Digital Discovery Session: Digital Reset

Digital Discovery session in December focused on the new report Digital Reset: Redirecting Technologies for the Deep Sustainability Transformation. 

Digital Reset shows how digital technologies can support the quest for a deep sustainability transformation. The report provides a blueprint for the European Union on how to conceptualize digitalization so that it first and foremost contributes to achieving carbon neutrality, resource autonomy and economic resilience while supporting equity and fully respecting citizen's rights and privacy. 

The session was hosted by the lead authors of the report Steffen Lange and Tilman Santarius.

Speaker bios

Steffen Lange is an economist who combines quantitative and qualitative empirical research with theoretical and conceptual methods to address sustainability issues. His research focuses on digital transformation, the relationship between economic growth and environmental throughput, rebound effects and concepts for sustainable economies. He is a researcher at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research, affiliated scholar of the Resource Economics Group at the Humboldt University Berlin and associated researcher at the Department of Social-Ecological Transformation at the Technical University Berlin. Steffen Lange studied economics in Maastricht, Santiago de Chile and Göttingen and received his doctorate from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg.

Besides publications in international research journals, he is the author of the books „Macroeconomics Without Growth: Sustainable Economies in Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian Theories“ (Metropolis) and „Smart Green World? Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability“ (Routledge).

Tilman Santarius is professor at the Technical University of Berlin and the Einstein Centre Digital Future, as well as Senior Fellow at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW). Tilman has published on topics such as climate policy, world trade, sustainable economics, global justice and digital transformation. Apart from numerous articles, Tilman co-authored the books “Fair Future. Limited Ressources, Security, and Global Justice” (zed books, 2007); “Slow Trade – Sound Farming. A Multilateral Framework for Sustainable Markets in Agriculture” (www.ecofair-trade.org, 2007); “Rethinking Climate and Energy Policies” (Springer, 2016); and “Smart Green World. Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability” (Routledge, 2020).

Tilman Santarius has studied sociology, anthropology and economics and accomplished a PhD in social science. During his studies, he jobbed for Greenpeace and the Kienbaum Management Consultants. From 2001-2009 he served as Senior Research Fellow at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. From 2009-2011 he was Head of International Climate and Energy Policy at the Heinrich Boell Foundation. Between 2012 and 2015 Tilman wrote a PhD thesis at the University of Kassel. During the academic year 2013/2014, he was Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2016 onwards, Tilman heads a Junior Research Group on „Digitalization and Sustainability“ at the Technical University of Berlin and the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW). As of voluntary work, Tilman served as member of the board to the NGO Germanwatch between 2007-2016. Since 2016 he is member of the board of Greenpeace Germany.

The session was moderated by Shivam Kishore, UNEP's Senior Digital Transformation Advisor and Co-champion of CODES