Cassandra Voices

Tag: Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay Cassandra Voices

  • Nordic Mythology & Iceland’s Sustainable Transformation

    Renewable energy transitions have increasingly been recognised not only as technological and environmental imperatives but also as drivers of community resilience, socio-economic innovation, and energy security. In the Nordic region, ambitious renewable energy policies and high shares of renewables in energy consumption reflect a shared commitment to sustainability that encompasses social participation, democratic engagement, and community-level agency (Nordic Energy Research, 2023). The Nordic energy tradition, where energy systems are deeply intertwined with the social and economic fabric of society, resonates with themes from the region’s oldest cultural narratives.

    Norse myth repeatedly ties elemental forces to human life and transformation. In the Poetic Edda, the prophecy of Ragnarök depicts fire as both destructive and transformative: “Hot you are, and rather too fierce… the fire scorches the fur” (Grímnismál, stanza 57; Bellows, 1936). Beyond mere destruction, the myth narrates the rebirth of the world, where a new earth rises green from the waves and life begins anew (Völuspá, stanzas 59–62). This cycle of destruction and renewal provides a compelling metaphor for contemporary energy transitions: they are not only technical shifts but societal transformations that reshape communities, economies, and regional identities (Norsetraditionschurch.org, 2024).

    The Norse concept of the Three Norns – Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld – who weave the threads of past, present, and future can inspire the context of energy planning, they serve as a symbolic reminder that decision-making must consider historical legacies (Urðr), current conditions and needs (Verðandi), and future consequences (Skuld). This framing underscores that sustainable energy transitions are not only about technological deployment but about long-term societal foresight, learning from experience, and anticipating intergenerational impacts.

    Within this broader Nordic and mythological context, Iceland’s renewable energy experience exemplifies how energy-based enterprises can act as agents of both environmental sustainability and inclusive socio-economic development, reflecting the kind of long-term, multi-stakeholder foresight highlighted by Mukhopadhyay and Ianole (2018). The organisational strategies and governance mechanisms observed in Icelandic initiatives reflect wider regional patterns of collaborative planning, community-centred engagement, and long-term resilience building. Together, the insights are central to understanding how energy systems can function as mechanisms of sustainable transformation and shared prosperity.

    Turf houses have been constructed since Iceland was settled in the 9th century.

    Linking Myth to Practice: Iceland’s Energy Enterprises

    Iceland’s renewable energy sector exemplifies the ‘destruction > transformation > renewal’ paradigm. From the early, state-led hydropower and high-temperature geothermal projects to today’s community-integrated industrial strategic enterprises, energy has served as a tool for economic revitalisation, social equity, and environmental stewardship. The foresight suggested by the Three Norms is evident in multi-generational planning, which considers historical reliance on fossil fuels (Urðr), present community and industry needs (Verðandi), and future sustainability and climate obligations (Skuld). Iceland’s energy-based enterprises demonstrate that technological innovation must go hand-in-hand with social licence, governance structures, and community integration to achieve long-term success.

    Case 1 – Baseload Power Iceland: Decentralised Geothermal for Local Development

    Baseload Power Iceland focuses on small- to mid-scale geothermal plants designed to tap underutilised low and medium-temperature resources. Unlike large-scale national utilities, Baseload develops modular and flexible plants situated close to local demand centers. A prominent example is the Kópsvatn geothermal plant, which generates both electricity and heat for surrounding communities. The enterprise’s community-integrated approach ensures partnerships with municipalities, landowners, and local utilities, creating strong stakeholder alignment and minimising opposition.

    Socio-economic impacts are wide-ranging: the project generates local employment across drilling, construction, and ongoing maintenance; it provides affordable energy access for households, farms, and small businesses, reducing heating and electricity costs; and it supports productive energy use in sectors such as greenhouses, aquaculture, and fish-drying facilities, securing local food security and small business resilience.

    By reducing reliance on fossil fuels, the initiative also strengthens household economics and insulates communities from global energy price shocks. Baseload’s model strongly contributes to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by embedding energy provision within social, economic, and ecological frameworks. The community governance structures enhance local agency, demonstrating how small-scale renewable initiatives can empower residents, encourage participatory decision-making, and stimulate multi-sectoral growth. Baseload thus offers a replicable blueprint for integrating energy entrepreneurship with social and environmental objectives in other geothermally active regions (Baseload Power Iceland, 2024).

    Case 2 – Fjarðarorka: Wind-to-Green Ammonia for Regional Industrial Transformation

    Fjarðarorka is spearheading one of Iceland’s largest renewable industrial initiatives, combining a 350 MW onshore wind farm in Fljótsdalshreppur with a green ammonia production facility projected to produce 220,000 tonnes annually. The ammonia targets maritime decarbonisation while positioning East Iceland as a hub in the global green fuel economy. The project carries significant regional development implications: East Iceland has historically faced economic marginalisation and population decline, and the Fjarðarorka initiative offers a pathway toward reversing these trends. The project supports high-skill employment in construction, operations, logistics, and chemical processing; drives infrastructure improvements, including roads, grid capacity, and data systems, which have spillover benefits across other sectors; and stimulates diversification in local industry.

    The Orkugarður Austurland platform, which engages landowners, municipalities, and businesses in planning and benefit-sharing, exemplifies community-centered governance and anticipatory planning. Environmental and social sustainability are central: the project is expected to avoid approximately 500,000 tons of CO₂ emissions annually, supporting Iceland’s climate commitments. These outcomes align with SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), illustrating how large-scale, export-oriented renewable energy projects can simultaneously drive regional equity, stimulate regional economy boost, and maintain environmental sustainability (Fjarðarorka, 2024; Daily Northern, 2024).

    Case 3 – Geothermal District Heating System: Public Infrastructure and Socio-Economic Equity

    Iceland’s geothermal district heating system provides energy to over 90% of households, representing one of the world’s most advanced examples of public energy infrastructure. Its socio-economic benefits are long-term and multi-dimensional. The system provides affordable energy access, dramatically reducing household heating costs and enhancing quality of life. Macroeconomic resilience is also strengthened, with estimated contributions of 7% of GDP through fuel import savings and support for energy-intensive sectors such as greenhouses, tourism, aquaculture, and fish processing (Atlantic Council, 2022).

    Social equity is embedded, as coverage spans income levels and geographies, while public ownership and regulatory oversight ensure that clean energy benefits are widely shared. These outcomes contribute directly to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). The system exemplifies anticipatory planning consistent with the foresight symbolised by the Three Norns: past experience (Urðr) informs present operation (Verðandi), while future sustainability (Skuld) is safeguarded through careful governance and long-term investment. Iceland’s geothermal district heating demonstrates how public infrastructure can simultaneously promote community wellbeing, industrial competitiveness, and sustainable energy transition.

    Table 1: Organisational Approach, Community Impact, and SDG Relevance of Icelandic Energy-Based Enterprises

    Enterprise / Project Organisational Approach & Strategy Key Community & Socio-Economic Impacts Relevant SDGs
    Baseload Power Iceland Modular, decentralised, community-integrated; partnerships with municipalities and cooperatives Local job creation; affordable energy; support for productive uses (greenhouses, aquaculture); regional economic diversification 7, 8, 11
    Fjarðarorka Wind-to-Ammonia Large-scale, export-oriented; multi-stakeholder governance; industrial transformation focus High-skilled employment; regional infrastructure; stakeholder participation; regional economic revitalisation 7, 8, 9, 13
    National Geothermal District Heating Publicly owned; long-term planning; robust governance; operational efficiency Affordable universal energy; industrial co-benefits; macroeconomic savings; social equity; population retention 7, 8, 11

     

    Gullfoss, an iconic waterfall of Iceland.

    Takeaways… Cross-cutting Policy and Business Insights

    The Icelandic experience demonstrates that decentralised and community-integrated energy systems, such as those pioneered by Baseload Power Iceland, can empower local economies by providing reliable, affordable, and clean energy backed by strong social license to operate. Embedding projects within community priorities and governance structures enhances resilience, encourages local stakeholder engagement, and aligns long-term economic development with sustainability objectives. For policymakers, this underscores the importance of regulatory frameworks that not only enable smaller-scale projects but also incentivise partnerships between public authorities, private enterprises, and local communities. For business leaders, the lesson is clear: energy investments are more sustainable and viable when they are socially embedded, responsive to community needs, and designed to generate local value alongside financial returns.

    Large-scale, export-oriented renewable projects, exemplified by Fjarðarorka’s wind-to-green-ammonia initiative, highlight the strategic potential of renewables to drive regional industrial transformation. By stimulating diversification in historically mono-industrial areas and generating high-skilled employment, such projects can reverse patterns of outmigration and economic stagnation. Their success, however, depends on transparent stakeholder engagement, governance mechanisms that ensure equitable benefit sharing, and careful environmental stewardship. For business leaders, these projects illustrate that commercial competitiveness increasingly requires balancing economic ambition with social and environmental accountability. Policymakers, in turn, are reminded of the need for frameworks that integrate industrial, energy, and regional policy, enabling innovation without compromising equity or environmental protection.

    The geothermal district heating network further reinforces the critical role of sustained public investment in achieving equitable, inclusive, and resilient energy systems. By providing near-universal access to low-cost heat, the system has stabilised household expenditures, supported energy-intensive industries, and reduced dependence on imported fossil fuels. The macroeconomic benefits are substantial, but equally important are the social gains, including improved energy security and reduced exposure to energy poverty in rural and urban communities alike. For businesses, reliable, low-cost energy inputs facilitate operational planning, encourage competitiveness, and encourage innovation. For policymakers, the Icelandic experience signals the value of maintaining public oversight or strong regulatory safeguards for critical infrastructure, ensuring that energy transitions advance both economic and social objectives.

    A cross-cutting lesson across all examples is the imperative of multi-stakeholder governance. The Icelandic model shows that energy transitions are as much socio-political undertakings as technical or economic ones, requiring inclusive institutional arrangements that integrate energy planning with land use, regional development, and community priorities. Platforms that bring together communities, governments, investors, and academia not only enhance legitimacy but also improve project outcomes by anticipating and mitigating potential conflicts. For both business leaders and policymakers, the emphasis is on designing systems where commercial ambition, social license, and sustainable development objectives are mutually reinforcing rather than in tension.

    Conclusion

    Iceland’s energy-based enterprises exemplify how clean energy can be a lever for both economic and social development, balancing technological innovation with community empowerment and sustainability. From small-scale, community-embedded geothermal projects to large industrial wind-to-ammonia initiatives and long-standing public heating systems, the country demonstrates that energy transitions are not only technical but deeply social and economic endeavours.

    By linking these practical examples to Nordic mythic narratives, the analysis highlights the importance of foresight, resilience, and intergenerational thinking in energy planning. The cycle of Ragnarök ‘destruction > transformation > renewal’ together with the guidance of the Three Norms, emphasizes how past experience, present action, and future consequences must be integrated to achieve socially, economically, and environmentally resilient energy strategies. Iceland’s approach thus offers a practical blueprint for designing energy systems that are technically sound, socially inclusive, and economically transformative, with lessons extending well beyond the Nordic context.

    Feature Image: Francesca Ungaro

    References

    Atlantic Council, 2022. A geothermal leader: The case of Iceland. [online] Available at: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/a-geothermal-leader-the-case-of-iceland [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Baseload Power Iceland, 2024. Projects & community energy. [online] Available at: https://www.baseloadpower.is [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Bellows, H.A. (Trans.), 1936. The Poetic Edda. New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation.

    Daily Northern, 2024. Fjarðarorka plans large wind farm in Fljótsdal to reduce emissions from Iceland’s fishing fleet. [online] Available at: https://www.dailynorthern.com [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Fjarðarorka, 2024. Wind-to-Ammonia Project Overview. [online] Available at: https://fjardarorka.is/en [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Larrington, C., 1999. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Mukhopadhyay, B. & Ianole, R., 2021. Community level impact of solar entrepreneurs in rural Odisha, India: the rise of women led solar energy‑based enterprises. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 42(4), pp.472–503. [online] Available at: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=114240 [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Nordic Energy Research, 2023. Nordic energy statistics 2023: Renewable transition and societal impacts. Oslo: Nordic Energy Research. [online] Available at: https://www.nordicenergy.org [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Norsetraditionschurch.org, 2024. Ragnarök: The fate of the gods in Völuspá. [online] Available at: https://www.norsetraditionschurch.org/post/ragnar%C3%B6k-the-fate-of-the-gods-in-v%C3%B6lusp%C3%A1 [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    ThinkGeoEnergy, 2021. GeoENVI: The many economic benefits Iceland got from using geothermal energy. [online] Available at: https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com [Accessed 17 March 2026].

  • Circular Economy: ‘Make-Use-Return’

    The Stone Age didn’t come to an end because they ran out of stones. Similarly, we should be building an economy where we ‘use’ resources rather than ‘use them up’. The human species must change its profligate ways, and radically reduce the level of extraction required to fuel our needs and desires.

    The economy is a part of society, and society is inextricably bound to the environment. In the living world there is no landfill; instead, materials simply flow. The waste of one species is food for another. Things grow, fade in time, and nutrients safely return to the soil. We, humans, however, generally ‘Take-Make-Dispose’.

    With increasing consumer demand, we continue to eat into finite resources and waste more and more. It begs the question: how can we turn waste into capital?

    The idea of the circular economy is move to ‘Make-Use-Return’, both in mindset and practice, and for this to become natural. A circular world economy would marry resourcefulness, design thinking for products built to last and be recyclable, retrieve raw materials, and alter current ownership models.

    We have a waste problem. Globally, we generate about 1.3 billion tons of trash per year, leading to environmental atrocities like ocean plastic pollution. This may even become a source of future conflicts, as countries search for new places to stash their trash.

    The UN International Resources Panel projects that our use of natural resources will double by 2050. A study by the OECD shows that the flow of materials through acquisition, transportation, processing, use and disposal accounts for about fifty per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

    What is the Circular Economy?

    The European Parliament offered the following definition in 2021:

    The circular economy is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. In this way, the life cycle of products is extended.

    This helpful definition should make us consider how we reduce waste to a minimum, and disassemble raw materials after a product reaches the end of its life cycle.

    The World Economic Forum’s definition is more comprehensive:

    A circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. It replaces the end-of-life concept with restoration, shifts towards the use of renewable energy, eliminates the use of toxic chemicals, which impair reuse and return to the biosphere, and aims for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, systems, and business.

    The challenge is to change our mindsets: how we think, behave, and consume collectively and individually.

    Can the goods of today become the resources of tomorrow? This could involve, for example, changing the way we recycle valuable alloys, polymers and metals so that they maintain their quality and continue to be useful beyond the shelf life of an individual product. It would certainly make a lot of commercial sense.

    We must move away from the ‘use and throw’ culture that operates today, consciously pivoting towards a more ‘return and renew’ approach, where products can be easily disassembled and regenerated.

    The circular economy isn’t about one manufacturer changing one product, it is about all of the interconnected companies that form our infrastructure and economy coming together.

    Therefore, across industries, the idea is to design products that can be disassembled systematically once the consumer has finished using them, re-manufacture and offer them out again.

    The focus then moves to ‘cradle to cradle’ rather than ‘cradle to grave’ and the production cost should decrease drastically. For example, in the clothing industry, instead of garments lying as waste in a landfill, clothing companies could collect them and reuse them to make new products; potentially profiting out of the waste.

    Everything is healthy food for something else. Everyday products from shoes to mattresses can be manufactured in a way that could be fully recyclable. For example, the fast-fashion brand H&M has made a commitment to use 100% sustainably sourced material.

    The circular economy is an inevitability. It is not simply about fixing a particular problem, but redesigning an entire system to address the interconnected challenges of climate change, pollution and waste.

    Sustainability vs Circular Economy

    The concept of ‘sustainability’ is often used interchangeably with the Circular Economy. This is rather misleading. Although both of the concepts address issues around decarbonization, energy transition, and the waste minimization narrative – amongst other points that include local and ‘glocal’ actions and strategies – the two concepts remain quite distinct.

    Sustainability, to a large extent, is a systems-level approach that encompasses environmental, social, and economic factors and assesses how they interact.

    We can also include the concept of the Triple Bottom Line (i.e., people, planet, profit) in the context of business organisations, and how this can contribute to the cause of sustainability.

    The concept of sustainability also helps us to evaluate the risks, trade-offs and externalities (positive or negative), from a life-cycle perspective, across the entire value chain. This is what leads to long-term system balance.

    Fundamentally, however, sustainability is an umbrella term addressing a wide range of scenarios and issues, and not only focusing on conservation, choosing eco-friendly options, or switching to renewable energy.

    Research by the MacArthur Foundation argues that sustainability does not have a singular focus on any individual part of the chain; rather the concept helps us to understand how the parts interrelate to enable effective overall outcomes.

    In other words, ‘individual parts cannot be optimized without optimizing the whole’. Thus, an electric vehicle is not sustainable if we factor in the unquantified and unaccounted for social and environmental externalities that span the lifecycle of the lithium-ion battery that powers the vehicle, from mining, processing, smelting, trade, and transportation across the globally networked supply chain to the lack of recycling and reuse options for the battery at its end-of-life.

    The Circular Economy in Action

    Certain industries have taken the lead in terms of rethinking and redesigning how they manufacture; choice of raw materials; and how they recollect products once consumers have stopped using them.

    BSH sells home appliances-as-a-service promoted reuse, repair and extend product lifecycles. It now offers a full service, delivering, installing, repairing, moving, adjusting and picking up the appliances again at the end of the contract.

    In the agriculture sector, there is growing availability of affordable bio-based solutions for recycling nutrients from agriculture. Using Hybrid Biofilter is a scalable solution that prevents nutrient leakage from fields, thereby improving local water quality. At their end-of-life, the biofilters can also be reused in several applications to release the captured nutrients back to their natural cycle.

    Similarly, Nike launched the recycled-content version of the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star series and introduced ‘exploratory footwear collection’ made from factor and post-consumer waste. At the Tokyo Olympics, the athletes representing US, France, and Brazil used Nike-sponsored uniforms made with 100 per cent recycled polyester.

    Another closely related example would be Adidas, which has rolled out fully recyclable version of the Ultraboost running shoe collection made from a single material without glue. Similar initiatives are going on in Puma and Timberland.

    Likewise, IKEA launched a buy back programme where customers can receive up to 50% of an item’s original price in the form of a store voucher. Also, unsold items are recycled or donated to local community projects.

    Philips design products for hospitals, including medical equipment such as MRIs and CT Scanners. They are currently offering trade-ins on their old equipment for a discount on new systems. The company disassembles the collected equipment, refurbishing and upgrading them to sell these again.

    This is a ‘win-win’ model since hospitals get financial returns from their older equipment, while also efficiently upgrading to the latest technology. This also addresses the e-waste recycling challenge that we face today.

    H&M, the leading fast-fashion brand, now encourages customers to return used clothing to stores, who receive discount vouchers for future purchases at the store. The company classifies the collected used clothing into a) Rewear; b) Reuse; and c) Recycle categories, and they work across partners to continue with their sustainability measures.

    Costs of the ‘Make, Use, Return’ Model

    In 2015, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation demonstrated that a circular economy could boost Europe’s resource productivity by 3 per cent by 2030, generating cost savings of €600 billion a year.

    The following are three sector specific examples:

    (a) Clothing businesses have actively taken steps towards embracing circular economy practices. Some firms in the apparels industry have formed coalitions to promote nontoxic chemicals, improve cotton farming. Others are developing standards for garments that are reused or recycled. There is great scope in investing in the development of new fibres that lower the environmental impacts of production.

    (b) Recovering the material value of bottles, from mixed recyclables or bottle-to-bottle recycling, could lead to a much higher pay out. Metals, meanwhile, are commonly extracted from tires in open backyard fires – at great cost to both human health and the environment. Aggregating tires for use as industrial fuel could increase their value almost tenfold, while crumbling them to make road-paving material yields even higher returns.

    (c) Dell has incorporated recycled plastics into its products, using the world’s largest takeback program for used electronics. Their cloud service lines provide customers with computing capabilities, while eliminating the need for physical assets, reducing costs and carbon footprints. All these practices, as mentioned above, can help companies extract additional value from leakages or waste in the production process.

    Barriers to Circularity

    A study by the World Resources Institute (WRI) identifies certain operational barriers in the functioning of the circular economy.

    Creating a changed mindset is a major challenge. Thus, for example, we use twenty times as much plastic as we did just fifty years ago. This is despite a strong push from the market to use linen as the material for shopping bags.

    Unfortunately, shoppers still choose single-use plastic bags and packages that often wind up at the bottom of the ocean. This requires a change in consumer attitude as well as a more stringent regulatory push on this matter.

    Another related aspect to this is how we understand the ‘expiry date’ of a food product. Expiration dates are designed to protect the consumer, but it is not contingent on how a particular foodstuff is stored. Thus, the expiration date on eggs in India may be labelled for pantry storage, but these will last longer when refrigerated.

    So, while an expiry date can mean that a food is inedible in certain circumstances, it may still be safe to eat while not necessarily meeting the manufacturer’s quality standards. This is currently being addressed in several markets.

    Waste management and recycling infrastructure differ from country to country, which is another difficult factor to control. For example, studies project that there could be more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050.

    There are certain limitations in how plastics are sorted by chemical composition and cleaned of additives. Better technology can maintain quality and purity so that product manufacturers are willing to use recycled plastics.

    Once there is some incentive, companies and users will be more inclined to act responsibly. This is an area where nations can work together during international conferences on partnerships and share research and development.

    The global population is projected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, with far fewer living in poverty than today. Emerging countries such as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have an expanding middle class – with increasing purchasing power.

    Clothing and apparel sector needs to lessen their environmental externalities by using non-toxic dyes and recycling cloth scraps.

    As discussed earlier, the ‘rental and resale’ model has to succeed against fast fashion preferences which produce far more waste. Also, with increasing demand for electric cars, lithium-ion battery manufacturers must design products with a similar mixtures of chemicals, allowing more processed recycling possibilities.

    From ‘Cradle to Cradle’

    A Harvard study reviewing the manufacturing sector, in particular the clothing and furnishing sectors, provides an understanding of the different strategies that embed a functioning circularity.

    First, the study suggests that companies should consider leasing products instead of selling them. This would retain the continuity or circularity.

    Moreover, from a stakeholder perspective, this would mean that the companies remain responsible for the products, even after consumers are finished with them.

    Xerox, for example, over the years have followed a model where they lease their printers and photocopiers to corporate clients rather than selling them. It entails after-sales and repair costs but is still more sustainable than replacing the devices after their life cycle ends.

    Since time immemorial the robes used at graduation ceremonies have been rented rather than sold. Similarly, the company ‘Rent the Runway’ also leases designer clothes for one-off events’

    The second example follows from the first: companies designing products that have a longer product life cycle. A longer life span means there are fewer repeat purchases and, at the same time, companies can leverage ‘durability’ as a competitive advantage over rivals.

    This can also give them access to new markets and price their products higher given the premium nature of the offering.

    For example, Bosch Power Tools extends the life of its used tools by remanufacturing them. This enables them to compete with cheaper products from competitors.

    Thirdly, companies can embed the recycling aspect during the product development stages and planning process. The idea here is to maximise the recoverability of materials used in products.

    For example, Adidas partners with Parley. The latter company makes textile thread using plastic waste from which Adidas manufactures its shoes and apparel. The end result is less plastic at the bottom of the ocean.

    Role of the State and Users

    In a world where approximately 3781 litres of water is used in the manufacturing of single pair of jeans, some choices are controllable.

    The question is do we want more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans? Are we going to allow nitrates and phosphates to leach from fertilised fields indefinitely?

    We urgently require innovative public-private partnerships, where companies, investors, governments and academia offer the intellectual, financial, and operational assets to solve big problems

    We also require a mindset shift to dream of ‘prosperity in a world of finite resources’, and where over a third of all food is wasted, even as the Amazon is deforested to produce more.

    We have to move to a situation where we are ‘users’ of services, rather than ‘consumers’; to pay-for-use (like we do in the Gig and Sharing economy) rather than ‘owning’ a service.

    The choice is as much individual as it is collective, as the Dalai Lama once put it: ‘if you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.’

    Feature Image: Shade-grown coffee, a form of polyculture (an example of sustainable agriculture) in imitation of natural ecosystems. Trees provide resources for the coffee plants such as shade, nutrients, and soil structure; the farmers harvest coffee and timber.

  • Cassandra Voices Music Podcast II

    Welcome to the second Cassandra Voices podcast introduced and written by Nicola Bigatti, and produced by Massimiliano Galli. This podcast was recorded in the heart of Dublin 8 in what used to be the studios of the 2014 indipendent project Radio Liberties.

    This podcast continues a journey through Italian ‘Library Music,’ a vast catalogue of records composed mainly in the 1960s and 1970s by some of Italy’s finest musicians, with Rome and Milan becoming centres of excellence.

    Although recording artists associated began with generic soundtrack music, this provided a springboard for an innovative music scene. From a commercial base in T.V. series and advertising jingles, musicians forged unique styles, and developed distinctive sounds such as that associated with Spaghetti Westerns, a genre known as Film Poliziesco-groove.

    Ennio Morricone in 2015

    Foremost among these composers was Ennio Morricone, who achieved global fame for soundtracks to films such as ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984) and ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966). Morricone passed away in July of this year at the age of ninety-one, and this Podcast is dedicated to his memory.

    This Italian Library encompassed avant-garde composition, classical harmony, psychedelia, and funk with brash horns, guitars, and futuristic synths prominent. It was a fertile ground for experimentation and creativity, strongly influenced by the social, economic and political dynamics of that epoch.

    Composition occcurred under the shadow of political and social turmoil in Italy – ‘the Years of Led’ (Anni di piombo) as a succession of bombings and assassinations by extremist groups shattered an uneasy post-War consensus.

    Voice and writing: Nicola Bigatti

    Podcast Editor: Massimiliano Galli

    Playlist

    Riccardo Luciani: ‘Chanson Balladee, (1977)
    Alessandro Alessandroni: ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (1964)
    Alessandro Alessandroni: ‘Afro Darkness’, (2019)
    Gianni Ferrio: ‘fai presto’ (1974)
    Piero Umiliani: ‘Nel Villaggio’ (1975)
    Daniela Casa: ‘giochi perduti’ (1975)
    Giuliano Sorgini: ‘Iniziazione’ (2018)
    Dindi Bembo orchestra: ‘Tangenziale Ovest’ (1977)
    Piero piccioni: ‘Charms’ (1969)
    Egisto Macchi: ‘Il Canto Della Steppa’ (1983)

  • WARNING: The (Open) Secret lives of Content Moderators

    Tick Yes or No: ‘I understand the content I will be reviewing may be disturbing. It is possible that reviewing such content may impact my mental health, and it could even lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).’[i]

    Last year, a sixteen-year-old Malay girl posted a poll on Instagram asking her followers whether she should live or die.[ii] 69% voted for death and she took her own life. The followers who voted that she should die neither took action to protect their ‘friend’ nor shared empathy or concern.

    “People are awful.[iii] This is what my job has taught me”, says a former Facebook content-moderator who recently sued the social media giant after experiencing psychological trauma as a direct consequence of his work. The Wall Street Journal recently described content moderator as ‘the worst job in the US’[iv] , and the same applies to other countries, which this article elaborates on.

    Very little is known about the role, mental health toll or other work experiences of content moderators. They may work for YouTube, Facebook, Google and other such platforms that we are all pretty much ‘addicted’ to.

    A few studies are now looking into the working conditions for people[v] who determine what ‘material’ or ‘content’ can be posted to Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. Their job is to decide on whether content adheres to the ‘community guidelines’ of online platforms. They work day and night so that we the users are saved from exposure to videos of graphic violence or child abuse as well as hate speech, among the constant stream of user generated material uploaded on to social media feeds.

    There are thousands of content moderators, who are paid to view objectionable posts and decide which need to be removed from digital platforms. Many are severely traumatized by the images of hate, abuse and violence they see on a daily basis so that we, our families and children get to see ‘WARNING: The following post or content may be disturbing to some viewers.’

    The heavy mental health toll on content moderators who are hired on a ‘freelance’ or ‘gig’ basis cannot be underestimated.

    Never-ending Uploads and Ever-Expanding Platforms

    A staggering three hundred hours of video content is uploaded on to YouTube every minute, while over ninety-five million photos[vi] are uploaded to Instagram each day, along with over five hundred million tweets sent out on Twitter (or 6,000 tweets per second). Therefore, it is virtually impossible for human moderators to vet every piece before a content is uploaded and goes live (with some potentially going ‘viral’). Popular platforms such as these serve user-generated content uploaded by a global community of contributors.

    The uploaded content is just as diverse as the user base, meaning inevitably that a significant amount is offensive to most users and, by extension, the platforms. Users routinely upload (or attempt to upload) content such as: child abuse, animal torture, and disturbing, hate-filled messages.

    Facebook outsources the hiring of content moderators and provides office space. Its sites are largely outside the United States – mainly in south, south-east and east Asia, but the operations have expanded to the US, more specifically in California, Arizona, Texas and Florida.[vii] Content moderators work at a computer workstation where they review content –  a steady stream of text posts, images and videos. These can range from random personal musings to information with ramifications for international politics. Some of it may seem rather benign – just words on a screen that someone didn’t like. While the worst may be incredibly disturbing. On a regular basis moderators have to witness beheadings, murders, animal abuse, and child exploitation. Therefore, one might wonder, what toll on mental health does this take?

    One previously unreported aspect of a moderator’w job is the numerical quotas that these subcontractors[viii] are forced to meet: each moderator is required to screen thousands of images or videos per day in order to maintain their employment.

    Facebook alone has an army of about 15,000 people in 20 locations[ix] around the world, who decide what content should be allowed to stay on Facebook, and what should be marked as ‘disturbing’, whether execution videos from terrorist groups, murders, beatings, child exploitation or the torture of animals. In addition to the stress of exposure to disturbing images and videos, there is also the pressure to make the right call about what how to mark the content. A wrong decision taken under stress will have penalties, financially for the worker, and also may have mental health effects on other human lives.

    Platforms, as we know them, reserve the right to police user-generated content through a clause in their Terms of Service (which none of us read, or do we? Should we?), usually by incorporating their Community Guidelines as a reference. For example, YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit  ‘nudity or sexual content’, ‘harmful or dangerous content’, ‘hateful content’, ‘violent or graphic content’, ‘harassment and cyberbullying’, ‘spam, misleading metadata’, ‘scams’, ‘threats’ videos that would violate someone else’s copyright, ‘impersonation’ and ‘child endangerment.’

    ‘Now you see me’

    The Cleaners, a recent documentary, features interviews with several former moderators who were previously outsourced by a subcontractor in the Philippines. The interviewees exposed their experiences of filtering the very worst images and video the internet has to offer. In the Philippines, workers operate out of jam-packed malls, where they spend over nine hours a day moderating content for as little as $480 a month.[x] With few workday breaks and no access to counselling, many of these individuals end up suffering from insomnia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Records also show the average pay of a full-time online content moderator in the US is around $28,000, but globally and by a large measure a significant amount of hiring is done through outsourcing and on a temporary basis. In Ireland, research shows that typically a Facebook employee would be paid a basic rate of €12.98 per hour,[xi] with a 25% bonus after 8pm, plus a travel allowance of €12 per night – the equivalent of about €25,000 to €32,000 per year. Yet the average Facebook employee in Ireland earned €154,000 in 2017.

    On average, the workload involves moderating about 300 to 400 pieces of content[xii]  – called ‘tickets’ – on an average night. On a busy night, their queue might have 800 to 1,000 tickets. The average handling time is 20 to 30 seconds – longer if it’s a particularly difficult decision.

    ‘We are trash to them, just a body in a seat’ shares a content moderator. Every work minute is strictly bound.[xiii]  Harsh working conditions characterised by specified bathroom breaks and a meagre nine minutes of wellness time engenders a stress that is exacerbated by employers’ downplaying the importance of mental health care.

    The continuum of content in those quotas range from tone-deaf jokes; kids dressed up as history’s great dictators that may constitute hate speech; nude images; domestic violence images, and then the really graphic and inhumane ones that inevitably surface. The content moderators have about twenty-four hours[xiv] within which they have to classify the posts under bullying, hate speech, and other content as appropriate.

    Like other forms of gig workers, digital reputation or future work orders come from high ratings. Several former moderators felt pressurised to achieve a 98% quality rating. This would mean that the auditor would agree with 98% of their decisions taken on a random sample of tickets. Moderators are therefore scrutinised for the smallest mistakes. An unending stream of extremism, violence, child sexual abuse imagery and revenge porn, does not give moderators time to consider the more subtle implications of particular posts.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot nail this one… just yet!

    Moderators are human beings, so mistakes are inevitable. However, to shatter one misconception on this front: Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot help much in this field. They currently act as triage systems; for example, by pushing suspect content to human moderators and weeding out some unwanted material on their own. But AI cannot solve the online content moderation problem without human help. For example, AI uses either a visual recognition to identify a broad category of objectionable content or match content to an index of banned items (for example, illicit materials, child abuse, terrorist content, etc.) – and then it allocates a ‘hash’ or an ID so that if these are detected again, the uploading process will be disabled. But then guess who will need to set the parameters before the automation can work!?

    Automated systems using AI and machine learning still have a long way to go before they can carry out content moderation independently (free of human help that is). We are surely not there yet.

    Content moderation is arguably one of the most important tasks that BPOs perform today, fulfilling outsourced contracts for social media giants ranging from Facebook and TikTok to Live, among many others. This has led to a process-driven BPO[xv] industry that has become the refuge for quick-fix content moderation based on subjective criteria. Add to that how many of the mods are often young people (their average age is less than thirty), who sometimes join even before finishing college degrees, and the problems begin to add up.

    The Need for (Content Upload) Speed and…Training!

    One might have assumed that US companies who hire moderators would have a good understanding of these issues, but it turns out that they really don’t. It has been reported for instance that Facebook doesn’t provide ongoing cultural education for these moderators to bring them up to speed. The one exception is when a particular issue goes viral on Facebook, and there’s a sudden need to bring everybody up to speed in real time. With this laissez faire approach it is unsurprising how many Court, Senate and Congressional hearings Mark Zuckerberg has had to attend over the past four years (and not just for the Cambridge Analytica scandal).

    One former moderator shared how he witnessed images of child sexual abuse[xvi] and bestiality with me while weeding out content that was unsuitable for the platform. He suffered from psychological trauma as a result of these working conditions and a lack of proper training.

    Accenture is one of the companies that hires contract workers to review content for big networks like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. There is a well-documented history of content moderators reviewing[xvii] including graphic and disturbing imagery – with jobs taking significant mental health tolls, and leading to psychological trauma.

    In order to share more of what goes on during content moderation, the freelancers have to break the nondisclosure agreements first, and this is an area where there is journalistic investigations and research work pending. One of the burning questions is whether the company has anything to say about the psychological and emotional impact of watching the brutality, pornography, and hate that the moderators have to look at on a daily basis?

    Some Debt Cannot be Repaid

    Facebook has already paid out a $52 million settlement to content moderators suffering from mental health problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).[xviii] In light of repeated allegations and the seriousness of the situation, the company has agreed to compensate American content moderators and provide extra counselling during their tenure. The social media giant will pay a minimum of $1,000 to each moderator.[xix]  The settlement covers 11,250 moderators which is a glimpse at the colossal number (in hundreds of thousands) of moderators involved in this work globally.

    “I know it’s not normal, but now everything is normalized[xx],” said a moderator who declined to share his name and other details because of the confidentiality clause he signed when he took the job. Non-disclosure agreements are non-negotiable for moderators, and are forcibly imposed by the platforms. For example, YouTube content moderators are reportedly being told they could be fired if they don’t sign ‘voluntary’ statements acknowledging their jobs could give them PTSD (i.e. post-traumatic stress disorder).

    Reports also shows that Accenture managers repeatedly coerced site counsellors to break patient confidentiality.[xxi] Although these allegations were refuted by Accenture, such fault lines between workers and management are bound to affect organisational morale.

    Further studies are elusive on whether companies such as Accenture are shifting the responsibility of mental health care onto individual employees, and thus avoiding liability in the face of increasing lawsuits from dormer moderators. In response to growing allegations, certain social media giants have reinstated their commitment towards safeguarding their employees’ mental health and have clinical psychologists on call.

    The Valley of Uploads

    While some of the specifics remain intentionally obfuscated, content moderation is done by tens of thousands of online content moderators, mostly employed by subcontractors in India and the Philippines, who are paid wages well below what the average Silicon Valley tech employee earns. We need more studies and investigations on this as time progresses, as our hunger for newer ‘tailor-made’ media feeds continues to grow.

    The general assumption is that the large tech companies can easily hide the worst parts of humanity, otherwise freely available on the internet. There is no easy solution. With billions of users and unending uploads, there will never be enough moderators to check everything before it is shared with the world.[xxii]

    Legal challenges and new methods of reporting abuse help to narrow the risks, but the task is nonetheless Sisyphean. The complexities are ongoing, ever-growing and multi-faceted. The trade-off between a ‘quick fix’ of myriad issues would still create a dispersed range of unintended externalities to the stakeholders involve. This list includes the users, content moderators, companies, lawmakers and legal systems monitoring these behemoth digital platforms.

    [i] Madhumita Murgia, ‘Facebook content moderators required to sign PTSD forms’, Financial Times, January 26th, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/98aad2f0-3ec9-11ea-a01a-bae547046735

    [ii] Jamie Fullerton, ‘Teenage girl kills herself ‘after Instagram poll’ in Malaysia’, May 15th, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/teenage-girl-kills-herself-after-instagram-poll-in-malaysia

    [iii] Marie Boren, ‘Life as a Facebook moderator: ‘People are awful. This is what my job has taught me’’ Irish Times, February 27th, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/life-as-a-facebook-moderator-people-are-awful-this-is-what-my-job-has-taught-me-1.4184711.

    [iv] Jennifer O’Connell, ‘Facebook’s dirty work in Ireland: ‘I had to watch footage of a person being beaten to death’’, Irish Times, March 30th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/facebook-s-dirty-work-in-ireland-i-had-to-watch-footage-of-a-person-being-beaten-to-death-1.3841743

    [v] ‘Managing and Leveraging Workplace Use of Social Media’, SHRM, January 19th, 2019,  https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/managingsocialmedia.aspx

    [vi] Daisy Soderberg-Rivkin, ‘Five myths about online content moderation, from a former content moderator’. October 30th, 2019, https://www.rstreet.org/2019/10/30/five-myths-about-online-content-moderation-from-a-former-content-moderator/

    [vii] ‘Inside Facebook, the second-class workers who do the hardest job are waging a quiet battle’, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/08/inside-facebook-second-class-workers-who-do-hardest-job-are-waging-quiet-battle/

    [viii] Terry Gross,  ‘For Facebook Content Moderators, Traumatizing Material Is A Job Hazard’, NPR, July 1st, 2019,

    [ix] Ibid, O’Connell, March 20th, 2019.

    [x] Ibid, Soderberg-Rivkin, October 30th, 2019.

    [xi] Ibid, O’Connell, March 20th, 2019.

    [xii] Ibid O’Connell, March 20th, 2019.

    [xiii] Prithvi Iyer, Suyash Barve, ‘Humanising digital labour: The toll of content moderation on mental health,’ Digital Frontiers, April 2nd, 2020, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/humanising-digital-labour-the-toll-of-content-moderation-on-mental-health-64005/

    [xiv] Ibid O’Connell, March 20th, 2019.

    [xv] Prasid Banerjee, ‘Inside the secretive world of India’s social media content moderators’, LiveMint, March 18th, 2020, https://www.livemint.com/news/india/inside-the-world-of-india-s-content-mods-11584543074609.html

    [xvi] Kelly Earley, ‘Irish content moderators prepare lawsuit against Facebook and CPL’ December 4th, 2019, https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/irish-content-moderators-facebook-cpl-recruitment

    [xvii] Paige Leskin, ‘Some YouTube content moderators are reportedly being told they could be fired if they don’t sign ‘voluntary’ statements acknowledging their jobs could give them PTSD’, January 24th, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.in/careers/news/some-youtube-content-moderators-are-reportedly-being-told-they-could-be-fired-if-they-dont-sign-voluntary-statements-acknowledging-their-jobs-could-give-them-ptsd/articleshow/73594478.cms

    [xviii] Untitled, ‘Facebook to pay $52m to content moderators over PTSD’, BBC, May 13th, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52642633

    [xix] Ibid

    [xx] Elizabeth Dowskin et al, ‘Content moderators at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter see the worst of the web — and suffer silently’, July 25th, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/25/social-media-companies-are-outsourcing-their-dirty-work-philippines-generation-workers-is-paying-price/

    [xxi] Sam Biddle, ‘Trauma Counselors Were Pressured to Divulge Confidential Information About Facebook Moderators, Internal Letter Claims’, The Intercept, August 16th, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/08/16/facebook-moderators-mental-health-accenture/

    [xxii] Ibid, Soderberg-Rivkin, October 30th, 2019. https://www.rstreet.org/2019/10/30/five-myths-about-online-content-moderation-from-a-former-content-moderator/