implemented to this day, such as Green Cloud Computing and the Natick Project as a case study. We will end up with some recommendations for policymakers and conclusions on this topic.

Platform Capitalism The development of platforms is undoubtedly one of the biggest growth of this century. Companies such as GAFAM have become big players, perhaps at the level of nations/states. Their key resource and added value is data. Thanks to the development of information communication technologies, has allowed these types of companies to expand the size that they have currently become. Thus, a new configuration of capitalism has gone underway. The platform business model is taking central importance in the economy and is becoming more and more dependent on new sectors.

However, the oligopolistic nature of this economy has created disparities and makes it very difficult for newcomers to insert themselves.

Platform capitalism is particularly profitable as they are characterized

as increasing returns to sales. Once the algorithms are completed the marginal cost of an additional user is almost zero. The platform companies depend on data that is positively correlated with the number of users.

The more flow on these platforms the stronger, and more efficient the information can be extracted. This is commonly known as the network effect and is a crucial moment for this type of capitalism to thrive. The information-related innovations turned into consistent practices that deliver to this day profitability and social acceptability. Platforms are designed as a mechanism for extracting and using that data: by providing the infrastructure and intermediation between different groups, platforms place themselves in a position in which they can monitor and extract all

the interactions between these groups (Srnicek, 2017). It took some time for these innovators to find a way for generating significant profitability because platforms first appeared as the irruption of free access to electronic services within a typically capitalist economy (Boyer, 2021).

Additionally, the rise of new ecosystems and their ability to build entire economic systems include institutions related to education, research, public infrastructure, property rights concepts, technical standards, taxation, credit, and access to labor relations. The full development of electronic market platforms calls for a set of complementary changes in quite all the spheres of economic activity. However, they are threatened by anti-monopoly legislation and antitrust laws. The outcome of their strengths and weaknesses is a social and national polarization between ICT producers and simple users. This has generated a new wave of organizational innovations, which is a prerequisite for platform economies to prosper through time. Some academics, such as Srnicek, are bold enough to affirm that these firms have been ‘successful’ only by leaping ahead of regulations and workers. This can be put in context with the latest news concerning the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and Facebook. Where an institution such as the EU is not conceding to a big company’s demands to protect information. Facebook has threatened to close in Europe if the laws aren’t alleviated, where French and German ministers replied that Europe can live without the omnipresent social media. Grandjean (2018) addresses the problem of whether the size of these companies is legitimate in proportion to the power gained by the information-led platforms and whether they distort income distribution against labor. The influence of GAFAM has got institutions such as the European Commission questioning individual rights concerning the data they keep and raising new political agendas. The information stacked by these firms is creating huge data farms which produce an insane amount of heat that needs to be cooled down. The environmental impact has a negative impact and is usually greenwashed by marketing strategies. There is growing pressure from innovators to redefine public policy, social conflicts, and debates about legitimate organizations and institutions. This can lead to an unbalanced power between oligopolies and citizens, creating social conflicts.

ICTs & Data Centers In 2021 the United Nations defined Information and communication technologies as technological tools and resources, such as internet, wireless networks, cell phones, computers, software social networking, and other media applications and services that enable users to access, retrieve, store, transmit, and manipulate information in a digital form.

With the growing use of ICTs, it is important to understand its energy

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SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DILEMMAS IN CAPITALISM.

consumption, environmental and climate change impacts and this has led to a debate on the positive and negative effects of ICTs. In 2008, the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative report estimated that ICT produces approximately 2% of the total carbon emissions, and although this is a small percentage it is believed to be the sector with the fastest growing emissions and consequential environmental impacts.

Existing studies are substantially different and lead to diverse results based on different concepts of ICTs, the life cycles analyzed or if they only focus on direct impacts or include indirect impacts, as ICTs are being used as a tool to stimulate energy savings in other sectors.

Much of the ICT research done focuses on the usage phase. In a cradle to grave perspective the amount of energy used for the extraction of the raw materials necessary to produce the devices, during the production, and the end-of-life treatment (final discarding or hopefully recycling) must be valued and acknowledged. Regarding raw materials, a range of rare earths (such as Barium, Lanthanum or Cerium), gold, silver or even plastics are used.

Phases such as trade, distribution, transportation and stockage phases, are also relevant and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is the standing most comprehensive evaluation method, as it considers a product’s environmental impact throughout its complete life cycle.

When talking about ICT energy consumption, two major aspects are studied, the amount of energy consumed, more specifically its growing trend, but as well as its efficiency, that has also a constant growing trend, due to technological advances and as well policies focusing on more efficient technologies, such as the decrease of standby losses and inefficient power conversion.

Regarding the indirect effects of ICTs, they refer mainly to their environmental impact in other economic activities, through the improvement of existing processes or the creation of new, more efficient processes. They are enabling smart/ future cities, integrating renewable energies sources and smart grids, providing information in areas such as transportation, mobility, buildings energy and even for cap-and-trade schemes. According to Rong et al. (2016) computers provide the higher percentage of CO2 emissions regarding several different ICTs categories (40%) and servers, including cooling, represent 23%. Now, we will next focus on data centers and what is being implemented to reduce their environmental impacts.

Green Cloud Computing Clouds are typically virtual data centers owned by platform firms and are used for almost all online activities. Such platform companies offer services, which are based on annual or monthly subscription. Data is

26

stored in servers, which require high energy consumption to function.

The demand for cloud computing has increased in the last few years due to the use of social media, which is responsible for the excessive use of energy in data centers. Nevertheless, there are strategies and solutions to reduce energy consumption. Green Cloud Computing compared to Cloud Computing focuses on using energy as efficiently as possible so that the quality of cloud computing is not affected and is environmentally friendly.

In addition to reducing energy consumption, Green Cloud Computing also aims to reduce electronic waste. Green Cloud Computing suggests the preparation and recycling of existing devices to counter the excessive e-waste, which harms the environment and the health of people.

For the reduction of energy consumption by data centers small operational means can make a huge change.

By switching off unused servers, small measures can help to save energy and only use it for servers that are operating. Additionally switching servers that are not operating to standby mode can also contribute to better energy management. Small adaptations like these have a cumulative effect on energy consumption and lead to energy saving. Adaptation on a bigger scale is also needed. Data centers are typically located in cold environments, which help the overheated servers to cool off. Instead of constructing cooling systems, which would use additional energy to cool off the servers, cold climate acts as a substitute for such systems. While conventional data centers use air-based cooling systems - one factor of why most of the data centers are located in cold northern countries such as Iceland, more high tech companies construct data centers based on water-based cooling systems.

Although more and more research is done by private enterprises to optimize cloud computing, full adaptation to environmentally friendly cloud computing is still lacking. High costs of implementation and the fast progress of technology act as hindering components for companies.

On the one hand, Green Cloud Computing is improving rapidly, it can be difficult for some to adapt to these technological changes.On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a helpful tool to make energy management more efficient. Indeed, AI might be the best solution to cut down energy consumption, since it would optimize power in such a way that energy would not be wasted.

Energy Consumption and ICTs : A Sustainability Dilemma ?

The Natick Project - Case Study Microsoft, a major player in the field, pioneered the idea of submerging a data center underwater as part of the Natick project, making its equipment physically inaccessible to humans in an effort to improve reliability and compare performance with land-based implementations (Aamir, 2020).

Project Natick is a Microsoft’s research program to assess the viability of light-off underwater data centers.

The Natick project represents a radical new approach to data center capacity that could enable Microsoft to move its modular factory projects from land to sea. Microsoft Natick Project is a multi-year research project that aims to determine the viability of autonomous subsea data centers.

In theory, Project Natick could enable Microsoft to quickly deploy edge computing capabilities near large communities that often develop along transportation systems, including coastlines and seaports.

Microsoft estimates subsea data centers can operate without maintenance for up to five years, which is the estimated lifespan of onboard computers.

Microsoft does not yet know if this has been proven now that it is out of the water, but the company said it is still analyzing the data and that more results will be obtained. Due to better conditions, the subsea data server is expected to last up to 10 years. Microsoft (2022) says that subsea data centers are a more sustainable approach that improves the performance and reliability of continental data centers.

Even though the ambitions of the Natick Project is a step forward towards a more sustainable method, there are many inconveniences related to this project such as warming the ocean and aggravating global climate change.

Using the ocean to cool data centers to avoid cooling costs is harmful for the ocean in terms of heat and ecosystem destruction (Coral reef, Flora & Fauna). The Natick Project is the first of its kind and it is being tested on a small scale so far. We question ourselves when all the GAFAM companies take forth in the same implementation and result in storage farms underwater.

On the other hand, there is a great concern on the heat recycling. To be fully sustainable, that is energy that can be converted into electricity to supply households with recycled energy. Even though this would not solve the heating problem of these servers, one should think how to optimize as efficiently as possible every aspect of the process to minimize waste to its maximum. One solution would be to use the heat of servers to heat buildings or houses instead of using the ocean to cool them such as the case of the Odense Facebook system. While implementing new innovative ideas, it is hard not to consider a marketing campaign to promote the image of the company. This is typically the characteristic of greenwashing. The idea is more of “lower cost” of cooling (opposed to air-based climatization) rather than a real sustainable process.

Also, what about risks taken if the data server “bubble” breaks? A rising concern is the safety of these data centers. Any breach or crack in the capsule would destroy the servers completely.

One of the ideas of the Natick Project is to minimize the effect of human error, however if the bubble breaks, this could be the cause of a natural disaster.

Safety is key in this kind of project and it is imperative to try to avoid worsening the actual situation of the environment and natural resources.

Conclusions Today, our society is shifting. As many say, a crisis can precipitate vast changes in society. With the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, incontestable changes happened. We can see it through home-office, decreasing movements, fewer trips and so on. This led to higher use of what we have called Informations and Communications Technologies (ICTs). GAFAM, Zoom and so on are considered as ‘platform capitalism’ and characterized by dematerialized products and as a new growing economic sector. Even before the epidemic, these enterprises were growing and now it is a huge economic boom for them. The spread of ICTs has been democratized.

ICTs lead to an enormous shift and improvement in our society and shake the pre-established social and economic structure. All the platform enterprises use ICTs to do all their activities and processes. One tremendous problem that we are facing is Climate Change. ICTs impact this process and the environment.

We saw how ICTs are worsening Climate Change. First, ICTs energy use is a growing part of the overall energy consumption. This leads to higher carbon emission every year. Also, this part does not consider the energy and the carbon emitted for the production, the transportation, the storage, the distribution and the recycling of each product for ICTs. Specifically, this study focused on data centers and we saw how this part is relatively important in terms of data storage and cooling systems. Data centers are huge energy consumers because they need an enormous amount of energy to function and they have to contain all data we produce. Also, these data centers need to be cooled at all times to be sure to function. This accounts for 80% of the ICTs energy consumption. The problem encountered is the gradual use of ICTs. We produce more and more energy and we consume it accordingly.

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SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DILEMMAS IN CAPITALISM.

We found solutions in the Green Cloud Computing concept. The concept and the literature associated try to find solutions to make Cloud Computing sustainable. Plethora of solutions are found, such as ‘simple’ ways to switch off or turn in standby mode a device to reduce energy consumption. Some more ‘complex’ ways to reduce energy consumption are found with data centers delocalization in cooler areas to use this cold for data centers. We can implement other measures through machine learning and the use of AI to reduce energy consumption. We can also mention the need for legislation and regulation by states to produce beneficial outcomes for the environment. States should be proactive in reducing ICT impacts and not let a vicious circle of ‘producing more to consuming more’ to install.

a price for every square-meter? These are concerns that legislatures need to address. Other similar national, regional and international initiatives are necessary for all the lifecycle of ICTs and data storage.

Microsoft created The Natick Project - that relies on an innovative cooling system. This system will produce less energy to cool the system using fresh water from the Ocean. But there are many controversial aspects of this project. First, we can mention that it will increase warming of the ocean and aggravating global climate change because they reject the water used to cool the data centers in the ocean. Another aspect is the fact that we can use the heat from the data centers to heat buildings as Facebook did ?

Moreover, what are concrete risks associated with this project if a bubble breaks? Finally, we should focus on reducing data centers’ use and find more efficient and sustainable solutions rather than this risky and unsustainable solution.

Information-based instruments are also available, and we suggest a greater bet on these. By providing consumers with information on the environmental impact of their choices, for example through labels or mandatory information will make enterprises improve their environmental footprint to attract more clients.

Strong of all these insights, some questions emerged as how to deal with this growing use of ICTs and energy consumption related to carbon emissions? Policy makers should be aware of these problems and have to write legislation on it, give incentives for enterprises and users to go in a sustainable direction. After all, is it not time to Make Our Planet Great Again as the French president Emmanuel Macron said ?

Recommendations and solutions Command-and-control instruments The European Commission recently legislated ecodesign requirements for servers and data storage products as a result of a 2009 EU directive aimed at reducing the environmental impact on energy efficiency in 2019.

The regulations target minimum efficiency of the power supply units, minimum server efficiency in active state, maximum consumption in idle state and information on the operating temperature. The European Union expects electricity savings of up to 9TW/year, which is comparable to Estonia´s electricity consumption in 2014. Additionally, a decrease of 3 Mton CO2 equivalent per year of greenhouse gas by 2030 is estimated.

As already elaborated in platform capitalism, enterprises exploit gray areas in legal systems. Because of this reason, many questions can arise. Are companies allowed to dump data centers in the ocean without considering their environmental impact? Will ocean space be utilized as land and have

28

Market-based instruments The purpose of market-based instruments is to align private and social interests through relative prices, for example by making polluters pay for their total emissions costs.

Incentives can take the form of taxes and subsidies with the same goals as command-and-control instruments, but these are not the ones we prioritize, since they tend to turn the environment into a commodity.

Green Cloud Computing Although enough studies and research exist to give companies at least a basic idea on how Green Cloud Computing can be implemented to save energy and reduce emissions on an operational level, companies are still reluctant to implement Green Cloud Computing due to high costs. In order to set incentives to adapt to Green Cloud Computing, policies are needed.

First, policymakers should reward companies with less taxes, when Green Cloud Computing is implemented. However, companies should be able to present reports that show a reduction in energy consumption as well as emissions. Second, policymakers can put restrictive measures whenever cloud computing is not adjusted to Green Cloud Computing. The government can impose sanctions on companies that do not implement technical adjustments to improve efficient use of energy.

Besides regulations on a national level, we strongly recommend policy enforcement on an international level as well. Migrating to another country allows companies to bypass restrictions enforced by a national government.To ensure that companies adjust their clouds to Climate Friendly Green Cloud Computing systems, the involvement of the international community is vital. Overconsumption of energy is not just a national issue; it transcends borders and international cooperation is needed to control it.

The Greener, The Better.

Energy Consumption and ICTs : A Sustainability Dilemma ?

Illustrations

References

Data Center (page 1) : Depositphotos. (2022). Green Data Center. Available here. Last consulted : 17.02.22.

Aamir, Humza (2020). Microsoft brings its experimental underwater data center to surface after two years with promising results. [online] TechSpot. Available at: https://www.techspot.com/news/86745-microsoft-brings-experimental-underwater-data-c enter-surface-after.html Boyer, R. (2021). Platform capitalism: a socio-economic analysis. Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaa055 Grandjean, M. (2018). Partage du Pouvoir et de la Valeur Chez Les Plateformes Numériques : une Typologie. In A. N., Bancel, J.-L., Coriat, B., and Sultan, F. (Eds.) Vers Une République Des Communs (pp.91-101). Paris: Les Liens qui libèrent.

Microsoft. (2022). Project Natick Phase 2. from Microsoft.com website: https://natick.research.microsoft.com/ Rong, H., Zhang, H., Xiao, S., Li, C., & Hu, C. (2016). Optimizing energy consumption for data centers. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 58, 674–691.

Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Cambridge : Polity Press.

Energy Consumption distribution of data centers (page 5) : Rong et al. (2016) => Rong, H., Zhang, H., Xiao, S., Li, C., & Hu, C. (2016). Optimizing energy consumption for data centers.

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 58, 674–691.

Natick Project (page 7) : Quora. (2018). How does underwater data center work ? Available here: Last Consulted : 17.02.22.

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IN PREPARATION / SEP 2022 CALLING FOR COLLABORATION & CONTENT

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SDGZINE #04

CALLING FOR COLLABORATION & CONTENT

Research

International Geneva

SDGs & education

Research projects and prototyping from the SDG Fab Lab in Geneva

Best practices from organisations in Geneva

Programs for schools to add SDGs to the curriculum

special school editions & other one partner projects and documentation

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF GENEVA

GENEVA TSINGHUA INITIATIVE

GENEVA TSINGHUA INITIATIVE

PRINTED & ONLINE

PRINTED & ONLINE

In production

SPECIAL SCHOOL EDITION

SPECIAL SCHOOL EDITION

SE4

OCT 2021

#1/ JUNE 2020

your logo

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF GENEVA SWITZERLAND

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF GENEVA SWITZERLAND

Collaborative publication on the sustainable development goals - WWW.SDGZINE.ORG

SDG challenges: thinking out of the box

your own SDGzine.

Contact us for challenges

International School of Geneva / Years 7-8-9 / 2021

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF GENEVA

UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA this issue

Printed and online

schools & organisations: Run your SDG project and create your own SDGzine.

Contact us for SDG challenges, lectures and workshops for your organization or school & let’s create your own SDGzine together. info@sdgzine.org

SDGs & Fab Labs

SDGs & art & design

SDGs & Business

You?

Linking makerspaces and fablabs to the SDGs

Thought-provoking concepts from artists, designers and other creative thinkers

Helping companies and organizations innovate while aligning with the SDGS

All questions and support via www.sdgzine.org

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