UNEP undertakes first Asia-Pacific examination of linkage between Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and the Environment

Must aid environment and development, not heighten the gap between the haves and have-nots - Toepfer

New Delhi/Bangkok, May 2 - The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has initiated a critical examination of the linkages between information and communications technologies (ICT) and environmental protection in a workshop that opens in New Delhi today.

The first initiative of its sort in Asia and the Pacific will be attended by UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, environment ministers from India, Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and many leaders from state government, civil society and business.

"Debate about ICT inevitably opens up profound questions about the means and ends of 'development', the disparities between the haves and have-nots, and the potential of technological innovation to address global environmental problems," Mr Toepfer will tell the more than 200 workshop participants.

The workshop comes just weeks before the launch of UNEP's flagship Global Environment Outlook 3 report that will present four contrasting and plausible future scenarios based on the degree of uptake of technological innovation, plus free market policies, government regulation, security issues and cohesive social values.

"It would be a folly to believe that computers and mobile phones can solve the number one development challenge of poverty eradication, but ICT has shown remarkable potential for enhancing human and environmental well being," Mr Toepfer said.

Last month UNEP announced that nearly 50 glacial lakes in the Himalayas were at risk of bursting their banks, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk, due to changes in climate. Such predictive capacity has been made possible through the computer analysis of high-resolution satellite data, remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping techniques.

*1 In the South Indian village of Pondichery provision of community Internet booths has brought health and economic benefits. Women turned access to information into enhanced health care for themselves and their children, while men gained increased returns for their produce through knowledge of market prices. Whether literate or semi-literate, capacity to absorb and adapt to ICT was found to be high, particularly among women. Such research has also highlighted the importance of ensuring ICT applications meet local needs and provide locally-relevant content.*2

Analyses like GEO show that increasing population, economic activity and consumptive lifestyles are placing unsustainable burdens on the earth's natural systems and finite resources. Creating prosperity through much less wasteful and harmful use of resources has been identified as the over-arching sustainable development challenge.

Trends in ICT towards miniaturization of components, and its capacity to monitor resource and energy use through production processes, can greatly reduce environmental and economic costs. Enhanced connectivity enables people to transact businesses from home, saving commuting time, energy and pollution from transportation. Mobile networks are allowing whole phases of 'hard-wired' infrastructure development to be 'leapfrogged' in many parts of the world.*3

"It is these connections between environment and science, environment and community participation, environment and trade that UNEP is drawing attention to in the build up to August's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg," Mr Toepfer said.

"We have an opportunity this year to rejuvenate our commitment to sustainable development and agree on the practical ways to improve quality of life and environment, not just quantity of consumption," Mr Toepfer said. "As US nature advocate Edward Abbey astutely noted, growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."

The workshop will examine successful ICT applications in the Asia Pacific context and develop strategies to extend their benefits.

These include on-line training packages for environmental technology assessment project (enTA), developed by UNEP, to enable planners and policy makers to access information about the environmental impacts of technologies; the Demonstrator Applications Grants Scheme (DAGS) in Malaysia which has provided seed funding for innovative environment and development applications of ICT; and applications such as LEARNZ which has taken school children to some of the world's most remote nature reserves through the Internet and teleconferencing.

Following the workshop UNEP will support a regional network of ICT developers and providers and the establishment of 'centers of excellence' to promote applications focused on urban and rural development, natural resource management, consumption and production, and 'south-south' cooperation and transfer.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat is expected to announce the expansion of the DAGS project through its region, plus the utilization of funds provided through India as an ASEAN dialogue partner for implementation of such projects.

The meeting will also allow UNEP to introduce its Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) to South Asia. GeSI involves some of the world's biggest ICT companies who are committed to environmentally friendly and sustainable business practices. The initiative will help address the issues documented recently in a report published by the Basel Action Network. "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia" showed how the used computers shipped from the United States were creating acute human and environmental impacts at primitive dismantling sites in India and China.

The two-day workshop will take place at the India HABITAT Centre in New Delhi and is jointly organized by UNEP, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the TATA Energy Research Institute (TERI).