New section on environmental impacts

index.html

@@ -1412,6 +1412,153 @@ <h3>Biometrics</h3>
     </section>
   </section>
 
+  <section class="informative">
+    <h2>Environmental and Ethical Considerations</h2>
+
+    <p>
+      The following section details certain key areas of focus when implementing a 
+      new DID menthod, or implementing a solution that incorporates DIDs.
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      A reliable guide for making assessments of various technologies and weighing
+      ethical considerations is the 
+      <a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/">W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles</a>
+      document.
+    </p>
+
+    <section class="informative">
+      <h3>Broad Ethical Principles</h3>
+      <p>
+        Decentralized Identifiers may come to underpin much of our digital life. This 
+        may include our public social and career personas, as well our private personas 
+        shared between friends and family. Identifiers representing these personas and 
+        relationships are some of the most important in people's lives, and great care 
+        should be taken when securing an identifier system that supports these critical 
+        activities. As with all things, strong consideration for the appropriate and ethical 
+        use of technology should be made when implementing items related to DIDs.
+      </p>
+
+      <p>
+        As noted in the <a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#principles">Principles</a>
+        section of the Ethical Web Principles, there are certain key goals that should 
+        apply to all Web standards and technologies. DIDs explicitly support several
+        of these goals, especially the following:
+        <ul>
+          <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#privacy">Privacy</a></li>
+          <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#control">Individual Control</a></li>
+          <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#multi">Device Independence</a></li>
+        </ul>
+      </p>
+    </section>
+
+    <section class="informative">
+      <h3>Energy Usage and Environmental Impacts</h3>
+      <p class="advisement">
+        The following section reflects the views of some members of the working group.
+        Additional PRs are welcome from the working group with additional points of view.
+      </p>
+
+      <section class="informative">
+        <h3>Environmental Principles as Applied to DID method development</h3>
+        <p>
+          When implementing or utilizing a DID method, consideration should be given
+          to the environmental impacts of any underlying technologies.  
+          Avoidance of excess energy use that does not further other equally important 
+          goals such as human rights or personal privacy, particularly when that energy 
+          is sourced from non-sustainable energy creation methods, is a best 
+          practice that serves the interest of all.
+        </p>
+
+        <p>
+          Direct comparison of each factor, and the balances between them, should be
+          considered when evaluating particular methods or approaches. Notably, the
+          ability to misuse or control DIDs that could impede privacy might be
+          found to be inversely correlated with additional energy consumption.
+        </p>
+
+        <p class="advisement">
+          The guiding principle that 
+          <a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#sustainable">the
+          web must be an environmentally sustainable platform</a> should be followed.
+          <br />As part of following this principle,    
+          utilizing or authoring DID methods that require unsustainably-sourced 
+          energy as part of their technical implementation or utilization should
+          be very carefully considered in balance against alternative approaches.
+        </p>
+
+        <p>
+          When selecting a DID method, the method that minimizes energy consumption 
+          while meeting privacy, interoperability, and other technical requirements
+          should generally be chosen.
+        </p>
+      </section>
+
+      <section class="informative">
+        <h3>Environmental Impact Assesment</h3>
+
+        <p>
+          The energy usage and other environmental impacts of a DID-based solution
+          should also be compared to existing approaches, which are often paper based
+          and/or require shipment of legacy certificates via air or other methods, and
+          thus can have extremely high environmental impacts. These should be factored
+          in when performing an assessment of energy usage and environmental impacts
+          of potential replacement solutions based on DIDs.
+        </p>
+
+        <p>
+          Utilizing or authoring DID methods that compromise on
+          the principles of security and / or control for other principles
+          of such as environmental concerns should be very carefully 
+          considered in balance against alternative approaches that may
+          provide the highest levels of security and protection.
+          The specific use case for a DID method will help determine the
+          optimal approach.  For matters that concern human rights, selection 
+          of approaches that are weighted towards privacy and control should 
+          outweigh other considerations.
+        </p>
+
+        <p class="advisement">
+          It is strongly recommended that authors of DID methods provide an assessment
+          of energy usage and impact of their DID method, preferably performed by
+          an independent third party.
+        </p>
+
+      </section>
+    </section>
+
+    <section class="informative">
+      <h3>Considerations for Applications related to Human Rights</h3>
+      <p>
+        Use of DIDs in furtherance of the improvement of the overall condition of 
+        the human species is highly desirable.  Examples of related work where 
+        decentralized technologies have been utilized to prevent use of minerals
+        sourced from conflict zones may be found in the following reports from
+        <a href="https://sustainability.google/progress/projects/traceability/">Google</a>
+        and
+        <a href="https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Conflict-Minerals-Report.pdf">Apple</a>.
+        DIDs serve a unique purpose in supporting privacy and enabling individual 
+        control over identifiers while also enabing accurate tracing of an individual
+        item's provenance to ensure that that item did not originate from use of
+        forced labor or have other aspects in its production process or supply 
+        chain that were inconsistent with a basic respect for human rights. 
+      </p>
+
+      <p>
+        Use of DIDs to trace the environmental impacts of various supply chains 
+        has already been performed, specifically in areas of food and agricultural
+        products.  
+        This type of usage demonstrates clearly that the new technology can be utilized 
+        in a manner that the consumed energy is balanced by the advantage of being able
+        to understand environmental impacts and make suggestions to actors in 
+        the supply chain under analysis that facilitate improvement of the overall 
+        environmental situation for our shared planet.  This type of usage of 
+        DIDs, for areas that help us understand, mitigate, and respond to our shared
+        crisis of human caused climate change, should be promoted. 
+      </p>
+    </section>
+  </section>
+
   <section>
     <h2>Future Work</h2>
     <p class="note">