Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00756-w
Fuso Nerini, F., Fawcett, T., Parag, Y. et al. Personal carbon allowances revisited. Nat Sustain 4, 1025–1031 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00756-w
...
In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on individuals for the sake of public health, and forms of individual accountability and responsibility that were unthinkable only one year before, have been adopted by millions of people. People may be more prepared to accept the tracking and limitations related to PCAs to achieve a safer climate and the many other benefits (for example, reduced air pollution and improved public health) associated with addressing the climate crisis. Other lessons that could be drawn relate to the public acceptance in some countries of additional surveillance and control in exchange for greater safety. For instance, in many countries, mobile apps designed for COVID-19 infection tracking and tracing played an important part in limiting the spread of the pandemic. The deployment and testing of such apps provide technology advances and insights for the design of future apps for tracking personal emissions. Recent studies show how COVID-19 contact-tracing apps were successfully implemented with mandatory schemes in several East Asian countries, such as China, Taiwan and South Korea[SUP]43[/SUP]. In these countries, the apps assessed each user’s travel history and health status, playing a key role in tracking infections[SUP]43[/SUP]. These unique natural experiments give insights into possible strategies to use apps to track PCAs. For instance, the many digital contact-tracing algorithms that were developed and tested[SUP]43,44[/SUP] provide initial valuable information for the design of future apps that—for example—estimate emissions on the basis of tracking the user’s movement history. However, the adoption of such apps also raised issues regarding the balance between data privacy concerns and public health[SUP]45[/SUP]. A recent review showed that only 16 of 50 reviewed contact-tracing apps explicitly state that the user’s data will be made anonymous, encrypted and secured and reported only in an aggregated format[SUP]46[/SUP]. Such a balance is also perceived differently in diverse countries. Initial evidence points to various issues related to adopting such schemes in liberal democracies such as in Europe and the United States—where data privacy, trust and ethical issues strongly limited participation in contact-tracing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic[SUP]46[/SUP]. Such resistance itself also provides important lessons for future PCA-tracking apps....
Fuso Nerini, F., Fawcett, T., Parag, Y. et al. Personal carbon allowances revisited. Nat Sustain 4, 1025–1031 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00756-w
...
In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on individuals for the sake of public health, and forms of individual accountability and responsibility that were unthinkable only one year before, have been adopted by millions of people. People may be more prepared to accept the tracking and limitations related to PCAs to achieve a safer climate and the many other benefits (for example, reduced air pollution and improved public health) associated with addressing the climate crisis. Other lessons that could be drawn relate to the public acceptance in some countries of additional surveillance and control in exchange for greater safety. For instance, in many countries, mobile apps designed for COVID-19 infection tracking and tracing played an important part in limiting the spread of the pandemic. The deployment and testing of such apps provide technology advances and insights for the design of future apps for tracking personal emissions. Recent studies show how COVID-19 contact-tracing apps were successfully implemented with mandatory schemes in several East Asian countries, such as China, Taiwan and South Korea[SUP]43[/SUP]. In these countries, the apps assessed each user’s travel history and health status, playing a key role in tracking infections[SUP]43[/SUP]. These unique natural experiments give insights into possible strategies to use apps to track PCAs. For instance, the many digital contact-tracing algorithms that were developed and tested[SUP]43,44[/SUP] provide initial valuable information for the design of future apps that—for example—estimate emissions on the basis of tracking the user’s movement history. However, the adoption of such apps also raised issues regarding the balance between data privacy concerns and public health[SUP]45[/SUP]. A recent review showed that only 16 of 50 reviewed contact-tracing apps explicitly state that the user’s data will be made anonymous, encrypted and secured and reported only in an aggregated format[SUP]46[/SUP]. Such a balance is also perceived differently in diverse countries. Initial evidence points to various issues related to adopting such schemes in liberal democracies such as in Europe and the United States—where data privacy, trust and ethical issues strongly limited participation in contact-tracing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic[SUP]46[/SUP]. Such resistance itself also provides important lessons for future PCA-tracking apps....
