"While data minimization and a certain frugality are principles of data protection, could data protection be part of environmental protection?"

To explore the answers to this question, LINC - the CNIL's Digital Innovation Laboratory - chose to enlist the services of the Plan.Net France agency. Together, the two entities carried out a Design Fiction project, which resulted in the Climatopie website (www.climatopie.fr).

Climatopie is first and foremost a thorough exploration of our imaginations in relation to the climate crisis and the place of digital technology in our lives. With the LINC teams, we've delved into the films, TV series and novels that tell us about the future. We also studied the news, to find out how the media shape our vision of the future.

François Houste, Consulting Director, Plan.Net France

Using these imaginary worlds as a starting point, Plan.Net spoke to a number of professionals from sectors as diverse as the automotive, advertising, travel, public institutions and agri-food industries, to find out their vision of the future based on three pre-established scenarios:

- What if... tomorrow our lives were punctuated by emissions, pollution and data quotas?

- What if... tomorrow, environmental impact became public data, for individuals and companies alike?

- What if... tomorrow the digital world had to adapt to the collapse of resources?

These are the thoughts behind the six stories in Climatopie: six illustrated stories that explore the links between digital technology, the environment and the protection of data and freedoms. Six stories that project you into a more or less near future:

The LINC regularly uses fiction and design fiction techniques in its foresight work. These are ways of producing objects for reflection, so that everyone can project themselves into the risks and challenges associated with data protection, and better respond to them. The combination of environment and freedom is a fertile source of imagination, inviting us to anticipate in order to better shape our future.

Régis Chatellier, in charge of Innovation and Prospective studies at the CNIL's Digital Innovation Laboratory.

One last point: the Climatopie site is based on Pico, a free, open-source CMS that has the unique feature of not using any database. It does not use any third-party platform and does not deposit any cookies on visitors' computers. To talk about environmental protection and personal data, it seemed appropriate to use the most frugal technology possible.