Blockchain and Sustainable Development Goals

The first global summit in terms of sustainable development in which I was able to intervene was Habitat III held in Quito in 2015. Habitat summits are held every 20 years and establish the general lines of urban development agreed upon by the participating countries. In 2015, the 2030 agenda was approved, which includes the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In Quito, the New Urban Agenda (NUA) was also approved which focuses on cities and the ideals they should follow for the fulfillment of the SDGs. In those summits, Blockchain technology was only timidly mentioned. I would say that among the hundreds of papers, not so many would deal with the topic.

After that I had the opportunity to attend other summits such as World Urban Forum 9 (WUF9) in Kuala Lumpur and the Wold Urban Forum 10 (WUF10) in Abu Dhabi. Hopefully I will also be able to speak at WUF11 in Katowice. In addition, I was also able to attend to the Barcelona Smart City Expo World Congress last 5 years.

I can assure that in these last years, Blockchain technology has gone from being something very little mentioned to being a technology that is addressed in many, many papers by academics and professionals. In September 2021, the UN itself published a resolution that included a series of recommendations to ensure security and privacy in the use of Blockchain, which is having beneficial effects, especially in developing countries, according to numerous humanitarian organizations. Since then, more and more discussion papers have appeared on blockchain as a technology that could contribute to sustainable development whith best practices and successful examples in countries such as Georgia, Afghanistan, or Ghana.

Curiously, most of the doubts regarding the possibilities for sustainable development of blockchain have to do with its use in cryptocurrencies that employ Proof of Staking (PoW). Once again, Bitcoin (BTC) is taken as a reference without going into details or deeping in diffferences with other cryptocurrencies.

The conclusion is that the Bitcoin (BTC) consumes an amount of energy for its operation comparable to the consumption of Austria or Norway together. In addition, if Bitcoin were used as a cryptocurrency on the same scale as VISA technology, the global temperature could rise between 2ºC and 5ºC in the next three decades.

I find this particularly upsetting. First, because It's like saying that every internal combustion engine is a Ford brand car. It isn't. There are many other 'brands' of cars that use a combustion engine. And there are other applications of the combustion engine that have nothing to do with cars. Obviously.

That happens with some arguments around Blockchain technology. Bitcoin uses it, yes, but so do many other projects, whether they are related to cryptocurrencies or not. It is unfair, because the Bitcoin (BTC) project 'misuses' a technology, other projects and the blockchain technology itself are judged as unsustainable, in terms of energy consumption and environmental sustainability.

Secondly, because I believe that Blockchain Technology can contribute a lot to the Sustainable Development Goals achievement, but its implementation is being slowed down because of the doubts generated by projects such as Bitcoin.

I would really like to read a scientific paper that evaluates other cryptocurrency projects such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and other applications of blockchain technology without mentioning Bitcoin (BTC) as an example of its unsustainable use.

@Loucy