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The Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development's Special Interest Group on Digitalisation & AI for Sustainability (SIG DAISY) invites you to their 2^nd annual symposium. Participants can explore the growing field of digital degrowth, which questions the compatibility of current digital paradigms with the goals of ecological sustainability, social justice, and democratic governance.

Keynote

From Backbone to Ruin: Rethinking Digital Infrastructures for a Post-Growth Society 
Mario Pansera, Director, Post-Growth Lab at the ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ of Vigo, Spain

As digital technologies increasingly mediate every aspect of contemporary life, the internet has become both a critical infrastructure and a symbol of limitless growth. Yet behind the abstraction of "the cloud" lies a heavy material footprint—of servers, cables, rare minerals, and energy-intensive systems—whose ecological and social costs are largely invisible. This keynote explores the infrastructural conditions that sustain the current digital paradigm, arguing that the internet as we know it is incompatible with the principles of a post-growth society. Drawing on the concept of infrastructural ruin, I ask what it means to inherit and manage the decaying systems of extractive capitalism. How can digital infrastructures be reimagined under conditions of ecological constraint, democratic governance, and social justice? This talk calls for a radical rethinking of ICT through the lens of degrowth, proposing pathways toward a digital future grounded not in efficiency and expansion, but in care, sufficiency, and collective stewardship.

Panel discussion

Mario Pansera, Director, Post-Growth Lab at the ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ of Vigo, Spain
Alex de Vries, Founder, Digiconomist & PhD researcher, VU Amsterdam
Karen van der Zanden, Strategic Advisor on Digital Sustainability, TNO