Managing Nature 5.0 in Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Society 5.0 Era

Advances in technology have led to more production of environmental friendly projects, products and services. As our colleagues from Germany and Japan highlight the importance of Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0, and after a series of my previous notes on technology and sustainable development, I would like now to extend our discussion on how the latest technology can be a powerful mechanism to improve our standard of living and sustain our mother earth. Industry 4.0 emerged from innovative digital technology to create value creation, whilst Society 5.0 is argued as a human-centered society that balances economic advancement with Industry 4.0. On the other hand, the environment has provided us with natural resources that speed up the growth of our industries and economies towards sustainability.

Nature 5.0 is proposed as regenerating nature, so it enables us to invent the technology that helps us in sustaining the earth as our living place. It follows creation (Nature 1.0), adaptation (Nature 2.0), evolution (Nature 3.0), and coalition (Nature 4.0). After the existence of Earth, the adaptation stage is the process that makes organisms better suited to their habitat. Interactions between organisms produce evolutions of fitness, and over hundred years later, evolution has caused us to promote and share the Earth’s natural resources. The advancements in the technology revolution have allowed us to play a significant role in shaping and regenerating nature.

The technology has enormous environmental impacts, including negative impacts like rising levels of pollution, to positive impacts like revitalization of the Earth’s landscape. The environmental changes have altered the evolution of life, and with the advancement of technology, changes have fed back to alter the environment. We evolve together.

We need to come out with more environmentally friendly technology that can be used in our food, farming and energy; and further, to create sustainable smart cities and industrial development as our standard for human well-being. Transforming and regenerating the Earth as well as our development pattern will be useful to future generations. The well-being of our future will be dependent on how we can produce technology that can govern our climate, health, social equity and stability. Technology 4.0 can be used to mitigate and provide a solution for enhancing our way of life by producing sustainable products and services. For example, by using an advance information technology system, we are creating new ways to reduce transportation emissions and manage resource consumption, in a way that is better for the economy, community and environment.

The creativity and innovation of technology development contributes to improving the global environment by producing green, resource-secure and inclusive economies for all. Furthermore, technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics, machine learning, 3D printing, etc, can be used to create, expand and monitor the effectiveness of sustainable development and environmental compliance across the globe. Industry 4.0 can be efficiently used to control and to improve required resources, energy, water and waste by connecting and automatically exchanging information via intra- and inter-systems. Moreover, financial incentives through government policy and market-based approaches can be implemented and monitored by charging a price on environmental and social costs, such as renewable resources deployment and pollution reduction. Partnership and collaborative processes from all stakeholders are required to enhance the acceleration and adoption of technologies for environmental regeneration and quality of life improvement. In this context, policy makers, business practitioners, scientists, and smart societies are working together to add sustainable value to reinforce the positive aspects of technology’s effect on nature. As technology changes the way we live, it will continue to have a profound impact on the way we regenerate and protect our environment sustainability.