ITU sustainability research in the Amazon awarded grant from IRFD

The project, Amazon 4.0, will examine the impact of technological sustainability measures in the Amazon. The researchers have been awarded close to 2.9 million DKK from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Business IT Department Research Climate IT grants green IT

Written 15 October, 2021 08:00 by Jari Kickbusch

Business IT-professor at the IT University, Steffen Dalsgaard, has been awarded close to 2.9 million DKK for a project that aims to facilitate the green transition. Earlier this year, in his inaugural lecture, Steffen Dalsgaard stated that his wish as a professor at ITU was to shine a light on the need for an inter-disciplinary approach in dealing with the climate crisis.

The inter-disciplinary approach is what characterizes the new research project entitled Amazon 4.0 which IRFD, alongside 55 other research projects out 479 applicants, has granted the means to generate new research and insight into problems relating to climate challenges. The project takes an ethnographic approach to assessing the consequences of technological sustainability initiatives in the Amazon and how those affect the local population which depends on natural resources from the rain forest.

For Danish and European consumers, the research project is valuable because it highlights ways in which the import process of soy for meat production can become more sustainable.

- The grant will allow us to get to work on a very exciting project about digital technologies and their imagined connection with a notion of economic growth as something that is possible without impacting the climate, says Steffen Dalsgaard.

- The Amazon, where most of our ethnographic field work will take place, is a global hotspot in terms of climate change and the fight for a sustainable economic system globally. That is why it is an important place to work with an approach that is both technologically as well as socially balanced.

Amazon 4.0 is the result of a collaborative effort between Steffen Dalsgaard, postdoc at ITU, Priscila Santos da Costa, who has been instrumental in drafting the project, and a team of Brazilian researchers who have launched technological initiatives in the Amazon.

In total, IRFD is funding 55 research projects to the tune of 280 million DKK. All projects are focused on the green transition and will individually receive between 2.8 and 11.9 million DKK over the course of 2-5 years. In 2020 and 2021, IRFD has supported 120 sustainability projects with approx. 600 million DKK.

Further information

Theis Duelund Jensen, Press Officer, Tel: +45 2555 0447, email: thej@itu.dk

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