Fourth Industrial Revolution and Challenges for Providing Sustainable Development

The 21st century seems to be characterized by the incoming of a new generation of technologies able to cope with the changes expected for the next decades and to ensure sustainability. Beside these positive aspects, there is a set of problems. First, new technologies must be accessible to everyone. Every country should be enabled to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation, according to the sustainable development goal n. 9. Secondly, the current technological change should be sustainable. From the social point of view, technological innovation has been usually a risk for employment. Many old jobs have been substituted by updated technology. Sometimes it is possible a compensation thanks to new jobs stimulated by the innovation. Another social aspect referred to sustainability are the working conditions, particularly affecting vulnerable workers, and among them children, in the global South (ILO, 2017). One of the worst examples are the mines in Congo where kids extract raw material, such as cobalt, for the electronic devices. Considering the productive aspect, the technological innovation, and in particular the digitalization, brings not only positive effects and advantages but also shows an unsustainable side. An example of negative side of the technological innovation is the electronic waste as outcome of the technical obsolescence and pollution produced by data centres and servers that manage internet traffic. This paper is structured as follows: The first section is devoted to the sustainable development topic. The second one focuses on the technological development and particularly on the so called fourth industrial revolution. In the third and fourth sections, I’m going to draw the attention respectively on the risks and opportunities challenging the technological innovation addressing the sustainable development