Sustainability in the digital economy: cyberecology of business

Strategies for the digital transformation of the public, corporate and private sectors are seen today as a universal tool for ensuring competitiveness, sustainability and efficiency. Every year the level of digitalization is growing, as well as the space required for data storage. The development and spread of digital technologies also leads to the emergence of new threats associated with them. However, the problems and risks caused by digitalization, which are not inferior in scale and significance to its merits, often remain without due attention from researchers and regulators. This determines the relevance of creating new approaches aimed at studying the impact of the processes of creating, storing, transferring and using data on social, environmental and economic spheres. An attempt is made to close this gap. The expediency of using the concept of “cyberecology” for the systematic consideration of the problems of sustainable development in the digital environment is substantiated, its definition is given and its place in the system of related disciplines is analyzed. The influence of data on cyberspace, the environment and the socio-environment is analyzed using the methods of content analysis, correlation-regression analysis, time series analysis and the method of reference dynamics. The role of cyberecology in the implementation of the ESG approach and the implementation of the concept of sustainable development is considered, the consequences of the uncontrolled development of the cybersphere and the virtualization of the social sphere are determined. Time trends for the amount of information created and used, electricity consumption, CO2 emissions per capita, energy intensity of GDP and damage caused by Internet crimes are identified and analyzed. The forecasts of changes in the energy intensity of GDP and CO2 emissions in the context of the development of the digital economy are considered, the principles of cyberecology in ensuring sustainable development in the digital environment are clarified.