5. Do no harm

This standard is linked to the following Principle for Digital Development: Design With the User and Address Privacy and Security.

Digital technology can be an incredible force for good. But at the same time, digital technologies are often developed without adequate consideration of the potential negative impacts they can cause. Technology is not neutral. Most technology has been built with inherent bias (because it is built by humans), and can therefore have unforeseen negative impacts on people and planet. 

This standard comes in two parts: Part A - Ensure Human Rights, and Part B - Protect the Environment.

Part A: Ensure Human Rights

The list of potential harms from digital technology is daunting, whether that is the suppression of speech, privacy violations, data leak or algorithmic discrimination. It is therefore our responsibility to integrate a human rights-based approach in all digital projects and effectively manage human rights risks associated with digital technologies. 

It is important to keep in mind that harm may not be immediately obvious. For instance, AI models that are built by averaging data from populations have often sidelined marginalized communities and minorities, even as they are disproportionately subjected to the technology’s impacts. Moreover, if your AI dataset is biased against a certain population, your AI will also integrate those biases. See an example of what happened to Microsoft’s Twitter bot. 

It is important to think about who is going to use and interact with the technology and their motivations and goals. For example, while helping a government create a health and education platform may have good goals in mind, is there a potential for the platform to be used to collect data that can fuel discrimination? Another example is that an algorithm on social media that optimizes for engagement can, as a by-product, promote fake news or extremist political content, as users will react strongly and share this content more than content that does not enrage. 

Ask yourself : 

• How can we ensure we do not lock people into future harms? 
• Who can be harmed by your innovation and when?
• Which human rights are touched upon with this project? 
• Who does this solution actually benefit?  
• Was appropriate consent obtained by the end user? 
• Is there any future good we might foreclose by implementing this solution? 

You must map out the potential consequences and risks of implementing a digital solution, including first, second, third and fourth-order consequences (example HERE) and plan mitigation measure. 

Part B: Protect the Environment

Technology can improve our ability to live in ways that regenerate ecosystems and mitigate climate change. Technology is helping us to use less energy, produce cleaner energy, produce food in more sustainable ways, shift to circular models of production, have cleaner transport options, better monitor our impacts on the planet, and easily share ways to do better.

However, technology can also cause harm to the planet, directly and indirectly. 

The biggest direct environmental impacts that technology causes are increased energy consumption and material mining and waste.
Negative impacts may include: 

• Algorithms that reinforce unsustainable behaviour. 
• E-waste is a major concern in countries where e-waste facilities are not set up. 
• Social media has driven increasing consumption of fast fashion and disposable goods.
• Globalisation has created a marketplace in which goods are shipped or flown all over the planet in wasteful ways. 
• Companies are still accountable to their shareholders to drive for constant growth with an ‘extract > make > waste’ model that is detrimental to the planet. 
• Technologies like cryptocurrencies, which save energy in the fast transfer of value across the planet, can consume huge amounts of energy in computing power to mine new coins.

In order to mitigate and prevent harms to the environment caused by technology, it is first important to understand the way the technology actually works. What are the sources of energy? What is the lifecycle of the technology product? How is waste managed? What might be the 2nd, 3rd and 4th order consequences of introducing this technology to an environment or ecosystem?

Understand Greentech and how you could use it to support sustainability goals. The main goal of Greentech is to minimalise the negative impact of new technologies on the planet, specific goals also include:

• Sustainability -  fulling our needs in a way that does not have a negative impact on our environment.
• Innovation - finding new and more efficient ways to replace existing technologies with eco-friendly ones.
• Viability - adopting new methods of green technology and creating new jobs that facilitate them.
• Source reduction - reducing the consumption of resources, waste, and pollution.