Author: Katrine Soma, Wageningen Institute
Despite the growing use of digital technologies, there is still limited knowledge about the actual reduction of environmental and climate impacts resulting from digitalisation. To address this gap, CODECS published a new scientific paper presenting its conceptual framework, to better understand how digitalisation shapes sustainability outcomes and accounts for these complexities.
CODECS is a European project designed to advance sustainable digitalisation across economic, environmental, and social dimensions. The project supports the development, implementation, and evaluation of sustainability- and data-related policies at regional, national, and EU levels, contributing to key policy objectives such as the EU Green Deal, the new CAP, and the 2030 Digital Compass. In this context, a policy brief presenting the conceptual framework has also been developed.
The CODECS Conceptual Framework operates within a dynamic and evolving context shaped by external social, technological, environmental, and political drivers, as well as internal drivers, including capacities, motivations, and opportunities. Together, these drivers influence the contextual factors affecting entities, relationships, and activities. CODECS therefore adopts a systems-thinking perspective, conceptualising digitalisation as a process of transition through successive levels of system transformation.
The system thinking approach distinguishes three interconnected process contexts, with each process level leading to a new level of digitalisation.
- Business processes,
- Digital ecosystem processes, and
- Socio-environmental processes.
First, in business process contexts, the value of digitalisation on farms goes beyond financial gains to include learning, improved coordination, and better support for farmers’ needs. Technologies such as sensors, automation, and digital advisory tools reshape farm operations by enabling new decision-making processes and altering everyday activities. As farms become digitised socio-physical systems, technologies influence workflows, relationships, and information flows. This creates new opportunities but also introduces costs related to adoption, skills, integration, and the reorganisation of traditional practices.
Second, digitalised farm processes depend on broader digital ecosystems that provide infrastructure, data storage, software, and expertise. These socio-cyber-physical systems combine digital tools, social actors, and physical systems, involving farmers, businesses, advisors, researchers, policymakers, and citizens. Their operations require effective coordination, data governance, and organisational capacity. Costs and benefits emerge from technical dependencies, shared responsibilities, and the need for collaboration. Successful digitalisation therefore relies on supportive networks that ensure reliable data flows, equitable access, and coherent management across multiple actors.
Third, operating in socio-environmental contexts, digitalisation affects natural ecosystems, governance structures, and societal outcomes. Costs and benefits arise from how digital resources and infrastructures shape interactions among people, technology, and the environment. Issues like the digital divide, environmental impacts, and unequal access to digital opportunities influence who gains and who may be excluded. This broader governance-cyber-ecological system involves complex feedback between digital practices and ecological conditions. Ensuring sustainable digitalisation requires attention to inclusiveness, long-term governance, and environmental stewardship across diverse actors and systems.
Building on this research, a set of core messages has been articulated, providing deeper understanding of the social, economic, and environmental costs and benefits associated with digitalisation (Soma et al., 2025):
- Digitalisation reorganises physical, social, economic and digital interdependence.
- Digitalisation may not necessarily lead to increased sustainability.
- Digitalisation impacts socioeconomic wellbeing, including inequalities.
- Costs and benefits differ across levels of digital transformation.
