SPECIAL REPORT (GENEVA) - On the opening day of its sixth meeting, the Aarhus Convention’s Task Force on Electronic Information Tools held a mini-conference, “Agenda 21 and the Information Society: Assessing Progress on Closing the Digital Divide, Access to Environmental Information and ICT for Sustainable Development in the ECE Region".
The conference, which was attended by 37 national and international experts from 17 UNECE Member States, the European Community, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, marked the 15th anniversary of the adoption of Agenda 21 and principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development at the Rio Earth Summit. It explored synergies between the access to information pillar of the Aarhus Convention and developments in the Information Society, including those in the rapidly evolving fields of e-Environment, e-Commerce and e-Democracy.
The event was chaired by Charles Geiger, Special Adviser for the UNCTAD Secretariat on the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD). During the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Mr. Geiger had served as WSIS Executive Director. CSTD is charged with monitoring United Nations follow-up on the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society.
“There are clear links between the WSIS-process and principle 10 [of the Rio Declaration]," Mr. Geiger said in opening remarks addressed to the Convention’s eTools experts. He continued
“The outcome documents of WSIS, the Geneva Declaration and Geneva Plan of Action as well as the Tunis Commitment and the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society did not create international public law. UN Summit outcomes, despite being important documents, are only morally binding. This is the difference e.g. to the conventions in your field of work, which are normative and legally binding instruments. Conventions are one step ahead in the process and this makes your field of work very interesting.”
Role of Clearinghouses
A special session of the mini-conference addressed collaboration, networking and partnerships on information clearing-house mechanisms. The session featured five UN-sponsored clearinghouses, organized through collaborative agreements between UN agencies, regional and national governmental and non-governmental organizations.
The Caucasus Environmental NGO Network and Aarhus Public Environmental Information Centres were also presented as examples of partnerships providing information to environmental decision-makers and the general public.
The UN has entrusted implementation of the WSIS outcomes to informal Action line platform meetings, “thought to be some sort of ‘clearinghouse’ for the exchange of information, presentation of best practices and possibly also creation of multi-stakeholder partnerships”, Mr. Geiger said.
In practice, these are not working as well as expected. The e-Environment WSIS Action line is dormant. “CSTD will need to revisit Action line facilitation”, Mr. Geiger added.
Cell phones may change how governments monitor the environment
The fast spread of mobile telephony and its potential for empowering the public to monitor the local environment were emphasized by Prof. Larissa Kapitsa, who presented the results of a study of the state of the Information Society in the ECE region commissioned by the UNECE.
In 2003, at the Geneva Summit, about 1 billion cell phones were in use worldwide. At the end of 2005, at the Tunis Summit, the figure was already 2 billion. By 2010/11, we will probably reach 4 billion and by 2012-14 or so nearly 5 billion users, according to Mr. Geiger.
Chris Jarvis, the Chair of the Task Force, reported that the Environment Agency for England and Wales was monitoring these developments and their potential impact on the future of environmental regulatory agencies.
“When the public can make its own measurements of environmental quality and its observations clash with officially published information, whose data will be believed?”, Mr. Jarvis asked.
For more information, see http://www.unece.org/env/pp/electronictools3.htm.
