Information and Communication Technologies are perceived both as enablers of technological and societal change towards sustainable development and as drivers of increasing energy and materials consumption, thus leading us away from the goal of sustainable development.

IFIP's World Computer Congress 2010 will therefore include a Track of contributions on the relationship between ICT and SD, entitled "Sustain IT", with the aim of reconciling future Information and Communication Technologies with sustainable development (SD).

In order to cover the full range of the complex relationship between ICT and SD and to stimulate an interdisciplinary discourse on “ICT for SD”, we invite herewith researchers working on various aspects of this issue to contribute to this WCC2010 Track. We will break down the issue into the following three topics.

ICT hardware and SD
- What are the qualities and quantities of the material and energy flows caused by the life cycle of ICT hardware and how can we assess their relevance for SD?
- What are the environmental and social implications of electronic waste (e-waste) Tracks rising in industrialized countries and emerging economies?
- What are the environmental and social implications of a growing demand for scarce chemical elements as they are increasingly used in ICT production?
- What are sound methodologies to assess the energy demand of ICT infrastructures and services?
- What innovations are necessary to reduce the life-cycle wide material and energy demand of ICT services, e.g. in the field of "Green IT"?

ICT applications and SD
- What are the potentials to apply ICT for energy efficiency in production and consumption, and what are the conditions for realizing these potentials?
- What are the potentials to apply ICT for materials efficiency or resource productivity, and what are the conditions for realizing these potentials?
- What ICT applications have the potential to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or to the adaption to climate change?
- Which methodology can be used to assess optimization, substitution and induction effects of ICT with regard to resource-intensive processes?
- How can we link organizational, regional, national and global perspectives in using ICT to support SD?
- What is the relationship between “ICT for development” and “ICT for sustainable development”?

ICT-enabled structural change towards SD
- What is the role of ICT in sustainable production and consumption, resource productivity or economic dematerialization (decoupling total material consumption from GDP)?
- How can we better understand rebound effects of ICT-induced efficiency gains and under what conditions can they be avoided?
- What is the relationship between conceptions of the “the information society” and SD?
- Is ICT going to bring about a “third industrial revolution”, and how is this perspective related to SD?
- What economic frameworks and conditions, including trade and tax regimes, are needed to enable ICT-supported structural change towards SD?
- What is the relationship between ICT, GDP growth and measures of progress beyond GDP (human development indicator, indicators for wellbeing, quality of life or happiness)?
What are the most relevant research questions in sustainability science regarding the role of ICT?