Data Sovereignty for Planetary Sustainability: Mapping the North-South Concerns

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-680-2_6How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Data Sovereignty; Planetary Sustainability; North-South Divide; Data Colonialism; Semantic Network Mapping

Abstract

The idea of data sovereignty has gained traction over the last decade. Data as a new resource is increasingly vital for decision-making in businesses, governments and societies. Proponents of data sovereignty resists exploitation of personal data especially by state and corporate power. The exploitation of data in a form of ‘data colonialism’ has created a range of risks that threaten the lives of people and the planet. This study seeks to examine how data sovereignty as a socio-political concept is discussed by civil society organisations in the Global North and South and how it relates to the agenda of planetary sustainability. Using textual data produced on websites and semantic network mapping as an analytical tool, this study explores and contextualises data sovereignty issues in the frame of the North-South divide. Comparing issues emerged online, the diffferent concerns were identified. This study found that the Northen organisations are more concerned on issues such as ‘indigenousity’, ‘rights’, and ‘privacy’. Meanwhile, ‘protection’, ‘trade’, and ‘development’ are among prominent issues in the South. Understanding these differences requires recognition of unequal relation between North and South in a current data economy, even when the shifting context such as US-China domination in ‘data realms’ enters into debates. The finding suggests that to enhance the global resilience through realisation of data sovereignty, the notions of ‘planetary sustainability’ must be pushed forward in parallel with reconsideration of sovereignty of the data subjects in the datafied societies.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sidiq Madya
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/04/26
TI  - Data Sovereignty for Planetary Sustainability: Mapping the North-South Concerns
BT  - Proceedings of the Asia Pacific Sociological Association Conference  (APSA 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 67
EP  - 77
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-680-2_6
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-680-2_6
ID  - Madya2025
ER  -