Brighter Handprints and Lighter Footprints: SIGCHI’s Committee for Sustainability
We have just announced a specific call for volunteers to serve on the SIGCHI Executive Committee’s new Sustainability Committee and I hope that, by introducing some of our objectives, this post will encourage you to get involved and support and extend our vision. As the first-ever SIGCHI Committee for Sustainability, our overarching goal is to foster a culture of social-environmental sustainability across the whole of HCI and allied fields. We will advise the EC about actions and policies, to improve the impact of SIGCHI’s work on global ecological wellbeing, and undertake activities towards socio-ecological transformation. There will be 12 members on the committee altogether who will work with me, on the SIGCHI EC, SIGCHI members, and community partners.
Why a Sustainability Committee for SIGCHI?
“Promoting the development and use of environmentally sustainable computing technologies and the adoption of environmentally responsible professional practices” is one of the ACM’s seven current goals. However, as far as we are aware, we will comprise the first Sustainability Committee of an ACM SIG. An ad hoc Committee on Climate Change did run for nearly four years within ACM SIGPLAN (the SIG on Programming Languages) and can be credited with starting the conversation about the large carbon footprints of conferences, and advocating for ACM’s Carbon Offset Program, which was then launched in 2019. From time to time, there are also articles in Communications of the ACM, such as about owning the environmental impact of computing and, of course, some dedicated ACM conferences, such as COMPASS — our newest SIGCHI conference. Yet, in concluding their ad hoc Committee on Climate Change, the group noted that no comparable group exists within SIGPLAN or at the ACM level.
While we may be the first standing committee for a SIG about social environmental sustainability, many have long recognised the need for the SIGCHI community to more responsibly account for the environmental impact of our professional activities and the vital contribution HCI can make to socio-ecological transformation. As illustrated just this month by the articles in Interactions and new books, such as Future-Proofing, HCI and CSCW researchers and practitioners have contributed a rich array of insights about environmental sustainability over the past 15 years. Indeed, it’s becoming commonplace for sessions, tracks and indeed whole conference themes to be devoted to sustainability and, meanwhile, many SIGCHI conferences have significantly extended on our early attempts to minimise their environmental impacts. UIST, CSCW, and CHI have had conference sustainability chairs since 2019, who have accumulated considerable insights about the environmental impact of research communities, and participation in the 2021 Equity Talk devoted to Making SIGCHI Sustainable demonstrates interest amongst members to adapt all our practices to sustainability imperatives. Linking together and assisting many local, institutional and global actions is how we can achieve real change. Thus, our role in the Sustainability Committee is to support and build on the efforts of a wide array of people and groups by ensuring that the environment becomes a priority across SIGCHI’s work, and as central to our field as the user is to user-centred design.
Along with ethical responsibilities to global ecological well-being and new areas for research and design, there are some prosaic justifications for SIGCHI’s concern for environmental sustainability. Growing pressure from governments, investors, consumers, and workers for corporate environmental responsibility presents an opportunity for SIGCHI to forge new partnerships to realise HCI’s potential in responding to anthropogenic environmental change. In the not too distant future we will need to account for the economic implications of the material risks posed by climate hazards and for levies that may be imposed, which will affect, for instance, conference travel. We also need to consider the impact of our reputation and branding on membership and sponsorship, given organisational commitments to social and environmental goods increasingly influence professionals’ decisions about who they associate with. The Sustainability Committee aspires to help SIGCHI respond effectively to socio-ecological imperatives through a dedicated and positive focus and consistent actions that engage with diverse perspectives. By drawing on SIGCHI’s expanding international reach, freeing our creativity and deeply understanding the challenges of changing norms, we will help our community adapt and ingeniously address the impact of our practices, technologies and sociotechnical systems.
An Ethos that Recognises the Social in Environmental Sustainability
The overall aim of our committee is to foster a culture of sustainability across HCI. The term environmental sustainability, of course, refers to nature’s biophysical support systems and factors caused by humans that affect them. However, our HCI expertise also sensitises us to the ways social systems, structures, relationships and formal and informal processes actively support human capacity to create well-being with, and within, our settings. Thus, the ethos of the Sustainability Committee recognises that promoting an ecologically wise environment necessitates a HCI culture that engages with the imaginations of diverse communities and is socially just, as I briefly outline next.
In promoting sustainability we need to engage effectively with both the processes and dynamics of globalized “development”, and their alternatives, as variously experienced in different contexts. I hope that serving on, or contributing to, our Committee will interest researchers and practitioners, in industry, academia, and third-sector, with special interests in behaviour change and environmental impact monitoring in the societies and regions that currently contribute most to carbon emissions, pollution and e-waste. However, researchers in HCI and allied fields also increasingly recognise that effective responses to environmental crises must account for different cultures and worldviews. People’s positionality and diverse ways of knowing, being and doing in relation to ecologies have been woven into my own research for a long time, starting when I collaborated with Aboriginal people whose traditional fire practices nourish species diversity. (In fact my Aboriginal co-author was the first person to present a “pluriversal” perspective from lived experiences of environmental sustainability at a major international SIGCHI conference — Designing Interactive Systems in Cape Town). Since indigenous people comprise only 5% of the world’s population, the importance of their role in environmental sustainability may not be obvious without also knowing that indigenous groups protect an estimated 22% of the planet’s surface and 80% of the earth’s biodiversity.
Ensuring the Sustainability Committee is racially, gender and disability diverse, and comprises people from all geographical regions (including Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Oceania) will contribute to generating locally appropriate ideas and actions. Our strategies will also recognise that people who are already more vulnerable and socially or economically marginalized experience the greatest impacts of the environmental crisis, have least influence on environmental policies, and are disproportionately impacted by mitigation measures. For instance, systemic inequalities contribute to environmental racism and eco-ableism in the Global North while women in the Global Souths are more vulnerable than men because they depend most on threatened “natural resources”.
Formative Objectives
Drawing on the spectrum of expertise, interests, and energies of the members of the Sustainability Committee, we will finalise our strategic vision in March when we first meet. However, as we recruit volunteers, there are already six objectives that guide my vision of activities for the next three years.
- Sharing Knowledge. Later this year we will launch SIGCHI SUSTAINS web-pages on sigchi.org, with a similar presence as SIGCHI CARES, to act as the first port of call for information about the Sustainability Committee’s vision and strategies and practical resources to inform and support the different aspects of SIGCHI and our members’ work. Over the next two years we will synthesise an open reference to guide our priorities. This reference will be based on surveying benchmarks and good practices for SIGCHI’s different activities, such as conferences, meetings and communications, and the different meanings made about sustainability amongst SIGCHI’s membership.
- Setting Targets and Monitoring Performance. We will establish impact targets for SIGCHI activities, indicators to monitor improvements and systems to track performance. I envisage achieving this quite ambitious goal in two phases. First we need to identify appropriate evaluation models and indicators, such as for pollutants, carbon emissions and e-waste, that are sensitive to the direct and indirect consequences of SIGCHI’s activities; gather data about SIGCHI’s activities over the past 5–10 years; and, determine feasible targets for improvement. After that I hope we will design, implement and promote the use of an accessible system to track performance against the targets for SIGCHI activities.
- Recognising and Incentivising. We intend to signal that SIGCHI values prior and ongoing efforts in socio-ecological transformation. Many people have steered endeavours that have sensitized our field to ecological imperatives and fostered more sustainable practices in past years: we will learn from their experiences, build on and support their endeavours and ensure their contributions are recognised. We will also create incentives for improving performance. For instance, we will dedicate small grants to fund local and global collaboration on sustainability activities (e.g. e-waste, repair, ecologically sensitive interactions etc), will consider ways to support collaborations between chapters in low- and high-carbon regions to achieve “net-zero”, or perhaps establish awards, say for the conference that achieved the largest sustainability improvement in a year.
- Cultivating Ethical Research, HCI Curricula and Aesthetics for Sustainability. The ACM’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct observes that “computing professionals should promote environmental sustainability both locally and globally” and some of the ACM’s Computing Curricula refer to assessing the environmental impacts of solutions. Yet, despite an increasing volume of university and professional teaching and research programmes that link HCI to environmental sustainability, SIGCHI’s policies have few explicit and actionable statements about this relation. Thus, as we develop as a committee, we will liaise with SIGCHI’s Research Ethics Committee and HCI Education Task Force to ensure sustainability is considered in guidelines for research and curricula. Along the way, we will ensure that the beauty and joy of our planet nourishes our commitments to change.
- Collaborating across the Sector. Recognising technology’s potential to have a much greater environmental handprint, or positive contribution, than footprint we will proactively engage with industry, the third sector and the ACM. We will share insights, collaborate on initiatives for sustainability on broader scales and, where appropriate, advocate for policy change.
- Care-full Adaptation. The Committee needs to engage with different, sometimes contrasting, perhaps even controversial, perspectives on SIGCHI’s sustainability goals. While we cannot know the full consequences of our actions doing nothing and ignoring differences are not options; thus we will seek to engage with humility. We will also prioritise caring. Any role in volunteering for SIGCHI involves emotional labour and this may be amplified for Sustainability Committee members, given eco-anxiety and grief, and senses of helplessness and managing alternative opinions. The challenge of changing norms and practices, likely accentuated by a collective desperation to ‘return to a pre-pandemic normal’, will place high demands on our creativity and on our empathy. Supporting each other is key.
Help to Create a Sustainable Future with SIGCHI
SIGCHI was already 10 years old when countries first joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in the thirty years since warnings from scientists and communities globally have increased in urgency and severity. Yet, at the same time interest in plant-based diets, recycling, bicycle commutes, and so on, has increased, particularly in privileged populations, and our technologies have ever more potential to interconnect diverse responses to our planet’s future. If you would like to contribute your skills and energy to help SIGCHI realise a brighter horizon we would love to hear from you. A research or professional focus on sustainability is not essential, but enthusiasm and commitment are. Different roles in the team will emerge, beyond communicating, impact tracking and liaising with partners on change actions, based on the formative objectives, noted above, and other activities that Committee members would like to lead. The Sustainability Committee will meet monthly (usually online) to determine priorities and co-create together. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions about the vision or process to Nic Bidwell bidwelln@acm.org.
