Why we need to (re)politicize digitalization to promote sustainability – and how we can do it

Digitalization is often celebrated as a powerful enabler of sustainability. From optimizing energy systems and resource efficiency to monitoring biodiversity and improving climate adaptation, the promise is huge. In reality, the outcome of the sustainability-digitalization nexus is context-specific, contested and in many cases problematic. In our new piece “Sustainability powered by digitalization? (Re-)politicizing the debate” we critically assess the role of digitalization for sustainability.

The article is a collaborative effort by Florian Steig , Pascal König, Jens Marquardt, Angela Oels, Jörg Radtke, Rainer Rehak, and Sabine Weiland.

Download our article from Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy.

Sustainability, Digitalization – and the Role of Power

In our new article, we argue that the relationship between digitalization and sustainability is not just a question of technological potential, but a contested field of power. While digital tools can indeed support sustainability, they also risk reinforcing existing inequalities, locking in unsustainable practices, and narrowing the space for democratic decision-making. That is why we need to (re)politicize digitalization: to examine who benefits, who decides, what visions of the future are embedded in digital infrastructures, and which alternatives are being sidelined. To do this, we develop an analytical framework that unpacks power relations at the sustainability–digitalization nexus. We distinguish three interconnected dimensions:

• Knowledge and discourse:Digital technologies shape how we see the environment — through data models, dashboards, and digital twins. These representations can reinforce dominant worldviews, marginalize alternative knowledge systems, and promote technocratic approaches to environmental governance. More and better data does not automatically mean better decisions.

• Governance and actor constellations: Digitalization is driven by powerful actor coalitions — tech firms, state agencies, and consultancies — often promoting narrow, efficiency-oriented understandings of sustainability. This can depoliticize sustainability debates by reducing them to optimization problems, crowding out more transformative visions and approaches.

• Technological materiality: Digital infrastructures are not neutral. Their design, implementation, and material footprints create path dependencies and lock-in effects. They rely on extractive global supply chains, energy-intensive cloud architectures, and often replicate colonial patterns of control and resource use — all while appearing clean and immaterial.

Across all three dimensions, we find that the sustainability potential of digitalization is deeply shaped by underlying power structures — and that these structures often go unquestioned.

(Re)politicizing digitalization means bringing normative and political questions back into the debate: What kinds of sustainability futures do we want? Whose knowledge counts? Who gets to design the systems we rely on? Where can and should digital technologies help — and where should they step back? We argue that sustainability transformations require not just new tools, but also democratic deliberation about goals, values, and trade-offs. Digitalization can support this — but only if it is made subject to critical scrutiny and democratic governance.

Background and Special Issue

Our article is part of a Special Issue in Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy that explores critical perspectives on the digitalization–sustainability nexus. The Special Issue brings together scholars from various disciplines to rethink the assumptions, dynamics, and consequences of digitalization in sustainability governance.

Published articles so far include:

• Counter-imaging Australia’s agricultural landscapes for digital sustainability communication by Joshua Zeunert and Alys Daroy

• Sustainability imaginaries by design by Roy Bendor

• Policy implications of digitalization pathways for lower energy demand by Noam Bergman and Timothy J. Foxon

The Special Issue builds on the international and interdisciplinary conference “Digitalization for Sustainability Transformations: Critical Perspectives, Lessons Learned, and Future Perspectives”, held in September 2023 at the University of Augsburg. The event was organized in collaboration with the Weizenbaum Institute, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and the German Political Science Association (DVPW).