Networking the environment and development arena

Facilitating partnership and communication between people, projects and organizations that are working to create and maintain a sustainable environment for the development of earth and humanity.

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends that governments should facilitate and support national to local networking of information

Some networks and communications services assumed a leadership role on Earth Summit issues and have continued monitoring UN conferences, keeping their members and subscribers up to date on UN activities in the environment and development field and discussing relevant technical and procedural matters through the Commission for Sustainable Development. These include the Malaysia-based Third World Network, the Uruguayan NGO Net, and the coalesced USA organizations – the International Working Group on Institutional Change, the US Citizens Network on Sustainable Development and the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

The Regional Environmental Information Network of the Global Environmental Monitoring System (UNEP) promotes exchange of information to support strategies for collective preventative or remedial action.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are leaders among research organizations creating electronic information services for sustainable development. Their two-year project Spinning the Web is to create a sustainable development information electronic network of expanded content and broader appeal to decision makers and people throughout the world. The planned outcome is a highly sophisticated, yet extremely accessible distributed network designed to draw a broader range of people into the web of information required for sustainable development action. Partnerships will be fostered with a core group of at least four organizations in different parts of the world, and alliances with an additional six, and possibly more, collaborating institutions.

The Dublin Declaration on Access to Environmental Information (15 September 2000) calls on countries to enhance networking and coordinating mechanisms, primarily in the form of consortia of key environmental information suppliers from both the governmental, non-governmental and private sectors to achieve a sustainable interactive information system as well as improving international cooperation.