Vol. III No. 8
August 2005
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
Eco-friendly actions
Seven strategic areas for ICT and environment Information for development
www.i4d.csdms.in
e-Livelihood in Africa Story telling for knowledge sharing: iConnect special
Network of networks
ISSN 0972 - 804X
MDG 7 (Environment)
Mountain Forum
April 2004 | www.i4donline.net
1
knowledge for change
Contents
Vol. III No. 8
Features
6
Ensuring Environmental Sustainability
7
The Conservation Commons A global environmental knowledge network Thomas D Moritz and T Hammond
10
Seven Strategic Areas Eco-friendly actions
August 2005
Ecotourism Sustainablity in Malaysia Cyber solution to ecotourism rating Vikneswaran Nair et. al.
15 18
European Commission Project Defining environmental sustainability Carlos R Casal and Lorenz Erdmann
Mountain Forum Network of networks Ujol Sherchan
19
info@i4donline.net
23 News Columns
21
Bridging the Content Gap
34
Zooming in
Dennis Pamlin
13
Mailbox
Manthan e-Content Award
Business social initiatives Sudhir K Sinha
39
Books received
42 44
Bytes for All
45 46
What’s on
Disaster feature Geography of disasters
In Fact Discovering the decay
I am a regular reader of your magazines and have benefited myself on several counts that these magazines have very effectively brought in. Especially, committing to promote MDGs in a series publication was a unique and wonderful idea towards sensitizing people in India on MDGs – which, to the best of my knowledge, no organization and magazine in India have done so. I sincerely congratulate the whole team for putting in their best effort – innovatively and very successfully towards exceeding the expectations of readers Sudhir K Sinha MoserBaer sudhir.sinha@moserbaer.net
Global Summit An eager wait for September... Saswati Paik
22 Akashganga
Simple ICT solutions for livelihood
Rendezvous
40
Ujval Shrinivas Parghi
Establishing communication rights
41 telling for knowledge 27 Story sharing e-Livelihood in Africa
35 ICTD project newsletter
Discussion Meeting Communication Rights, June 30, 2005, Dhaka, Bangladesh Second Annual Convention of National Alliance on Mission 2007, July 10-12, 2005 New Delhi Finding ways to realise a national dream
i4donline.net News Search ICT4D news by date in the sectors of governance, health, education, agriculture and so on. E-mail Subscribe to daily, weekly, monthly newsletters online or send request to info@i4donline.net
I am glad to see your excellent editing to improve my article. Please convey my greetings to all colleagues in I4D. Shahjahan Siraj UnnayanNet siraj@unnayannet.org
I receive your print magazine as well as e-updates…. as an operator of a ‘mobile women’s community radio station’ in Fiji as well as member of AMARC, where at the upcoming Asia-Pacific conference we are going to be addressing regulatory issues, I would like the steering committee to also read this article (“mixed signals of expectations’ in the June 2005 edition) - as well as others here in the pacific island region… Sharon Bhagwan Rolls fem’LINKpacific: Media Initiatives for Women Email: femlinkpac@connect.com.fj
Research e-Learning projects from India. www.i4d.csdms.in/elearn.asp
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April
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May
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i4d | August 2005
Editorial Information for development
The poor have a right to live with dignity
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ADVISORY BOARD M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Amitabha Pande Indian Administrative Service Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Ichiro Tambo OECD, France Karl Harmsen Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific, India Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Mohammed Yunus Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Nagy Hanna Information Solutions Group, World Bank, USA Richard Fuchs IDRC, Canada S Ramani Research Director, H.P.Labs, India Walter Fust Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France EDITORIAL BOARD Akhtar Badshah, Frederick Noronha EDITORIAL TEAM Editor Ravi Gupta Editorial Consultant Jayalakshmi Chittoor Sr Programme Officers Rumi Mallick, Saswati Paik Research Associates Sejuti Sarkar De, Tanzeena Ghoshe Mukherjee Designers Bishwajeet Kumar Singh, Deepak Kumar Web Programmer Zia Salahuddin Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India Phone +91 120 250 2180-87 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4d.csdms.in Contact us in Singapore 25 International Business Park, #4-103F, German Centre, Singapore - 609916 Phone +65-65627983 Fax +65-656227984 Printed at Yashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and CommnicationTechnologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.
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July 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
The unofficial draft (non paper) of the World Summit (previously called the Millennium Plus 5 Summit) has been released on July 22, 2005. Though the draft has major improvements in recognising the role of the environment in development. The Millennium Development Goal 7 is to ensure environmental sustainability. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has recently released a position paper that reiterates the need to focus on a sustainable development perspective with an emphasis on poverty reduction. Among the three targets for MDG 7 on environment (targets 9, 10 and 11), target 9 is the least reported by countries. The decade spanning 2005-15 has been declared as “Celebrating water for life: International Decade for Action�. This directly reinforces and urges countries to meet the Target 10, which is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Though the drinking water targets are more or less being met, except in sub-Saharan Africa, the global sanitation coverage is way below the targets. Nearly half of the developing world i.e. about 2.6 billion people still live without improved sanitation. The way to achieve this is to take an integrated water resources management process to implement cost effective and sustainable solutions in developing countries, and for the developed world to assist them in its implementation. This will, for the poor families, mean better health, longer lives and greater dignity. Another important task would be to ensure that adequate treatment and disposal of wastewater is made so to save the ecosystems, and lesser contamination of precious groundwater. Fast forward to 2007, and reflect on Target 11. The situation looks rather grim. The target: achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. The number of slum dwellers would already be numbering from 0.75 to 1.0 billion and would be nearly one sixth of the world population. These figures could rapidly increase in the coming years. A European Union report in Ireland made in 2004 estimates the cost of achieving target 11 at $50 billion. Ensuring that the MDG 7 targets are met is critical to the achievement of other goals, as they are closely linked. Another important factor is to put in place the mechanism for decentralised management of the resources generated and fulfilling the goals by national governments, in collaboration with private sector and the civil society. MDGs are not simply goals set out by the UN and signed on by 187 countries, they are very much targets that we, as a society, must contribute to achieve.
Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in
5
MDG 7
Ensuring Environmental sustainability
A family struggles to survive in India
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can play a significant role in addressing some of the key challenges, including sharing of knowledge and expertise, some of which are covered in this special issue on ICTs and Environment. This issue of i4d focuses on how a more connected world is learning from each other, sharing valuable data and information, forming alliances and advocating for the issues relating to environmental sustainability.
The scene reverberates in many poor countries
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Rio Earth Summit took place in 1992. The World Summit on Sustainable Development was held a decade later. 2005 will be a stocktaking year for the Global Summit, which is a five year review of the eight goals set out as Millennium Development Goals by the United Nations in 2000. The commitments made during various global meetings and summits have to be backed by national goals and programmes and supported by critical financial resources and expertise. It is evident that more collaborative efforts are needed to address the economic and environmental marginalisation that afflicts millions of people, especially in the poorer countries. According to Christopher Flavin, the Worldwatch President, whose organisation produce the State of the World report each year, “Pressures on the world’s natural systems, from global warming to the depletion and degradation of resources such as fisheries and fresh water, have further destabilized societies.” The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan is more optimistic and notes, “all of us should understand that not only that we face common threats, but also that there are common opportunities to be seized if we respond to this challenge as a single human community.” Progress has been slow due to three critical factors: • Most international treaties on environment suffer setbacks due to weak commitments and inadequate funding, while military expenditures are running as high as US$ 2 billion a day. • Despite massive economic outputs, especially due to globalisation and market driven economies, international aid for development has actually declined globally. • Third world debt crisis is worsening. The total debt burden in developing and transition countries has reached a whopping 2.5 trillion in 2000 What is encouraging is that more multistakeholder partnerships have emerged; more agencies from civil society are
complementing the work of governments and finding innovative solutions that can be implemented at much lower costs.
The three specific targets Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. This includes forest cover, areas designated for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, focus on energy efficiency, reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and consumption of greenhouse gases, and reduce the dependency on biomass/solid fuel use. Target 10: Have, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. This includes addressing the water access issues, and to improve access to basic sanitation. Countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Namibia have set timebound and measurable targets for both urban and rural areas. The world is on target except in the subSaharan African region, where the condition is severe. Target 11: By 2020, to have achieved significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. Apart from rolling back the growing slums, targets include providing secure tenure, and improve housing and service sector investments. The datasets to monitor the progress and follow up on the indicators are held with several of the lead UN agencies. Few environmental issues like sewage and wastewater treatment, solid waste management, etc. are some key environmental priorities that go beyond the global framework, but are critical to achieve these targets. Some of the key challenges to ensuring environmental sustainability are rapid population growth, rapid urbanization, governance and management limitations, lack of knowledge expertise, weak technological and institutional capacities and lack of financial and technical capacity. i4d | August 2005
T HE C ONSERVATION C OMMONS
A global environmental knowledge network Conservation commons is a network of committed global conservation organisations who contribute data and share environmental information.
Thomas Daniel Moritz American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA tmoritz@amnh.org
Tom Hammond IUCN – The World Conservation Union, Canada tom.hammond@iucn.org
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Organisational efforts for biome As, the environmental degradation, species decline, and habitat loss continue to accelerate, the earth’s life support systems, as illustrated of late in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), are under increasing stress – in some cases to the breaking point, by human activity. Much of the world’s biodiversity now exists solely in isolated reserves or protected areas, and although there are more organisations and groups devoted to conservation than ever before – things are getting worse. Environmental organisations, however, generally do not directly control or ‘own’ the biodiversity and natural resources they are seeking to conserve, and thus in most cases, cannot act directly to preserve these resources. The common mission of these organisations, rather, is to better understand the natural world and the stresses that human society is placing on the environment. They also want to develop and perfect approaches for using and conserving these resources in a responsible and equitable manner, and influence those whose decisions most directly impact biodiversity. Indeed, generating comprehensive data, expertise, and knowledge on the distribution, conservation, and sustainable use of biodiversity are central tenets of the conservation community. Information, therefore, is arguably the most valuable contribution made by the environmental community towards the preservation of the web of life on this planet.
Data conservation for environment conservation Digital information and data resources, on the other hand, are what economists term ‘non-rivalrous’ resources. That is, each incremental ‘use’ does not diminish either
the quality nor the availability of these resources, once created and stored in a digital environment, these assets can be used, transferred, and improved indefinitely – rapidly (and exponentially) expanding our understanding of the natural world and how best to conserve it. Much of the data, information, or expertise that the conservation biologists and ecologists require is fragmented, difficult to find, or simply not accessible to the conservation community. This challenge is magnified where varying data formats and standards limit ‘interoperability’ – or how data contained in independent systems may interconnect –impeding conservation efforts domestically, as well as at regional and global levels. In the event that we are able to identify the resources we need, difficulties abound when we attempt to integrate the plethora of data and information into useful forms. Common standards to easily relate, say, taxonomic records with bio-geographic information such as soil or vegetation types, or ‘best practice’ regarding the conservation of a particular taxonomic group or ecosystem in a way useful for policy makers, in most cases simply do not exist. Information sharing initiatives may also run up against substantial cultural, institutional, and legal barriers. In the case of conservation organisations, while they may share a common mission they are also friendly rivals (and at times competitors) with respect to funding and public attention. Indigenous communities have also voiced strong concerns that they have increasingly lost control of their knowledge resources – indeed their cultural heritage– to commercial or other interests. These challenges also provide opportunities for conservation agencies to collectively find solutions.
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Identifying Solutions Conservation and research organisations wishing to actively pursue an open access approach to information and knowledge management could simply act unilaterally and place their assets in the public domain. This response, however, poses the potential constraints of information resources created for scientific, educational, and related purposes be used for commercial gain. These considerations led to a proposed alternative as a complement to the pure public domain. The notion of a biodiversity or conservation ‘knowledge commons’, defining a framework of free yet equitable use for data, information and knowledge resources (i.e. a ‘zone of fair use’) began to take root in the mid-1990s. A group of prominent conservation organisations came together in 1995 to establish an institutional framework for data and information sharing, the Biodiversity Conservation Information System (BCIS) and build on the simple notion that by working together to effectively share information resources the conservation community could achieve far more than through individual action. Led by Colin Bibby of Birdlife International, this effort paralleled similar initiatives gaining momentum in the open source software community, the creative arts, and medical research fields. The purpose of BCIS was to encourage and nurture the conscious sharing of biodiversity knowledge resources within the global conservation community, and to support environmentally sound decision-making and action.
WDPA as an open access information resource to the global community. Several years after the conclusion of the BCIS initiative, a group of 48 representatives from 27 organisations; met in May 2004 at The World Conservation Union (IUCN)’s Headquarters in Gland, Switzerland. Representatives included many of the original BCIS members, the scientific and research community, multilateral organisations, indigenous people, and the private sector. The meeting generated a highly constructive exchange of ideas on the notion of conservation knowledge ‘commons’.
To view the 2005 World Database visit: http://parksdata.conserveonline.org
BCIS Consortium Members • • • • • • • • • • • •
Birdlife International Botanical Gardens Conservation International Conservation International ISIS IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management IUCN Commission on Environmental Law IUCN Species Survival Commission IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas The Nature Conservancy - NatureServe TRAFFIC Wetlands International The World Conservation Monitoring Center
The results of this initiative, however, were mixed. With the World Wide Web, and the information technology architecture supporting it just beginning to take shape, it became clear that the information sharing ideas of BCIS were slightly ahead of existing capabilities. Institutional constraints were perhaps even more ubiquitous. Information, like biodiversity, is a precious resource. Many conservation and research groups preferred to move cautiously with respect to opening full access to resources they had invested a great deal in creating. One important direct result was the visiting committee organised and drawn from the BCIS Consortium to review the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) protected areas database. This work led directly to the formation of the World Database on Protected Areas Consortium, and ultimately to the release of three successive versions of the
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A draft set of core Principles were debated, and refined and a final set of Principles for the Conservation Commons were presented to, and accepted by, the IUCN Membership at the World Conservation Congress of November 2004. The concerns raised in the intellectual property rights debate, and particularly traditional knowledge, are explicitly addressed through the responsible use and due attribution provisions of the Principles and implicitly through the notion that data providers may specify ‘terms of use’ and limit access as they see fit. The Principles have generated an enormous amount of interest and dialogue, and to date over 40 organisations from a wide variety of sectors, both local and global, have formally endorsed these Principles. Over the past 10 years since the creation of BCIS, the reach and capacity of the global IT infrastructure has expanded exponentially, and conservationists are much more adept at taking advantage of it. The open source movement has also grown rapidly, and new open access initiatives abound. In addition, the notion that conservation
To endorse the principles, to join the online forum or to contribute data and content, visit www.conservationcommons.org i4d | August 2005
PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSERVATION COMMONS Principle 1 Open Access: The Conservation Commons promotes free and open access to data, information and knowledge for conservation purposes. Principle 2 Mutual Benefit: The Conservation Commons welcomes and encourages participants to both use these resources and to contribute data, information and knowledge. Principle 3 Rights and Responsibilities: Contributors to the Conservation Commons have full right to attribution for any use of their data, information, or knowledge, and the right to ensure that the original integrity of their contribution to the Commons is preserved. Users of the Conservation Commons are expected to comply, in good faith, with terms of uses specified by contributors and in accordance with these Principles.
organisations must work together on a variety of fronts, and in particular in sharing the primary commodity they generate – information – is now an ethic shared by a much broader group of managers and practitioners in the conservation community, from CEOs to project officers, than the few ‘early adopters’ of a decade earlier. The Principles of the Conservation Commons are also a reflection of a number of important and commonly held values regarding the use of information in the scientific and conservation communities – shared responsibilities, fair play, due attribution, and ultimately managing and maintaining quality control over data and information assets.
Putting Principles into Practice The Conservation Commons is first and foremost an idea, and the Principles are at the centre of this idea. They encourage organisations and individuals alike to ensure open access to data, information, expertise, and knowledge resources on the conservation of biodiversity, allowing others to benefit from and innovate with these assets in service of a universally held mission. More importantly they provide a common ethical ‘playing field’, to share information with confidence that these resources will not be used for purposes for which they were not intended. Equally as important, participants in the Conservation Commons recognise the need to focus attention on improving efficiencies in the creation, use and management of information critical for conservation efforts. A common approach – and common standards – to sharing data and information will make it possible to quickly and easily find conservation information, inform key policy development processes, and learn more effectively from past successes and failures. At the same time, effectively leveraging existing information assets will help to create new ones and address knowledge gaps, potentially generating huge benefits for future conservation work. August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Many initiatives for generating specific data sets on biodiversity and conservation, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the Species Information System, and others, already exist or are being developed. The Conservation Commons will not duplicate these efforts. Rather, this initiative will promote an open access framework, as outlined in the Principles, and directly support integration and logical synthesis of data and information resources and technical ‘interoperability’ between these systems. This would entail as a first step, to develop, test, and adjust data sharing architecture (flexible and adaptable), in order to effectively link a limited number of key independent systems. Most aspects of environmental conservation are place-based. Whether it is species, protected areas, hot spots, or viewed through the lens of a private company wishing to utilise natural resources – conservation successes or failures and the work of conservationists throughout the world is largely focused on key sites, places, and ecosystems – all of which may be defined geographically. This site-based focus lends itself well to a new generation of web-enabled geographic information systems, capable of incorporating and intelligently organising data and information well beyond that which was capable in printed thematic maps. A number of initiatives, such as the NASA ‘Protected Area Archive’ and ‘World Wind’ initiatives, the National Geographic Society’s ‘World Base-Map of Conservation’, and Harvard Professor E.O. Wilson’s ‘Biodiversity Atlas’ are experimenting with this approach – creating (or seeking to create) highly interactive open access and web-enabled biodiversity information resources organised through a geographic interface. The Conservation Commons is experimenting with GIS-based data sharing models and working with existing databases and systems in the development of a web-enabled data sharing model which incorporates large volumes of data in an easily manageable and intelligent retrieval system.
Getting Involved The international community made a commitment in Johannesburg to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, as well as to track progress towards achieving this target. Open and efficient access to the best available scientific information, knowledge resources, and best practice, and effective cooperation in accessing and sharing these assets, is central to this effort - with anything less significant progress towards achieving this target will not be made. A straight forward way to assist in this process is through endorsement of the Principles of the Conservation Commons. The Principles may be consulted and endorsed on line at www.conservationcommons.org, which also provides a variety of additional resources, access to discussion groups, and background information. The open access, responsible use, and due attribution provisions of the Principles is central to this initiative. Endorsement of these Principles represents an explicit step by participating organisations towards joining a rapidly growing community of organisations working together to put these values into practice. Comprehensive and easily accessible information, and expert knowledge, on biodiversity and its conservation is a long-held dream and this cooperative approach based on common values will help to ensure that this reality is open to all and global in scope.
9
S EVEN S TRATEGIC A REAS
FOR
ICT
AND
E NVIRONMENT
Eco-friendly actions ICT development will not contribute to the acceleration of the current negative trends, but will instead contribute towards sustainable development. A limited number of areas need to be prioritised to start with.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is right now exploring the possibilities to engage in a more proactive way in India. The experiences from China have been very encouraging. A report by WWF, ‘Chinese companies in the 21st Century - helping or destroying the planet’, has created a lot of interest and WWF hope to produce something similar for India. But for this we need good cases, especially in the field of ICT.
The future of the planet For too long the environmental agenda as been set by the north. The language and way to approach the global challenges have been developed in a context that often have failed to incorporate the perspective of other parts of the world. As a global organisation, WWF is therefore shifting its focus from north to emerging economies such as India in areas such as new technologies, trade and investment. Many are worried by the implications of the economic growth of India and China and the difficulty of tackling the problems it is set to generate; problems which will have ramifications for the rest of the world. Increasingly, other poor countries are pinning their own economic development hopes on providing the natural resource base for these emerging economies: soy from Latin America, oil from Africa, timber from South East Asia. Considering the historical precedents for the succession of one global superpower by another, we should be concerned about the environmental implications. The need for ICT solutions that can provide welfare without increased resource consumption should be obvious.
Grounds for hope Dennis Pamlin World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Sweden dennis.pamlin@wwf.se
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Instead of worry, WWF would like to see this change as an opportunity and a ground for hope. Increasingly, environmental problems such as climate change are coming to be seen not just as problems to be considered in a narrow ‘environment’ box, but rather as challenges, which strike to the
heart of international relations and global economic welfare. This is where WWF, which has now been working in countries like China and India for twenty-five to thirty-five years, has something to offer. If we are to meet the global target such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention of Biodiversity, etc, we must start to think outside the box and include the frontrunners in the emerging economies. WWF must move beyond the environment ministry, and include also to those in government who are charged with long-term economic planning, development of technology and trade and investment policy. These are the people who will decide, for example, whether colossal investment in meeting India’s and China’s energy demand is to be channelled to building more coalfired power stations and buying oil from countries with questionable human-rights records, or whether they will invest this money in the development of new urban solutions with energy efficient solutions that can be fuelled by renewable alternatives. WWF also wants to see how it can support progressive companies who are willing to engage in the challenges ahead and to explore ways in way we can strengthen these companies, not only at a national level, but also through finding and opening new export markets. With a strong presence in European Union (EU) and US, WWF hopes to become a constructive partner in providing support for those who see opportunities in a sustainable future.
Beyond a simple polarised perspective Whether we like it or not, ICT will radically influence transport patterns, energy consumption, overall resource usage and, to an unknown degree, our culture and even the way we perceive the world, our relationship to it, and our actions as dictated by these new mores. Although ICT will have an enormous effect on tomorrow’s society, i4d | August 2005
surprisingly little research has been conducted regarding its future environmental and social consequences. Most of the work that has been done has reached one of two conclusions: either ICT will bring only good things, from solutions to world hunger and the elimination of all transportation problems to a revitalised democracy; or ICT will bring nothing but problems, accelerating resource consumption, introducing new toxic materials and resulting in greater inequity by introducing a digital divide that will worsen the already unequal distribution of wealth and influence. The first challenge is if we want to tackle the challenges surrounding ICT for the future, is to go beyond this polarised perspective. The complexity of ICT makes it difficult to approach in a traditional manner, which focuses only on the direct impacts of extraction, manufacturing, use, and disposal. It is vital that all due caution be taken when responding to ICT-based challenges. The impact of ICT must be viewed in a very broad sense, from cultural changes caused by the use of new technologies, to the appearance of new possibilities for shaping a new economy in which production and consumption patterns look fundamentally different.
Seven strategic areas for action Corporations, organisations and political parties are all very enthusiastic about ICT and its possibilities, but judging from the actual results so far, these ideas and thoughts are seldom transformed into concrete action. This lack of results often seems to stem from a lack of focus. In order to focus, a limited number of areas need to be prioritised to start with. The areas chosen are, of course, not all that need to be addressed, but are among those that require rapid progress in order to ensure that ICT development will not contribute to the acceleration of the current negative trends, but will instead contribute towards sustainable development. ICT products The importance of ICT products is due to two basic causes: (i) ICTs broader credibility is threatened as there is a great risk that the political system and mass media will judge the whole sector as environmentally unfriendly if the sector as a whole does not have a clear environmental strategy even if ICT products themselves have only a marginal environmental impact; (ii) The rapid increase and penetration of ICT products can, if no action is taken, result in increased energy demand and bigger quantities of toxic substances. In order to address the issue of sustainability, the sustainable approach must be integrated throughout the entire life cycle of every new product. Low energy use and the no use of toxic substances should be goals that are encouraged from Research and Development (R&D) to the final act of recycling a product. Transport of goods One area where ICT can contribute significantly is the transport of goods. But it could also result in further investment in a system that is inherently unsustainable. Due care must therefore be taken in order to avoid a situation where investments only result in marginal short term reductions and create an infrastructure that makes it hard to reach the necessary long term solutions. When considering a sustainable transportation system, it is important to always think in terms of service. This process, along with the encouragement of August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Concrete examples Video-conferencing If 20% of business travel in Germany alone was replaced by ‘non travel solutions’,e.g. video-conference: 5.2 million tonnes CO2 emissions would be saved. Audio-conference calls If we replaced travel with 100 million audio-conference calls: 2.2 million tonnes CO2 emissions would be saved. Flexi-work If we got 100 million flexi-workers: 2.87 million tonnes CO2 emissions would be saved. Online billing If 100 million customers received online phone bills: 109,100 tonnes CO2 emissions would be saved. Web-based tax-return If 100 million web-based tax-returns were sent out: 101,400 tonnes CO2 emissions would be saved. Source: WWF-ETNO leaflet
local production, could set in place a less ecologically damaging economy. Business travels One strategic area where more advanced technology already exists, and where there could be a rapid and important shift towards sustainability, is business travel. Not only would a reduction in business travel result in significant environmental gains; but done in the right way it could also contribute to a corporate culture where physical transport would be an option to be avoided, if possible. The most important change needed in order to shift from a flying and car-driving culture to a videoconferencing and telecommuting culture is a small mental and institutional shift. For this shift to take place, there must be no compromise solutions. Full-wall high-resolution projections for virtual meetings should be a standard in all major corporations, and all major cities should supply this kind of facility for groups and corporations that do not have sufficient in-house resources. The technology exists; it is just a matter of co-ordinated investments, as there would be little point in only one city or company investing in such technology. Changes in production and consumption patterns Introducing ICT would make the economy more efficient in a number of ways: • More accurate estimation of demand, • The optimisation of production processes, • Facilitated updates of products. However, very little indicates that these improvements, sometimes called eco-efficiency, would be sufficient to reduce over-all resource and energy use. The most important issue that needs to be addressed is the very different economic and social situations on the planet.
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For the first time in history, a significant proportion of the world’s population is living a life without material scarcity. At the same time, a much larger proportion is still living in poverty. By using the same development model for both systems, many of the negative trends seem to be accelerating instead of reversing. Solving this challenge requires elaborating solutions for the more affluent parts of the globe to shift their economies from growth economies to quality economies, keeping sustainable development in focus instead of the old economic indicators. The energy system is just one example where most rich countries have a centralised large-scale system to deal with very large fluctuations. With a small scale system there is no need to build the same kind of over-capacity. Land use Looking ahead, many of today’s trends show that the exploitation of natural areas will continue. In order to address this issue, a multiprong strategy is required, wherein ICT could play a significant role. ICT can be used• To monitor land use in a more efficient manner than is currently the standard (e.g. satellites and probes in remote areas can help to understand and identify different threats, Geographical Information Systems may also be used to optimise land use); • To communicate not only the threats to, but also the beauty of untouched areas; • For more direct educational purposes, such as calculating and communicating the footprints left by various lifestyles in different parts of the world. New technologies With ICT and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) already available, difficult ethical, environmental and economic questions beg to be discussed. Much indicate that ethical questions regarding new technologies will be even more important in the years to come, as there will probably be new breakthroughs in areas such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics and quantum computing. In order to direct ICT and broader technological development in a sustainable direction, independent agencies should be created on both the national and international level to evaluate emerging technologies. One way to address this issue would be to develop an International Convention on New Technologies, to assess the societal and political implications of emerging technologies before their commercial release. Digital divide and digital bridge Today a digital divide, both within and between countries, is growing. This divide is a serious issue, as it tends to increase already existing gaps, making the poor on this planet even more isolated than before. To address this challenge, there must be a change in the methodology for addressing basic needs, acknowledging that it will be impossible for a purely commercial perspective to be used to close the digital divide. Let’s start now There is no time to waste and the world desperately need a new generation of entrepreneurs who are not afraid of a global perspective. Actors who are thinking about India’s emerging role as a global power house and how sustainable ICT solutions can be spread from India to the rest of the world must step forward.
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Internet-linked boats for ecological awareness in Bangladesh The river-dominated areas of Bangladesh are submerged for 3-4 months every year during the monsoon season. These floods prevent the government from providing services to the 20 million people. In addition, these river basin communities do not have access to information about water protection, and poor water practices are rampant, such as dumping pesticides and raw sewage into the rivers. As a result, these rivers have experienced an alarming level of toxicity and a sharp decline in fish production. Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS) has started Mobile Internet-Educational Unit Boats (MIEUB) to reduce pesticide use, improve water quality, and increase incomes for isolated river basin farming communities through distance learning programmes on water health and rights. This project is the only one of its kind to literally navigate the Bangladeshi river network to deliver water information and training services to these remote areas. In addition, the Internet capability allows the farmers to obtain commodity pricing information and communicate with others. This project expects to educate 100,000 farmers to take a more proactive approach to address water violation practices, while also helping them to achieve a 50 percent increase in agricultural productivity and income and a 60 percent reduction in pesticide and fertiliser use. http://web.worldbank.org/
EnviroInfo conference 20052005 The conference ‘EnviroInfo: Informatics for Environmental Protection’ will be hosted by Centre of Biostatics and Analyses, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic from 7-9 September, 2005. The conference will show the state-of-the-art in research, development and application, with a special focus on the networking environmental information. Enviroinfo 2005 is a meeting place for experts from leading edge technologies, fostering information flows in Europe and beyond and standardisations necessary for a sustainable development. Proposed topics for discussion at EnviroInfo 2005 include: • Environmental information systems engineering, • Modelling, simulation and computing, • Geographical information systems and their applications, • e-Government in the Europe and environmental web services, • Environment, Health and Security (e-Health), • Knowledge management and decision support systems, • Statistics (Environmetrics/Chemometrics), • Standardisation of environmental data and information management, • Corporate sustainability communication and reporting, • Environmental law and e-Commerce, • Urban environment, • e-Learning, • Environmental informatics in the 7th framework programme of the European Union. http://www.enviroinfo2005.org/
i4d | August 2005
E COTOURISM S USTAINABILITY IN M ALAYSIA
Cyber solution to ecotourism rating A systematic expert rating system that uses a web-based information-sharing platform is developed to ensure the sustainability of ecotourism sites in Malaysia.
Vikneswaran Nair Taylor’s College, School of Hospitality and Tourism, Malaysia vicky.n@taylors.edu.my Mohamed Daud University Putra Malaysia mdaud@eng.upm.edu.my Mohd. Zohadie Bardaie University Putra Malaysia mzbd@admin.upm.edu.my Abdullah Mohd. University Putra Malaysia abdullah@forr.upm.edu.my
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
The past decade has seen the Malaysian ecotourism industry, experiencing a process of reformation in implementation of best practice. This reflects the commitment by the Malaysian ecotourism industry to achieve the highest standards as well as an evolution of environmental management and performance standards required by regulating government agencies, including protected area managers. The Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism’s Orchid Classification Scheme was formulated to accommodate those hotels, which do not meet the requirements or criteria for any star rating. Besides hotels, the scheme also classifies hostels, beds and breakfasts, inns, boarding houses, rest houses and ecolodges. The Orchid rating is awarded to tourist accommodation premises with basic facilities, which include good, safe and clean accommodation and friendly hospitable atmosphere. In 1996, the Malaysian National Ecotourism Plan was developed by World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), Malaysia. Diagnostic lists of ecotourism sites were compiled. The factors used to classify ecotourism sites are based on the following: • Current tourism status • Accessibility and existing facilities • Flagship potential • Type of attractions and activities • Staff manning the site • Rehabilitation and recovery needs • Gross carrying capacity • Current management agency
ICT in ecotourism Among the main problems in the current practice in ensuring sustainable development of the ecotourism industry in Malaysia are: • Lack of effective sustainable management practice of the ecotourism site,
• Lack of enforcement in ensuring the ecosystem is sustained, • Insufficient environmental cum ecological expertise that incorporates the fundamental of safety and health issues, • Lack of consistent approaches in implementing a mitigation abatement measure and in satisfying the requirement of national environmental regulatory authorities, • Large number of small organisation involved in tourism and their related fields make the effort to collect data from them both costly and time-consuming, • Unreliable and incomplete ecotourism databases. Thus, there is a need to develop and maintain a certain level of standards based on different levels of categorisation and rating to ensure the sustainability of these ecotourism sites. Accreditation and certification in the form of electronic rating (e-Rating) is one such approach. Using an Internet-based information-sharing platform, guided by the existing legislation on safety, health and environment, the ecotourism sites in Malaysia can be rated. Where no guidelines are available, recommendations based on the knowledge of human experts in this particular field or domain (domain experts), literature and field survey statistics can be incorporated to further enhance the knowledge based rating system. Previous studies like the diagnostic list of ecotourism sites in Malaysia, can be used in enhancing the ecotourism sites rating system. A knowledge based system is a computer programme that reasons with knowledge of some specialist subject with a view to solving problems or giving advice. It is an intelligent computer programme that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems that are difficult for human to solve.
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Evaluation of ecorating site Three groups of people that can rate ecotourism sites include: • Visitors to the site, • Operators or the party that is responsible in running and managing the site, • Appointed auditors to check and balance the input. Certifications, ecolabels and ecorating basically serve three purposes, namely: • Stimulating tourism service providers to introduce improvements in their operations, aimed at greater environmental, economic, and social sustainability; • Differentiating and distinguish tourism products and services that meet environmental, social, and economic standards beyond the level required by the legislation in force; • Orienting consumers with regard to the sustainability characteristics of the tourism services available on the market. Additionally, certifications, ecolabels and ecorating serve to promote and stimulate higher levels of sustainability and quality throughout the tourism sector, aside from enhancing the image of certified companies, with the commercial benefits that such enhancement brings. One such method of ecorating was developed by the Expert System Rating Group (ESRG) (http://esrg.upm.edu.my) in Universiti Putra Malaysia. The project was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Malaysia (MOSTE) under the Intensified Research in Priority Area (IRPA) funding. The main objectives of the ecorating developed are as follows: • To design, develop, test and implement an expert system to rate the ecotourism components consistently and reliably based on safety, health and environment; • To create an ecotourism database in an information sharing platform; • To extract the opinions of the domain expert, existing statistics and literature and field survey of people’s perception in order to produce a set of rules to enable the expert system to be used to make intelligent decision. For each ecotourism site included in the database, the state and the district where the site is located is recorded. The types of attractions and tourism activities available at the site are put into the database. A list of accommodation available within the district where an ecotourism site is located is also incorporated into the database, complete with the name, type, location, number of rooms available, and address of the accommodation. The ecorating database could be used as a starting point for creating a standardised ecotourism statistics and databases. The heart of the system is the ecotourism-site rating module. An ecotourism site could be rated into one of the five levels, i.e., from ECO-1 (the lowest) to ECO-5 (the highest). The rating given by the eco-rating by ESRG is very transparent. A prospective visitor can make his own judgement by referring to ratings from the three groups of people. All the parameters and coefficient (weights) incorporated into the system can easily be updated to incorporate new relevant knowledge on ecotourism.
Ecorating scale ESRG has developed a 5 point cumulative rating scale. The weights for each compliance percentage are reset to zero at every level.
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At Level 1, ECO-1 rating is awarded for compliance of more than 75%. Any compliance level that is less than 75% is not entitled to use this rating system and will be rejected by the system by ending the consultation. At Level 2, ECO-2 rating is awarded for compliance of between 25% and 50%. ECO-3 rating is awarded for compliance of more than 50%. At Level 3, ECO-4 rating is awarded for compliance of between 25% and 50%. ECO-5 is the highest rating awarded for compliance of more than 50%. A successful rating can be accomplished in one of the 3 levels. The user can award the rating from ECO-1 gradually to ECO-2 (Level 1) before terminating the rating. The user can move directly from ECO-1 ECO-3 and then gradually to ECO-4 (Level 2). In the last type, the user can move directly from ECO-1 to ECO-3 to ECO-4 (Level 3). ECO-5 should be the ultimate goal for ecotourism supporters, whether they are tour operators, the travelling public, or the resource management agencies. This includes no advertising in non-recyclable magazines. Transportation must be environmentally. On-site accommodations and all visitor and staff activities must be benign to the environment. Heating and air-conditioning would be solar and low-impact. Foods and souvenirs would be produced in sustainable ways. All residual products would have to be handled in a benign way. Sewage containment and treatment would be an absolute requirement. Used products would be recycled, soaps and cleaning solutions would be biodegradable, and non-degradation of the environment would be the standard. This rating system takes into consideration many types of ecotourism categories, facilities and activities available at ecotourism sites in Malaysia. Easily accessibility through Internet, transparency of the rating, accountability of a person who use the system, and the incorporation of knowledge from domain experts and field data are the strength of this rating system. New knowledge and information could easily be incorporated into the system.
Reflections Eventually, the entire Malaysian ecotourism sites should be recorded in this ecotourism e-Rating. Ensuring that nature-based travel establishes and maintains high standards will be a challenge for all parties. The roles are different for each player, but together they can find the ecologically sensitive and economically viable methods and practices that will ensure survival of the attractions of nature and culture, without harming the resources. i4d | August 2005
E UROPEAN C OMMISSION PROJECT
Defining environmental sustainability The European Commission commissioned a project to explore qualitatively and to assess quantitatively the way that ICTs can influence environmental sustainability.
Carlos Rodríguez Casal Institute for Prospective Technological Studies - DG JRC European Commission, Spain Carlos.RODRIGUEZ@cec.eu.int
Lorenz Erdmann Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment IZT, Germany l.erdmann@izt.de
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Introduction At the European Council in Gothenburg (June 2001) the European Union adopted a common strategy for sustainable development as an integral part of the EU strategy for transition to a knowledge-based economy. Information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as computers, mobile phones and microchips, play a key role in the change towards this knowledgebased economy. There are many single case studies on the impact of ICTs on isolated aspects of sustainability, but no coherent research on the full range of impacts has to date been carried out. The ‘Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre’ commissioned the project ‘The future impact of ICT on environmental sustainability’ to explore qualitatively and to assess quantitatively the way that ICTs can influence environmental sustainability. To define environmental sustainability, the project took seven indicators as a reference: • Greenhouse gas emissions, • Energy intensity of the economy, • Transport intensity of the economy, • Modal split of transport, • Share of renewables in electricity consumption, • Urban air quality, • Municipal waste collected but not recycled. The geographical coverage of the project is the member states of European Union (EU 15) plus accession countries (AC 10). The time horizon is 2020.
Methodology The project adopted a five step methodology. In the first step a set of environmental indicators was chosen and the
economic sectors and ICT applications with the highest impact on these indicators were identified for further analysis. The second step was to build up data as a basis for the project through an extensive literature review of the environmental impacts of selected ICT applications. Three kinds of impact were considered: • The impacts and opportunities created by the physical existence of ICTs and the processes involved (first order effects); • The impacts and opportunities created by the ongoing use and application of ICTs (second order effects); • The impacts and opportunities created by the aggregated effects of large numbers of people using ICTs over the medium to long term (third order effects). Thirdly, three consistent scenarios were developed, by choosing highly unpredictable factors likely to influence the development and use of ICTs in the future. The Table 1 shows the combination of uncertain factors in the following three scenarios: • Technocracy: Government and business collude to produce high speed, growthfocused technology development. • Government first: Heavy-handed government steers technology development to favour social outcomes, while business competes to exploit a slowing market. • Stakeholders democracy: A positive environment for sustainable development, with all eyes on what ICT can deliver, but outcomes are not always straightforward. In the fourth step a simulation model was built to quantify the future impact of ICTs on the environmental indicators for the three mentioned scenarios. The final step was to review the project results in setting them into the current EU policy context.
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Table 1: Three future scenarios based on uncertain factors Uncertain factor Technology regulation Attitudes to ICT ICT in business Attitudes to the environment
Scenario A ‘Technocracy’ Incentives for innovation Moderate, conservative High level of cooperation Moderate/ controversial
This led to a range of detailed policy recommendations, which were then validated by a panel of experts.
Results It is possible to estimate the isolated effects of ICTs on different indicators. However, the most relevant information is not the direct impact of ICTs on one indicator, but the whole picture, including the evolution of all the indicators in relation to the development of ICTs. The following figure presents the development of environmental indicators by 2020. These figures are percentage increase/decrease from the base year 2000. A negative value indicates that the indicator level would be higher without ICT, a positive value indicates that ICTs contribute to growth of the indicator. The length of the bars indicates the uncertainty of the findings, as a result of both future scenario variation and data uncertainty. There are two bars per indicator: the upper (dark blue) bar shows the results for projected ICT development, the lower (light grey) bar shows the results for the so-called ‘ICT freeze’ simulations (i.e., ICT applications remain at the same level as in 2000). The impacts shown are aggregated values of all ICT applications considered in all scenarios simulated.
Recommendations Freight and passenger transport. ICT related efficiency improvements in transport must be combined with demand side management for an overall reduction in environmental impact. Time reduction and network capacity increases achieved by intelligent transport systems will pave the way for more transport, unless measures are taken to limit growth. The research indicates that the internalisation of environmental externalities, in particular raising energy prices and fuel prices, could bring demand levels down to a level where transport is no longer linked to economic growth. The option to complement such measures by including transport in emissions trading schemes also seems reasonable. Moreover, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) could support public transport by: • Directing research focus and allocating resources to multi-modal, seamless travel and public transport supported by intelligent transport systems; • Increasing the attractiveness of public transport by developing and implementing systems for tailor-made information, such as adapted time-tables, route-planning, and so on; • In the specific case of passenger transport, providing prerequisites for ICT supported work (such as wireless internet access) during train travel and on public transport.
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Scenario B ‘Government first’ Government intervention Open and accepting High level of competition High awareness and interest
Scenario C ‘Stakeholders democracy’ Stakeholder approach Highly accepting Between A and B High awareness and interest
Virtual mobility applications will not automatically generate significant transport savings unless policy initiatives are introduced to support this. Promotion of virtual meetings is probably the most effective e-Application for reducing the environmental impact from passenger transport. Attention should also be given to a potential passenger transport increase due to a growing number of mobile workers. Specific policy recommendations are: • promoting development of affordable and reliable broadband access; • Promoting the establishment of corporate policies and agreements for efficient e-work; • Establishing policies and routines for virtual meetings while increasing the cost of passenger transport, which will promote a shift towards the virtual alternatives. Energy consumption and share of renewables Suggested energy measures apply to both the energy consumption and the supply side. On the demand side, ICTs have two main roles to play. Firstly, ICTs could support energy saving measures in buildings and could have an important impact on the rational use of heating energy. Although it is highly uncertain under which conditions ‘soft’ measures supported by ICTs (such as intelligent heating systems) operate effectively and satisfactorily for the users, this issue deserves consideration because of the high energy consumption on heating. Heating accounts for roughly 30% of total energy consumption, and the most effective ‘hard’ measures apply only to the small annual share of buildings that are renovated or newly built. ‘Soft’ measures, even if they are less effective, have the advantage that they could, in principle, be applied in every building. Secondly, ICTs could also influence the demand side towards more sustainable consumption patterns, thus avoiding the rebound effect of increased consumption that outweighs positive effects. Regarding the supply side, the deployment of ICT support systems for decentralised electricity production from renewable sources and the use of small combined heat and power devices are recommended. The development of low-cost metering and communication systems for the electricity grid, making small-scale electricity production easier to operate and maintain and more costeffective than conventional approaches, is also recommended. Greenhouse gas emissions The recommendations for greenhouse gas emissions are crosscutting, as they are closely connected to energy use in industry, transport and housing. This study’s main findings suggest the need for ICT supported monitoring and reporting schemes, the adjustment of consumption of energy and transport to a sustainable level, and the promotion of research into ICT supported measures i4d | August 2005
for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that can be accomplished in more cost-effective ways than by more traditional investment in energy savings. Municipal waste collected but not recycled ICTs impact on waste volumes both in the generation and management of waste electrical and electronic equipment, and the management and recycling of municipal solid waste. It is foreseen that the 6th Environmental Action Programme objective to break the link between economic growth and increases in municipal solid waste will be achieved. However, ICTs would add significantly to municipal solid waste not recycled if no measures are found to limit the growth of ICT waste. Recommended actions include: • Further enhancement of the implementation of the 1994 directive on packaging waste, by developing incentive systems for teleshopping retailers to reduce packaging waste (e.g. by designing their product, retail and shipping systems in ways that reduce the need for and use of packaging). • Reduction of the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment through: - providing incentives for producers to design and sell ICT products with a long life-span, thus reducing the churn rate, - effectively implementing the directive on waste electric and electronic equipment, which is based on the extended producer responsibility principle. This would encourage product designers and producers to minimise the waste stream, particularly if producers are held responsible for managing the waste of their own products, - limiting sales models that make ICT products of little or no value in a short period of time, such as subsidised mobile phones and subscription packages, - extending the depreciation time for ICT equipment (minimum time to ‘write off’ ICT equipment investments). • Adaptation of the policy for limiting environmental impacts of the trends of pervasive computing and electronics embedded in non-traditional ICT products, that are not covered by the current policy framework (e.g. directives on waste electrical and electronic equipment and restriction of hazardous substances). • Support of intelligent systems for recycling and other forms of recovery, thereby decreasing the waste fraction that goes to final disposal and incineration.
Crosscutting issues There are two cross-cutting issues that effect the results as described above. Rebound effect The efficiency improvements (time, fuel, energy) made possible through technological advancements are counteracted by an increasing demand (growing consumption volumes) of energy, products, services, passenger and freight transport. In the model this is managed by determining elasticities, quantified by assigned numbers, for example by determining what proportion of savings are counteracted by increased consumption, or vice versa. For instance, a price elasticity value of -0,5 means that demand will decrease by 10 % if prices increase by 20 %, or that the demand August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Simulated development of environmental indicators by 2020
will increase by 10 % if prices are 20 % lower. Another rebound effect is the rematerialisation effect, which could be exemplified by virtual information products such as information accessed via the Internet being printed out or burned on a CD. Rebound effects should be acknowledged and addressed by all policies which aim at increased efficiency, especially ICT policies. Accession countries The simulation of the impact of ICT on the environmental indicators has been limited to EU 15, because of the lack of sufficient data for the 10 accession countries. Their economies show some particular characteristics, which will also have implications for the impact of ICT on the environmental indicators. High expected GDP growth inducing increased consumption of commodities, including ICT products, and very strong transport growth, are the environmental downside trends in the acceding countries. Improved material and energy efficiency in industry, including the energy industry, a shift to less polluting energy sources and more energy efficient and less polluting vehicles, are important environmentally positive trends. ICT will play a role for the acceding countries in all of these areas, and the role is likely to be more prominent than for EU 15, as a dramatic change in the economic structures is expected as a result of accession.
Conclusion Although the study delivers a systematic and differentiated picture of the future impact of ICTs on environmental sustainability, significant uncertainties, both of future developments and data, still exist. Further holistic research is therefore necessary for a fuller understanding of the role of ICTs in meeting environmental goals. Special emphasis is to be given to the rebound effect and to developing countries with a poor data base. An important deficit on the action side is, that neither the important ICT-Push initiatives, such as eEurope, nor relevant environmental institutions, such as the European Environmental Agency adequately address the strong interactions between ICTs and environmental sustainability. [i4d editorial team had invited two authors to submit contributions, which covered the same project. We present a combined story with attribution to both authors.]
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M OUNTAIN F ORUM
Network of networks Following the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 where the mountain agenda, more commonly known as Chapter 13 Ujol Sherchan of Agenda 21, was MF Secretariat adopted, it was felt c/o ICIMOD, Nepal that a forum - ‘a ujol@mtnforum.org federation of networks’ was needed to promote this agenda at the global, regional, national and local level. Thus the Mountain Forum (MF) was born in 1995 with financial support from the Swiss government as well as in-kind and moral support from mountain NGOs and champions. MF discussion provides a less inhibited and more creative forum for discussions but not necessarily for decisions. MF is primarily an electronic and online network of networks that also increasingly relies on traditional strategies to generate and disseminate information on relevant mountain issues and facilitates networking amongst like-minded entities. It comprises of five regional nodes in six regions (Latin America, North America, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Europe) under the coordination of the MF Secretariat, and guidance of MF board and of their respective hosting institutions. The forum has active members and subscribers including organisations and individuals interested in the following: • Discussing mountain issues, • Sharing lessons learnt, • Testing project and programme ideas related to natural resource management and mountain poverty alleviation, • Accessing funding information, • Forming partnerships, • Influencing policy, • Advocating mountain people’s rights and environmental justice, • Informing others of upcoming mountain-focussed events, • Contributing to ever growing MF online library, etc.
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Mountain Forum on global platform MF (www.mtnforum.org) uses ICTs to Use of ICT
promote discussions on environmental issues, thereby contributing toward ensuring environmental sustainability of fragile mountain ecosystems. These are supplemented by offline dialogues as well. • e-Discussion initiatives: MF manages some 14 e-mail lists, which are either regional or thematic. While most lists deal with mountain cultures, environments and sustainable development, MFParamos deals exclusively with conserving high-altitude grasslands of the Andes, MF-TOPAS with developing standards for staff training in European protected areas, and MF-InSitu with in-situ conservation of germplasm. • e-Conferences: MF, in coordination with its nodes, organises global or regional e-Conferences on critical and emerging mountain themes. InfoAndina, the Latin American node of MF, is credited with pioneering e-Conference on the Paramos, which not only fostered face-to-face collaborations afterward but also resulted in a creation of an unofficial Paramos Taskforce funded by International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). A sampling of environment-related themes covered by global e-Conferences co-organised by Mountain Forum and Mountain Institute are as follow: - Mountain laws and policy: moving toward sustainable development and recognition of community-based property rights; - Mountain people, forests and trees: linking local management and outside interests; - Community-based mountain tourism: practices for linking conservation with enterprise; - Investing in mountains: innovative mechanisms and promising examples for financing conservation and sustainable development.
It was in part due to MF members that the UN declared 2002 as the ‘International Year of Mountains’. During the year, MF constituencies provided input into the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which also resulted in mountain-focussed Paragraph 42 of the ‘Johannesburg Plan of Implementation’, as well as to the Bishkek Global Mountain Summit, out of which emerged the ‘Bishkek Mountain Platform’, both blueprints for future mountain development. After WSSD, MF organised a series of eConsultations on the Mountain Partnership (MP), which was an outcome of the WSSD process. As Credit: AR Sherpa, TMI of July 2005, the MP, a very close partner of MF, has 123 members including 45 countries, 14 intergovernmental organisations and 64 major groups, and this number is poised to grow. Moreover, MF regularly does advocacy for its mountain constituencies and mountains with the UN Commission on Sustainable Development through one of its founding members-The Mountain Institute (TMI). An example of support from MF members is evident from an appeal by the Eco-Tourism Society of Pakistan (ESP)-an organisational MF member. They warned that a million trees with average age of 400 years will be chopped down to make way, with serious consequences for those living downhill, as per the New Murree Hills Development Master Plan in Pakistan. Within a week, the MF AsiaPacific list witnessed a flurry of e-Discussions on this topic and solidarity came not just from Pakistan but from around the world. i4d | August 2005
G LOBAL S UMMIT
An eager wait for September… In September 2005, the United Nations (UN) will hold a high level plenary meeting which is also referred to as a summit, to review the implementation of the Millennium Declaration (2000), and the integrated follow-up to the major United Nations conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields. Member States at the summit will also deliberate the Secretary-General’s report, released in March 2005, on the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and issues of peace and security, as well as UN reform. In preparation for this high-level meeting, the Secretary-General released a report, in October 2004, on the event’s modalities, format and organisation. The report recommends, among other things, a three-day event taking place at the commencement of the 60th session of the General Assembly in September 2005.
Facts in focus The Millennium +5 Summit is expected to undertake a comprehensive review of the progress made towards the commitments articulated in the UN Millennium Declaration, including the internationally agreed development goals and the global partnership required for their achievement. Apart from that, the event will review the progress made in the integrated and coordinated implementation of the outcomes and commitments of the major United Nations conferences and summits. The summit will also draw on issues of peace and security, more specifically the findings of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, established by the Secretary-General in early 2004. The report of this panel has been released in December 2004.
Kofi Annan and UN reforms Just six months after taking office as Secretary General in January 1997, Kofi Annan announced his plan for United Nations reform. He set out an agenda of better management and coordination across the entire UN system and stronger human rights promotion and peacekeeping operations. In 2002, Annan announced further reforms, coinciding with the beginning of his second term. These proposals took up earlier technocratic themes, including enhanced coordination of the organisations in the UN system and greater ‘focus’ in the UN’s work. Over the years, Annan’s priorities have reflected financial and political pressure from Washington amid a deep crisis in UN funding. In such a cash-starved setting, reforms tended to rearrange resources and bleed important programmes to serve ever-new precedence. The consequences brought some modern management August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
into a cumbersome bureaucracy, but they also made the UN more conservative and less democratic, by shaping it to a neoliberal, security-driven US agenda. Kofi Annan announced his plans to establish the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change in an address to the General Assembly on September 23, 2003. The panel was created to ensure that the UN remains capable of fulfilling its primary purpose as enshrined in Article I of the Charter – ‘to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace’. The Panel has been instructed to recommend clear and practical measures for ensuring effectual collective responses to the common security problems and challenges facing Member States. The Panel was planned to undertake three tasks in fulfilling its mandate: • Examine today’s global threats and provide an analysis of future challenges to international peace and security, including the connections between them; • Identify clearly the contribution that collective action can make in addressing these challenges, and assess existing approaches, instruments and mechanisms; • Recommend the changes required to ensure effective collective action, including but not limited to a review of the principal organs of the United Nations. On March 21, 2005, the day before the closing session of the 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the UN Secretary-General released his report, entitled ‘In Larger Freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all’. This report addresses the recommendations put forward in the report of the Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change – ‘A More Secure World’ and in the reports of the Millennium Project, in preparation for the review of the Millennium Declaration. Prior to the release of ‘In Larger Freedom’, UN Member States had devoted months to achieve a negotiated political declaration on the 10-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Platform for Action, in which they committed themselves to integrate a gender perspective in the high-level plenary meeting on the review of the ‘Millennium Declaration’. In addition, they stated that the MDGs cannot be achieved without the full implementation of the Platform for Action. With the adoption of this declaration, governments reaffirmed that women’s empowerment and gender equality are cross-cutting issues to be addressed not only in the discussion on the MDGs, but also in the security, human rights and UN reform considerations on the agenda during the September Summit.
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The Millennium Campaign and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) In 1995, the heads of State and Government of the world, gathered in Copenhagen at the World Summit for Social Development in the midst of the series of international conferences through which the UN renewed its global social agenda in the post-cold war era and made a solemn commitment to eradicate world poverty. Although the UN Millennium Declaration was adopted by over 150 Heads of State at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, many governments have not acted on their promises, and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. While many NGOs argue that the MDGs are not ambitious enough, at the present rate of action, some observers speculate that the world will not meet the current goals in one hundred years, let alone by 2015. The Millennium Campaign was initiated in late 2002, as part of the core MDG strategy of the UN in the attainment of the MDGs. The campaign aims to raise awareness and build political will for the achievement of the MDGs, while encouraging citizens to take action to hold their own governments to account for their Millennium pledges. However different the backgrounds of these groups and actors may be, they are more and more uniting in the common mission of achieving the Millennium Goals. The Millennium Campaign serves as a provider of information and catalyst for networking groups that are campaigning together for the MDGs. As the UN heads into 2005, the Campaign is gathering momentum and bringing a obvious sense of urgency to the Millennium Development Goals. Register to the Millennium Campaign Newsletter to get up-to-date information on the Campaign’s activities at the local, national, regional and international levels. The Millennium Campaign website ( h t t p : / / w w w. m i l l e n n i u m c a m p a i g n . o r g / s i t e / p p . a s p ? c = grKVL2NLE&b=138312) provides a platform for independent campaigns to inform a large audience about their work and encourage people to join them in making the millennium goals a reality. The Millennium Campaign informs, inspires and encourages people’s involvement and action for the realisation of the MDGs. An initiative of the UN, the Campaign supports citizens’ efforts to hold their government to account for the Millennium promise. These goals are currently being discussed both internationally and nationally, with many organisations deliberating how to include them in the various global or national strategies. Since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration, civil society organisations (CSOs) have made some basic questions about the MDGs: • Why should the public mobilise behind them when so many earlier UN goals remain unfulfilled? • Do the MDGs apply to everyone in the global street? Do the Goals concern only aid? • What trade-offs took place in reaching the ‘Monterrey Consensus’ and how fair are they? • Do the MDGs represent a new global bargain or the old-style impositions? Many women’s organisations are also exploring how to ‘engender’ each MDGs goal, and are calling for a linkage, within the UN, of the Beijing ten year review and the Millennium Declaration five year review. There is enormous concern about the co-optation of
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Credit: www.princeton.edu
United Nations Conference Hall
‘gender and development’ and ‘gender mainstreaming’ in a way that would seek to engender a failed development model. Controversial discussions took place in the Copenhagen Plus Five summit regarding the report ‘A Better World For All’, published by the UN Secretariat, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). NGO pressing arguments resulted in the inclusion of point 8 of the MDG. One of the major global initiatives currently on the radar screen of the Millennium Campaign is the Action Rights Week ‘New’. Organised by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP), the Action Rights Week is an international week of action to show global solidarity in the fight against poverty and injustice by demanding basic human rights for all. Some examples of action include holding a protest or musical performance; forming a human chain; designing a T-shirt; handing out educational pamphlets; lobbying for a newspaper supplement; creating posters, banners, stickers; and recruiting opinion formers and makers as ambassadors. The reporting tied to the implementation of the MDGs is conducted at both international and national level. At a countrylevel, MDG reports provide a systematic and identifiable follow-up to the global conferences and world summits of the 1990s as well as to the MDGs. UNDP, in its capacity as chair of the UN Development Group, co-ordinates support for preparing these reports, which are submitted by individual member-states. At the global level, the Secretary-General reports annually to the General Assembly on progress towards a sub-set of the MDGs. Additional reporting exercises and country studies on the progress of implementation of the MDGs have also emerged outside these two official levels of monitoring. These reports have been produced by UN regional bodies and UN agencies and programmes. Despite the reform initiatives taken so far, there are still huge regional disparities in terms of socio-economic development parameters. We will have to look forward for some more advanced strategies which might be taken in this Millennium +5 Summit. Let us hope for a better effective plan and strategy for a far better future. Saswati Paik saswati@csdms.in i4d | August 2005
B RIDGING T HE C ONTENT G AP
Manthan e-Content award Starting from the WSA statement “A truly Global Information Society is one where all persons, without distinction, are empowered freely to create, receive, share and utilize information and knowledge for their economic, social, cultural and political development.” – the creation of e-Content is imperative for providing faster, quicker access to rich, diverse sources of content and for the creation of a Global Information Society. Bridging the divide also means making sure that people, wherever they may live, get access to digital content that is localized, culturally relevant and available for use. Producing and distributing a diverse and original digital content is thus of paramount importance if citizens are to be provided access and bridging the digital divide. Organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation (Delhi-based NonGovernmental Organisation) India, and PlaNet Finance India, the Manthan Award 2004-2005, India, has been inspired by the World Summit Award (WSA) aims to select quality e-Content and promote creativity and innovation in the development of new media applications in India. Digital Empowerment Foundation, and World
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Summit Award in partnership with Planet Finance India, had launched the Manthan Award on October 1, 2004 and on July 23rd 2005, Mathan Awards were given for eight categories of e content comprising e-Learning, e-Culture, e-Science, e-Government, e-Health, e-Business, e-Entertainment and e-Inclusion. The Manthan Award with an overall goal of narrowing of the content gap, is the first of its kind in India, which emphasizes the importance of content in bridging the ever widening digital divide. The aim and purpose of organizing the Manthan Award (Indian name given for the e-Content Award) was to recognize and acknowledge the achievements of producers and designers, showcase, encourage and further disseminate India’s best e-Content practices thus celebrating creativity and digital cultures and at the same time break the information barrier. Osama Manzar, the director of Digital Empowerment Foundation and the WSA country expert for India for e-Content applications in the year 2003, emphasized that the Manthan Award aimed at opening the doors of global recognition and support to local initiatives, was unique not only in India but also in Asia. e-Content development can make the common man more self reliant through complete information on his/her rights, privileges, strengths and how he/she can use the information for their own development, This initiative would encourage developing e-content at every level and enhance the e-content production capabilities The contest represents a showcasing and networking platform for e-content products
and a unique chance for producers to receive recognition outside their existing markets and customer communities. It was an unique opportunity for young talents not only to showcase their products and share ideas and techniques with professionals and international experts but also to learn from innovations in the use of IT tools and communication networks in content creation. The Manthan Award 2004-2005 is unique through its specific categories, which cover all aspects and sectors of the emerging Information Society and put the added value of multimedia and electronic contents for specific user groups and purposes at the centre of competition and evaluation. It is also unique due to sustained outreach activities in all the Indian states and territories and its promotion by leading multimedia and Internet organizations and institutions Several significant recommendations were made during the conference that preceded the awards ceremony. The floor recommended that instead of being limited to the Internet and website as medium, other more common electronic media like community radio, mobile phones and other oral and visual media can be adopted for sharing contents and knowledge as in many cases content users are illiterate or do not have access to the world wide web. Various content possibilities also have to be explored such that disabled people can also access to information and knowledge. Similarly content providers have to make sure that content is provided in local languages so that they are able to carry the right messages and create knowledge. For more details contact: Osama Manzar The Manthan Awards osamam@gmail.com www.manthanaward.com
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A KASHGANGA
Simple ICT solutions for livelihood ‘A k a s h g a n g a ’ (meaning ‘The Milky Way’) project was conceptualised more than six years ago, when IT awareness in the Ujval Shrinivas Parghi country was limited Akashganga, India ujvalparghi@hotmail.com to big urban centres only. The fact that illiterate and semi-literate farmers accepted the system and are operating it confidently, is an achievement by itself. For the past several years, computers are being used for a very basic activity like collection of milk and rural masses are comfortable with it and have reposed their confidence in it. Local entrepreneurs could spot the latent potential and have spread the system in the remote areas, through diligent work and timely support. They kept their system, without any monetary compensation for weeks together, for the Dairy Cooperative Societies (DCS) to try out and feel comfortable with the systems. The benefits in a nutshell are: • Speedier collection of milk and timely disbursement of payment; • Lower prevalence of corrupt practices; • Regular and timely maintenance of DCS accounts.
Project description After studying in detail the various functional aspects of village milk co-operative societies, ‘Akashganga’ (www.akashganga.co.in) had developed two unique systems to automate all the milk procurement operations of village milk collection centre. ‘Akashganga’ is being used at the DCS, which is a farmer-owned, grass-root level unit in the cooperative structure. All the farmer (members) of the DCS congregate twice a day at its premises
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to sell milk. The simple technology used in this product has enabled the timely collection of milk and thus, generated higher profits for the producer, now paid well on time. A basic milk collection transaction done by ‘Akashganga’ comprises: (i) measuring weight of milk with Electronic Weighing Scale, (ii) fat testing using Milko Tester, (iii) capture of unique member ID by the PC software, (iv) printing of pay slip, with all this data and the amount to be paid.
ICT intervention ‘Akashganga’ has been implemented at more than 1000 locations. At each and every location, it is being used 365 days in a year,
mechanism of electronic unit with the PC is innovative and, at the same time, cost effective and offers transparency of operations. Till date project benefits approximately 1.5 million farmers daily.
Lessons learned • People’s attitude: People generally do not accept anything new until the total benefit is proven to them. • Cost of the system: Although ‘Akashganga’ is priced competitively, the cost is a major impediment for the DCS, for whom every rupee has to be accounted for. • Environment (physical): For IT based systems to operate, the machines have to be really rugged and withstand all the climatic conditions. • Lack of adequate power protection equipment: Power situation in the villages is poor. At times, during power cut, manual entry has to be resorted to, leading to major disruption of normal routines.
Akashganga’s achievements and for more than 6 hours in a day. What so far Microprocessor based Automatic Milk Collection System
started out as a project is now a full-fledged product, with after sales services and so on. Information technology used in ‘Akashganga’ is not the modern web-enabled technology but a simple DOS-based system. It comprises of computer hardware, software and milk testing and interfacing equipment. The interface equipment is a microprocessor based electronic unit, and the milk testing equipment consists of an electronic weighing machine and a fat testing machine. The electronic interface allows the data about the milk to be transmitted to the PC. The data, which is transmitted, is also displayed on the display board, connected to the milk testing equipment. The complete interface
• Designated Best Practice by UNDP India and Good practice by UNHABITAT. • Invited by ICT4D Platform a major event WSIS to showcase its work at Exhibition. • Qualified Finalist for Development Marketplace Award 2003 • Shortlisted by Digital Dividend for its contribution in bridging the digital divide • Qualified for the final round at the Stockholm Challenge Awards 2002 & 2003 Akashganga is the recipient of Manthan Award 2005 in e-business category for best e-content.
i4d | August 2005
Vol. III No. 8
August 2005
Information for development w w w. i 4 d . c s d m s . i n
Agriculture
e-Commerce
Computerised system of irrigation in South Africa
e-Payment facility for freight users
The mango and tomato farming region of Blydepoort in Mpumalanga of South Africa has installed a computerised private irrigation network that interconnects fibre optics and telemetry to allow for total communication and control across the system. Local farmers installed the system because the old ground canal water system proved unreliable, with natural predicaments such as cave-ins affecting water delivery to farms in the area. The Adroit Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada) system automatically monitors the water pressure and water flow at 70 stations in the system. The system also makes use of SMS capability to notify operators of water pressures that are too high or low.
Having successfully launched payment and booking over Internet services in the passenger segment, the Indian Railways will now focus on implementing the same in its freight business segment, which accounts for the majority of the organisation’s earnings. Implementing e-Payment scheme for the freight users was proving to be difficult since the amount for online transactions involved were of the order of several crores.
http://www.itweb.co.za
Community radio Training programme on HIV/ AIDS in Africa Community radio practitioners gathered from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Niger to attend a week-long training that forms the basis of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO’s) ‘Science of HIV and AIDS’ media training programme implemented since 2003 in Bangkok, Chennai, and Kampala. The workshop aims to provide participants with increased confidence and skills to communicate more effectively on HIV and AIDS. http://portal.unesco.org
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com
government had taken to strengthen the ICT sector and for the adoption of e-Governance. The same include acquiring of land for the establishment of an ICT village, formation of an ICT incubator for rapid development of the software industry, an ICT business council and expansion of ICT education at grassroots level. But notwithstanding such plans and programmes and declaration of government’s policy supports, the realities in this sector and e-Governance appear to be far from what are expected. This has been reflected in the recent reported ranking of Bangladesh in a lower position than previously among the countries of the world in respect of computer use and ICT capacities. http://www.financialexpress-bd.com
e-Governance New centre in IT Ministry in India The Union Information Technology Ministry of India has created a separate Productivity and Employment Centre Division under the existing eInfrastructure/e-Learning group. The division will play a nodal role in identifying various sectors where the information and communication tools can be extended to enhance productivity of the sector and consequently generate more employment. The department is presently working on creating a competent team depending on the manpower restraints, and infrastructure requirements. http://www.asianage.com
Bangladesh government to reinforce e-Governance In Bangladesh, Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia stated recently in Parliament a number of measures that the
National Alliance on Mission 2007 in India Indian President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, on 11 July, 2005 delivered the inaugural address at the second annual convention of the National Alliance on Mission 2007 for ushering in ICT-led development in rural India. The National Alliance led by Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and One World South Asia announced the pan India roll-out plan for Mission 2007 for creating a network of information kiosks in 600,000 villages in India by August 15, 2007. In Phase I, the focus is on connecting 240,000 panchayats. The National Alliance intends to create an information kiosk network that would connect village level communities to the government functionaries or to the market. The overall objective of the initiative is to leverage technology to reach the rural communities and convert the knowledge receivers into knowledge creators. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com
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The i4d News
Rural panchayats to receive Rural networked computers in India The Panchayati Raj Ministry is to spend over Rs. 1,000 crores in the next two years towards installation of computers in 2.4 lakh panchayats, interlink them with one another and also with a national panchayat portal. Besides linking rural areas, the programme would also provide employment to at least two persons from each gram panchayat who would be trained to operate the computers. The government would soon enter into Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state governments with the target of completing the work within two years. The Ministry would spend Rs. 4,000 on training two individuals in every gram panchayat. The Ministry is making efforts to club its computerisation programme with the Bharat Nirman project that aims at providing infrastructure in rural areas. http://www.hinduonnet.com
Labour Department services via mobile units in Africa In South Africa, the rural residents of North West provinces are now able to access services from the labour department on their own doorstep. The labour department has dispatched two mobile offices to help people in the Bophirima and Central districts access services such as claiming from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and Workman’s Compensation. These mobile units are part of the nationwide launch by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana last week, in an effort to bring services closer to communities. Provincial Executive Manager of the labour department, Andile Makapela, said the mobile offices were actually fully kitted trucks. The trucks are properly furnished and equipped with the necessary technology and filing and storage facilities.
Health IT-based healthcare systems launched in Tamil Nadu Three important initiatives straddling technology and medicine and building an interface between the two were launched at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chennai, India on July 16, 2005. NeuroDbase, a unique customised electronic medical record system for Indian neurologists and Neuropsychiatry Online, a joint effort by the Neurosciences India Group and IIT Madras will provide Internet based counselling to people living in rural areas. Pubmedinfo.com is a unique public portal for health related information. They were released by Baskara Narayana, Director, Satellite Communication, Indian Space Research Organisation. http://www.hindu.com
In India, the Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit has launched ‘Gyan Jyoti Scheme’ for the benefit of government employees on 20 July, 2005. The scheme has been launched in collaboration with Intel and Microsoft to make available personal computers (PC) to government employees at attractive price points created specially for them. The Chief Minister has said that acquision of a PC at home will lead to creation of a knowledge based society and enable them to access online services provided by the government. http://www.tribuneindia.com
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http://www.asianage.com
Open Source Bulgarian cities adopting open source in municipalities After Kardjali, the city of Vratza has also migrated to open source software. Municipal computers have been migrated to the free office suite OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox. Using the new e-Services portal, which does not require digital signature, citizens are able to submit requests, signal, letter and complaint. The Deputy Mayor, Mladenov has announced that OpenOffice.org will be installed on the computers in the villages that are part of the municipality of Vratza in order to generate savings from the administration’s budgets. http://europa.eu.int
Korean schools to work on open source platform The South Korean government has announced that it would introduce an open source platform that it has developed to 10.000 schools in the country. The project, entitled the New Education Information System, is based on a Korean Linux version, called Buyeo. The system is already installed in 190 schools located in the capital city Seoul. The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) is responsible for the initiation of the project. http://europa.eu.int
http://allafrica.com
‘Gyan Jyoti Scheme’ launched
an electronic discussion forum to obtain views and suggestions from the wider public for its third phase programme.
e-Consultation to design national AIDS policy One can now log on to the official website of the United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS (UNAIDS) and participate in the e-Consultation where AIDS professionals and the common public will be sharing ideas to help the Government of India design its national AIDS policy under National AIDS Control Programme-Phase III (NACP-III) which will come into force from April 2006. To make it ‘true people’s programme’ and learning the lesson from the failure of the NACP I and II, this is the first time that the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) is consulting through
New Zealand schools go for open source Novell has signed a national agreement with the New Zealand Ministry of Education to provide all state and stateintegrated schools with a range of Novell software, including SUSE Linux operating systems. Douglas Harré, senior ICT consultant from the Ministry of Education has said that a large number of New Zealand schools have been ardent Novell users for many years. This new agreement will allow those schools to upgrade to the latest versions at no cost. http://www.nbr.co.nz
i4d | August 2005
The i4d News
Technology
Conflux 2005 The e-Government Conference , Conflux 2005 (www.conflux.csdms.in) to be held at The Grand New Delhi between October 17-19, 2005 is a joint effort of Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), Government of National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, major government departments of India, key academic and civil society organisations and various multilateral agencies involved in e-Government arena.
Radio frequency identification to track wagons The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) of Indian Railways plans to use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to improve the wagon management system of the Railways. CRIS proposes to have a RFID tag or chip embedded in all the wagons and provide sheds with handheld devices that would read these chips and thus register the data. Following this, the details can be fed into the Indian Railways system to help track wagons accurately. A pilot project will be run in the East Coast Railways. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com
Intel plans to sell movies via Internet Intel says it’s investing in a new venture with actor Morgan Freeman to distribute movie rentals to consumers via the Internet before the films become available on DVD. One of the biggest challenges Hollywood faces in Internet film distribution is piracy. The new company, ClickStar plans to use digital-rights management software to monitor the allotted time and content of downloads. Technologies, including Digital Transmission Content Protection would play a role in streaming the movies to devices such as computers, televisions, handheld devices, and laptops.
Aims and objectives This three-day conference-cum-exhibition aims to showcase e-Government developments in India and the Asia-Pacific and enable sharing of learning practices among stakeholders. Three key players in e-Government programme implementation, namely - the government, private and NGO sector will be sharing their successes, failures and opportunities and will attempt to bring out practical, actionable knowledge and solutions.
Host state Government of NCT of Delhi (www.delhigovt.nic.in), rated as one of the aspiring leaders in the latest e-Government readiness ranking report of Government of India, is the host state for this event.
Co-organisers Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India (www.mit.gov.in), Danish Technological Institute (www.danishtechnology.dk) and Society for Promotion of e-Governance (www.egovindia.org) are co-organisers of Conflux 2005.
Institutional partner Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, a premier institute of India and a centre-forexcellence in higher education, research and development in the field of science, engineering and technology is an institutional partner of Conflux 2005.
Supporting partners Various national and international organisations are supporting Conflux 2005. A few of them being - National Institute of Smart Government, Hyderabad (www.nisg.org), Commonwealth Centre of e-Governance (www.electronicgov.net), Technical University of Denmark (www.dtu.uk), Internet Service Provider of India (www.ispai.com), Global eSchools and Communities Initiatives (www.gesci.org).
http://informationweek.com
Key speakers
Vehicle tracking project launched The Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India, T.R. Baalu launched a pilot project for radio frequency identification (RFID)-based vehicle tracking project on the Delhi-Jaipur highway of India on July 21. Under the project, 68 buses of R ajasthan State Road Transport Corporation (RSRTC) plying on the highway have been fitted with RFID tags and readers have been placed to track the vehicle movement along the highway, whereby their movement is being tracked, monitored and managed. RFID grids have been placed along with Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) at four places that are about 50 km apart from each other. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
A number of eminent personalities from the government, academia and industry would be speaking in Conflux 2005. This includes – Honourable Chief Minister of Delhi, Shiela Dikshit; R. Chandrashekhar, Joint Secretary (e-Governance), Government of India; Prakash Kumar, IT Secretary, Government of Delhi; J. Satyanarayana, CEO, National Institute of Smart Government, Hyderabad; Jeremy Millard, Danish Technological Institute; Amitabha Pandey, Principal Resident Commissioner, Government of Punjab; Prof. Michael Blackmore, University of Durham; Dr. Thomas Riley, Commonwealth Centre of e-Governance.
Conflux 2005 special sessions A series of special sessions are being planned to be held during Conflux 2005, which would aim to focus on thematic issues of e-Governance pertaining to National e-Governance Action Plan (NeGP), e-Panchayat, ICT in Education and e-Health.
Extended date for paper submission The last date for submission of abstracts has been extended till 31 August 2005 while that for full paper has been extended till 15 September 2005.
Contacts Submission of papers: papers@conflux.csdms.in Registration: registration@conflux.csdms.in Sponsorships: sponsorship@conflux.csdms.in
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The i4d News
Power starved rur rural al India to run PCs with pedals Power starved villages in rural India may soon be able to run their computers using pedals. HCL Infosystems - an Indian IT major, has come up with a prototype of a gadget that can be charged through pedalling and can be used to run a computer. The product is currently under testing at HCL’s facility in Pondicherry. However, the real sucees of the product would depend upon certain critical issues like - the time taken to charge the battery via pedalling, number of hours the PC can be used thereafter and the price of the unit. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com
Microsoft to debut Windows Vista in late 2006
Citizens to use mobile phone for e-Government services
Microsoft Corporation announced on July 22 that the new version of its Windows operating system, Vista would be released in late 2006. The first two test versions of the programme will be made available to corporate technology managers on August 2006. The new version has been known as Longhorn since development began more than four years ago. Among Vista’s features are new ways to organise information and connect to other devices. In Vista, the icons used to represent files will be tiny snapshots of the actual files rather than a generic graphic. The company has also put a particular focus on search capability.
The Finnish Population Register Centre now offers its citizens an innovative solution for doing official business over the Internet, which will allow the citizen to use a mobile telephone when secure identification is required for online services or requests. The first SIM cards equipped with the security certificate required for the mobile signature are now being offered by Elisa, Finland’s second-largest mobile network operator. The basis for this is the UniverSIM product line from international technology group Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) with signature functionality and encryption mechanism. Citizens who want to use the digital signature over their mobile telephones for official business can register at a local police station and sign up for the service.
http://www.hinduonnet.com
Telecom Websites for mobile devices get suffix in the Netherlands In Amsterdam, consumers will soon be able to recognise websites specially designed for use by mobile phones by the new ‘.mobi’ suffix, which will be introduced alongside the popular ‘.com’ and other top-level domain names. The new suffix was approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at a Luxemburg meeting recently. The first websites for mobile devices, which will be fit for a small screen and limited memory and bandwidth, will be ready in 2006. Mobile web services will also use geographic information to take advantage of the changing location of a mobile device. The new domain name was requested by a group of powerful mobile phone operators and handset makers. http://www.financialexpress.com
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http://publictechnology.net
infoDev, ITU jointly launch online Regulation Toolkit infoDev, a multi-donor programme focusing on ICT for development, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialised agency for telecommunications launched a new online Regulation Toolkit designed to address the complex regulatory challenges emerging from a rapidly evolving ICT industry on July 25, 2005. An update and expansion of infoDev’s influential print publication Telecom Regulators’ Handbook (issued in 2000), the new web-based toolkit is aimed at national and regional regulatory agencies, ICT policy-makers, and other stakeholders with an active interest in ICT regulation. The full toolkit will be showcased at the annual ITU Global Symposium for Regulators
(GSR), to be held in Hammamet, Tunisia from November 14 to 15, 2005, as well as at the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). http://www.noticias.info
Assam Police telecom network inaugurated Assam Polnet, the dedicated satellite-based National Police Telecommunication Project under the modernisation scheme of Assam Police, was inaugurated by Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi on July 20 at the Assam Police headquarters of Guwahati in India. The Polnet will provide communication link from the national Capital to the State capital and the district headquarters on voice, data, fax and computer communication and further extend the communication connectivity upto the police sations on voice. The Assam Police had completed installation of 25 Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) in the first phase of the Polnet project covering district headquarters and some important locations in Assam which will be extended to the sub-divisional headquarters and battalion headquarters. The connectivity over voice will be extended to the police stations with Mandatory Abuse Reporting Training (MART) systems. http://www.assamtribune.com
Wireless Internet access provided onboard for first time in India In what may be a first for Indian aviation, a corporate aircraft has been converted into a wireless ‘hotspot’, allowing passengers to surf the Internet from the laptops while in the air. The Wireless Local Area Network (LAN), popularly known as Wi-Fi, has just been created on-board a 12-seater corporate jet by Indian engineers. They have successfully installed a wireless access point in the passenger cabin, together with a printer server. In effect it wirelessly enables any laptop or PC on board to access the Internet at the best speeds currently available — 4 gigabytes per second and share the printer. The network is satellitelinked to an Internet service provider on the ground to complete the access. http://www.hindu.com i4d | August 2005
Story telling for knowledge sharing
e-Livelihood in Africa Presenting a series of locally written articles with southern perspectives on the impact and the use of ICTs for Development. Following is the second series of articles focusing on ICT and Livelihoods in 6 African countries.
In collaboration with:
www.iConnect-online.org is a knowledge sharing platform for Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in sustainable development. iConnect draws content from its partners, links resources and expertise and encourages collaboration. For the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), the host of iConnect, this is a way to share experiences, lessons learned and ideas, and interact with communities and people with an interest in development and the applications of ICTs. These experiences can lead to a better understanding of the actual benefits of ICTs for Development (ICT4D). The core of iConnect will be a series of locally written articles on the impact and the use of ICTs for development. The articles have a strong focus on fact finding; objective information on ICT4D practices from a southern perspective: Southern content written by Southern people. i4d is the iConnect partner for Asia, disseminating the articles to their readers. For the full text of the articles, please visit www.iconnect-online.org.
CROMABU: enhancing market opportunities for small farmers in Mwanza, Tanzania By Aloyce Menda In 2001 the Crop Marketing Bureau (CROMABU) project was designed to gather and disseminate relevant information regarding crop prices in local and international markets. Basically the project is aimed at empowering smallscale farmers economically by enhancing their access to price information in trade flows. While stakeholders in the agricultural sector are demanding the government to ensure a fair-competition policy, for agricultural marketing and distribution, CROMABU (www.cromabul.com) is leveling the ground by use of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to empower farmers. Based in Magu area of Mwanza near to the southern shores of Lake Victoria, the four-year old CROMABU project is supported by the Dutch International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). According to CROMABU manager Ms. Naomi Massele, a professional agriculturalist with experience in management of rural agricultural and industrial projects, CROMABU comprises three components. These are the Internet Café that serves the targeted community; the price information services; and community development through information and training. CROMABU’s development phase will end in September 2006 and is regarded by IICD as a pilot project to be replicated in other rural areas with crop marketing problems. Ms. Massele explains that the project targets 16 villages directly, but the information from it circulates further. Information on crop prices gathered from local and foreign markets downloaded from the Internet are compiled by Farmers
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
CROMABU and stored in a database. Eventually a simple price index is prepared in Ki-Swahili language and disseminated to farming villages. The youth, particularly ex-students from primary and secondary schools, are the key channel of communication between the CROMABU and the targeted small-scale farmers in Magu. They are employed as agents and use bicycles to collect and distribute all relevant documents to the villages. According to experts, four characteristics describe the powers of modern ICT in poverty reduction: • Interactivity: For the first time ICTs are effective twoway communication technologies. • Permanent availability: The new ICTs are available 24 hours a day.
sowing seeds in Tanzania
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• Global reach: Geographic distances hardly matter any more. • Cost-effective: For most areas the relative cost of communication has been shrunk to a fraction of previous values. The CROMABU project is aimed at doing exactly that. With NGO set-up, the project generates income from its communitytraining centre for peasant farmers and youth groups. It also charges fees from institutional clients in Magu, such as NGOs, for training and the Internet Café. Small-scale farmers have benefited a lot from the project. The Internet services have helped them get best markets for their produce namely cotton, groundnuts, maize, beans, fingermillet and sunflower. When prices are low in Tanzania, the Internet enables them to secure direct buyers from abroad - some of whom are sometimes ready to pay above the world market price. Before 2002, middlemen (madalali) in Magu, were conspiring to lower crop prices and reap super profit. The price of good cotton for instance is currently ranging from Tanzanian shillings 200 (US$ 0.2) to shillings 250 (US$ 0.25) for a kilogram, while before the project it could be lowered to as much as shillings 150 (US$ 0.12) to shillings 180 (US$ 0.18) per kilogram. Recent press reports said that small cotton farmers in the neighbouring Bunda district, situated about 450 kilometres from Magu in the eastern shores of Lake Victoria, refused to vend their products for shillings 180 (US$ 0.18) per kilogram to any buyer. They heard that prices are much better in Magu and hence would rather retain their cotton, which after all is imperishable product. They anticipated buyers with good prices would eventually come! Despite the remarkable success of CROMABU, the challenge remains on content issues. Most web contents are in English, which is a language of elite in Tanzania. Ki-Swahili is the official national language of 34.6 million people of Tanzania, and over 95 percent of the population can only speak, read and write in either
Ki-Swahili or tribal languages and hence cannot comprehend most of the Internet’s contents, even if they get access to it. Before thinking of a project on ICT for development one should comprehend the multi-dimensional concept of poverty. Beyond a lack of income, poverty also refers to disadvantages in access to land, credit and services (such as health and education), vulnerability (towards violence, external economic shocks, natural disasters, etc.), powerlessness and social exclusion. According to the year 2002-03 government commissioned study titled ‘Tanzania Participatory Poverty Assessment (TzPPA)’, impoverishing forces arise from social, economic and political processes. The study concludes that the macro-economic reforms that pushed the government to withdraw from running production and market operations is among the impoverishing forces. This has affected rural population in three main areas namely: changes in marketing systems, lack of price control, and inadequate extension services. Since modern ICTs facilitate efficient creation, storage, management and dissemination of information by electronic means, they are powerful tools for fighting some of these impoverishing forces. If a poor African can send a 40-page trade document from Tanzania to Cuba for just 40 cents of one US$ (Tsh 400) instead of paying US$ 50 (Tsh 50,000) to courier, then there is no doubt that modern ICTs are cost effective. “While technology shapes the future, ultimately it is people who shape technology, and who decide to what uses it can and should be put,” said Kofi Annan in his message to the Geneva World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS-I) in December 2003. CROMABU has done so before, by shaping ICTs to benefit peasant farmers in Mwanza since September 2001. For further information contact iConnect coordinator Harry Hare, harry@aitecafrica.com
Using ICTs to open up Kampala’s hinterland By Davis J. Weddi
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Credit: ICTARD
Though to experts it is easy to explain, to a layperson in Uganda it is normally very difficult to explain how ICTs fit into agriculture. But today, shrewd crop-husbandry farmers in the rural Kayunga district of central Uganda understand what it means to have a direct link to vital information that helps them to plan for their crops. The whole ICT4D phenomenon is catching up around the country like a wild fire. In western Uganda, initiator Action Aid has started celebrating prospects of early success after a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection for a community knowledge centre in a distant village became a reality on June 8, 2005 (www. inveneo.org/?q=uganda). From then on, the project implementer, Inveneo, a California based not-for-profit organisation, says the farmers have access to world market prices and can communicate among themselves. The Kayunga project is a pilot project which by the looks of the way it is operating seems to be a success and will later be taken on in the rest of Uganda. It is part of a bigger project initiated by the Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFFE - www.unffe.org), the largest farmer’s advocacy membership organisation in Uganda.
Kayunga farmers in a business support workshop
The project, the Farmers Information Communication Management (FICOM), is being undertaken for rural Ugandan farmers also in two other districts namely Luwero and Jinja. i4d | August 2005
Credit: ICTARD
Farmers learning to use World Space radio
August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Credit: ICTARD
The FICOM project is implemented by Information Communication Technologies for Africa Rural Development (ICTARD - www.ictard.org). The project receives funding from Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture based in Basel, Switzerland. Hellene Karamagi who heads ICTARD visited Kayunga last year and explained later in March 2005 during an I-Network Uganda seminar on ICT4D, that on her first trip to the remotest parts of the district, she found heaps of harvested produce by the roadside. Karamagi says the farmers told her that the heaps of pineapples were waiting for buyers from Kenya and other parts of Uganda. But then the buyers were not arriving and some of the produce was starting to rot off. Karamagi’s instincts set rolling - a real solution had to be found for these farmers. One of the immediate issues noticed was that there was a huge deficit in communication to the rural farmers and even at UNFFE headquarters and the member districts. Such a problem is common all over rural Uganda: farmers fail to sell their produce due to lack of means of communication with the market. This situation prompted UNFFE to try an intervention using FICOM to enable such services as necessary information gathering and effective dissemination. The information had to enable farmers to make informed decisions when planning for their crops. In addition to the organisations named above, other vital stakeholders had to be called in to make the FICOM project a reality. They include the Ministry of Water, Lands and Environment (Meteorology Department) and the National Agricultural Research Organisation. When ICTARD was given the task to apply a solution they chose to put emphasis on existing communication channels like the village phone, by increasing on their number and distribution around the three concerned districts. There was also the introduction of the World Space channel. Armed with the FICOM project, Karamagi set out to improve exchange of customised agro- and health-related information. And
farmer groups had to be empowered with adequate skills for sustainability of the project. Districts without Internet connection now have access to updated information from the UNFFE website. Farmers of Kayunga and Jinja districts received computers with printers, photocopiers and World Space radio which improved their access to meteorological and agricultural advisory information from the Ministry of Water, Lands and Environment. The district’s farmers’ association offices are now empowered and recognised as agricultural information dissemination centres. The farmers themselves have maximised the use of the village phones to access market information from any part of Uganda. They use locally developed Short Message Service (SMS) to send and automatically receive updates on market prices. Because of this, farmers have direct contact with the buyers. Middlemen are no more involved in the process. Some farmers are now able to sell to the big
Training of the farmers
supermarket chains in Kampala, including Uganda’s Metro and Uchumi. In this way, ICT has helped in the poverty alleviation of the poor Ugandan farmers. ICTARD boasts that the rural farmer associations are now being empowered with basic computer, business support and management training for sustainability purposes. This includes basic computer knowledge, downloading and viewing of information from the World Space channel, business support training, book keeping, customer care, marketing and business planning, conflict management, avoidance and resolution. A big lesson that is coming out is that ICTs will no longer be an isolated reserve for the literate people alone. Also the notion that the technology is very expensive and that the rural people cannot easily adapt to the technologies, is now being allayed. For further information contact iConnect coordinator Davis Joseph Weddi, dweddi@newvision.co.ug
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The impact of access to information for Ghanian farmers By John Yarney All three children of Osei Kwabiah Amanfi have their school fees assured for a long time, credit to his new grasscutter husbandry project. Amanfi, an organic citrus farmer in Agona Swedru of the Central Region of Ghana, is trying out grasscutter husbandry in addition to his farm.
Agona Swedru Agricultural Information Centre in Ghana
Amanfi’s introduction to his new pet project was by chance. He had been visiting the Agona Swedru Agricultural Information Centre, a collaborative project between Ghana’s Ministry of Agriculture and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), when he chanced on the brochure of grasscutter rearing prepared by the Centre and decided to try it out with the encouragement of the officers of the facility. The Ghana Agricultural Information Network System (GAINS) is the library and information system component of the Government of Ghana/World Bank supported National Agricultural Research Project (NARP) and links the libraries of all the agricultural research institutions under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana, the faculties of agricultural libraries of the universities, the library of Biotechnology and Nuclear Agricultural Research Institute (BNARI) and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA).The network was established to strengthen the information infrastructure to support agricultural research management which will eventually lead to increased production. In spite of the many positive outcomes from the network, managers of the project noticed some shortcomings. There was a gap between the network and the final user of the information - the farmer. GAINS consequently devised the strategy of using information intermediaries to get the research it had generated to the farmers. It then selected the Agona Swedru Agricultural Information Centre and the Winneba based community radio station Radio Peace to act as information intermediaries. To date, GAINS has provided the Agona Swedru Agricultural Information Centre with a series of manuals on Video Home System
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(VHS) cassette on subjects as grasscutters, snails, poultry farming, mushroom cultivation, seedling production and many others, to disseminate to the farmers. The impact of the information to the farmer has been enriching. According to Emmanuel Osei-Bonsu, Principal Technical Officer of the Centre, between 6 to 20 farmers come to the Centre weekly to be trained in cultural practices, especially with citrus. A group of physically challenged people within the catchment area of the Centre who were trained in mushroom cultivation won the district’s farmers award last year in the non-traditional crop category. Farmers are also requesting for copies of the VHS video cassettes to keep. In another agricultural town in the same region, Twifo Praso, a different information dissemination set-up is followed. Twifo Praso, 70 kms north of Cape Coast (the regional capital), is typical of many of Ghana’s agricultural towns; comprising smallholdings of cocoa or oil palm land, mixed with vegetable crops. Twifo Praso, was the focus of a two-year Information Society Research Group project as part of a four country comparative study of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and poverty reduction, funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) and based at the London School of Political Science (www.isrg.info/ ISRGWorkingPaper4.pdf). According to the researchers, the creative use of ICTs can impact positively on the residents of communities whose livelihood is at a subsistence level, with seasonal inflows of cash at harvest times, oscillating with periods of high debt and lack of cash; daily life is sustained through household vegetable production supplemented by weekly marketing of small surpluses. The district assembly at Twifo Praso has a high standard ICT facility and the researchers think there are already well-established communications networks that can be built upon in various ways. According to the researchers, there are broadly two major issues in which ICTs might play an important local role. The first is the commonly expressed need for market price information. At present this information is collected but not made public, and most knowledge of market prices is conveyed by word of mouth.
Notice board of the Agricultural Information Centre in Ghana i4d | August 2005
Credit: ICTARD
Farmers in a workshop in Uganda
The second major issue is somewhat different. The researchers reason that agricultural development depends on retaining more
value-adding processes in the locality, through increased processing of raw materials by local people. They observe that although it is obviously a hugely complex issue involving problems of technical knowledge, organisation, capital, coordination and marketing, ICTs are not going to be applicable to this issue in one way, but will enter into the process in a range of ways. Amanfi, the citrus farmer in Agona Swedru, lives far from the geographical area of the farmers in Twifo Praso, but he identifies with their need for market price information. The second harvest of his citrus farm is going rotten because of the unfavourable prices offered by middlemen for his produce. “I have regretted planting citrus, if I had planted cocoa the government would have paid me for the crop. I take consolation from the farm being close to town; I can one day sell the land for property development,” Amanfi says of the consequence of unavailable market information. For further information contact iConnect coordinator John Yarney, john_yarney@yahoo.co.uk
e-Commerce emerges in Zambia’s banking sector By Michael Malakata Today, a large number of people in Zambia are conducting business without physical contacts with the buyers of their goods and services. This is what is generally referred to as electronic commerce (e-Commerce). e-Commerce is basically the use of the Internet to perform commercial and business operations. It is gaining ground in Zambia among commercial banks that are providing telephone banking, Internet banking and e-Tracer. Zambia has a draft Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy that is currently under scrutiny which after being reviewed will become the country’s ICT policy. The draft policy acknowledges that the banking sector plays an important role in the development of e-Commerce solutions and as such there is need to develop ICT infrastructure. Mobile commerce solutions via Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) phones are also increasing on the Zambian market mainly owing to convenience, flexibility, and increase in the use of mobile phones. But the growth of e-Commerce depends on effective legal and regulatory framework, good communications infrastructure and the development of e-Commerce solutions. Lack of infrastructure and weak technologies have been the major hindrance to e-Commerce development in Zambia. e-Commerce in Zambia is an initiative now being undertaken mainly by banks to ease the difficulties experienced by clients in accessing bank services. Finance Bank Information Technology Director, Shahzad Ghazi says that apart from issuing Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards to clients, the bank has introduced the ‘Customer Access System’ and ‘MoneyGram’ services, both computer based. There are always fears that cyber criminals might hack the system and steal money of the customers. Shahzad Ghazi, however, says so far no single fraud has been recorded in the system. “The Customer Access System allows customers with a computer connected to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access their accounts from anywhere in the country or in the world, August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
permitting them to find out their bank balances, among other uses”, he added. The Zambia National Commercial Bank (ZANACO) has also introduced Internet banking, e-Tracer, and ZANACO Short Message Service (SMS), all which make banking easy. According to ZANACO Marketing Manager Daisy Diangamo, Internet banking allows customers to enquire after account balances, foreign exchange rates, the status of cheques and more. With an e-Tracer service, an account holder can receive up-to-date bank statements at an agreed time straight into their email box. e-Tracer service is safer as all the e-mails are encrypted, meaning that only the client is able to read them hence the system is not under threats. Diangamo said, “Hundreds of retailers for beverages from Zambian breweries now pay delivery drivers by sending text messages on mobile phones to the bank. The bank then verifies the message and the payment is made.” Dabson Tembo, an account holder with Finance Bank using the electronic banking services, says he is satisfied with the services provided by the bank because he does not need to physically be at the bank for him to know his bank balance. “However, there is need for the bank to spread its e-Commerce services to rural areas so that many people can benefit from the services,” Tembo said. Finance Bank has more than 5000 clients and about 2000 of them are benefiting from the bank’s e-Commerce services. New technology, including electronic and cell phone banking, also speeds up investment in an economy and could accelerate Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. High banking costs are the result of paper-based payment systems and high labour costs. Electronic banking in Zambia not only helps savings, but also reduces the bundles of cash people have to carry, making the life of the people easier. For further information contact iConnect coordinator Tovin Ngombe, tngombe@yahoo.co.uk
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e-Business in Mali: Galerie Indigo, opportunities thanks to ICTs By Almahady Moustapha Cissé The promoter of the Galerie Indigo, Mr. Mamadou Léo Keita, is one of Mali’s pioneers of electronic commerce. The arrival of the Internet in Mali in 1997 was the turning point in his professional life. From then until 2003, thanks to the Internet, he managed the operation of a branch located in Indiana in the USA, from Bamako in Mali. In the space of a few years, the Galerie Indigo, located in the centre of the city of Bamako, has become a must-visit location for art lovers. The promoter’s goal is to turn his gallery into a window on African art and expression. His target audience is made up of tourists, expatriates and Mali residents living abroad.
A difficult beginning The founder of the gallery, Mamadou Léo Keita, was the Sales Manager of the International Company for Trade, Marketing and Exports in Mali. “After working for other people for many years,” he said, “I decided to go into business for myself.” He started from next to nothing in 1992. At first he carried out his own feasibility study of the project. Based on the study, a bank agreed to lend him six million CFA francs (US$ 11,174), provided that he personally brought in two million CFA francs (US$ 3,725). Keita could only come up with some 600,000 CFA francs (US$ 1,117) in cash. The balance of his investment took the form of works of art. “The lack of fresh capital made the start-up very difficult because the business needed operating capital,” said Mr. Keita. The Galerie opened for business in February 1992, but, says the promoter, for the first four to six months there were no customers.
Breakthrough with ICT According to Mamadou Léo Keita, the real turning point for the shop and the business occurred in 1997, when he was invited to come to Indiana, the United States, for an exhibition. It was the same year that the Internet came to Mali. Very quickly, Mr. Keita recognised the important impact of this new tool. He had the brilliant idea of creating a boutique with the unsold articles, which he called ‘Indigo Indiana’, to satisfy the needs of American clients on site.
Galerie Indigo at the centre of Bamako in Mali
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“I had my customers whom I was able to deal with from Bamako thanks to the Internet. Better still, with my electronic banking card, I was able to collect my money at the bank window.” This experiment lasted from 1997 to 2003, but, the events of September 11, 2001, were a serious blow to the art market. “After September 11, there were difficult times,” says Keita with a hint of sadness. Exports represent the main source of income for the business. In 1999, for example, of 33 million CFA francs (US$ 61,461) total revenue, 20 million CFA francs (US$ 37,248), or 60.6 percent came from exports. As a result of the owner-manager’s professional skills, the business gradually penetrated overseas markets. Arts and crafts products from Mali, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso were exported to Europe, South America and the United States of America. At first glance, the Galerie Indigo in Bamako appears no more than a handicrafts boutique. In reality, it is the sales point for a network of some one hundred associations of artisans, cooperatives and individuals from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali. The products chosen for export include traditional fabrics, Tuareg carved wooden boxes, leather bags, silver jewellery, knives, cushion tops, wrought iron articles, wooden utensils and statuettes and traditional jewellery of these three countries. The business has a sales display boutique in Bamako, the capital of Mali and now employs a permanent staff of eight, including two receptionists. It also has a fabrication workshop located in another part of the city which employs six people during busy periods. The distinctive characteristic of this business is the undeniable ambition of its promoter to progress in a sector that is well known for its many difficulties, which include the lack of organisation of its participants and a lack of attention to problems related to quality and finish of the articles produced.
e-Commerce, the legal void Electronic commerce is almost non-existent in Mali. Apart from the experience of Mamadou Keita, very few business people have ventured into this area. According to Ms. Assitan Coulibaly, a legal specialist who presented a Master’s thesis in 2002 on ‘Legal and judicial aspects of electronic commerce’, there is a legal void on this subject in Mali. In her opinion, there are certain pre-conditions for electronic commerce to succeed. She shared some of these pre-conditions: • high-speed Internet connections, • secure payment methods, • enabling laws for e-Commerce, • participation by the country’s banks. Finally, the government must adopt legislation dealing with e-Commerce and electronic fraud. “People turn to e-Commerce to save time,” says Ms. Coulibaly, “If there are slow Internet connections and outdated bank management structures, conditions are far from satisfactory for electronic commerce in Mali.” For further information contact iConnect coordinator Filifing Diakite, filifing@journalist.com
i4d | August 2005
e-Commerce growing in Burkina Faso By Ramata Soré Electronic commerce is growing around the world. In Burkina Faso, where it is still in its early stages, there are enthusiastic supporters. In ‘the land of honest people’, the Internet is on its way to become a commercial sales network. “We were one of the first organisations, in the period of 1998 and 1999 to use the Internet to find customers in order to sell our products in Europe,” states Charles Yvon Tougouma, coordinator of the Cercle des Sécheurs (CDS), distributors of dried fruit and vegetables such as mangoes, tomatoes and onions. Electronic commerce or e-Commerce provides the means of buying or selling Burkina Faso products such as sesame, karite butter, Arabic gum and cotton, etc. without leaving your home or office, thanks to the Internet. It has certainly opened new markets for large numbers of Burkina Faso companies and merchants. “I am keeping up with the world in selling my masks and bronze statuettes over the Internet. My customers contact me by e-mail. I don’t need to travel around the world any more, with my masks and statues under my arm. That means tremendous savings in the cost of airplane tickets and telephone charges,” remarks Alphonse Ouédraogo, who directs the art gallery carrying his name. He is in touch with buyers located in France, Italy, Switzerland, the United States and Denmark. Trade Point was the vehicle that introduced Alphonse Ouédraogo to e-Commerce or e-Business in 2001. Trade Point Burkina is a commercial information centre that provides information to traders about niche markets and possible openings, on potential customers and suppliers, on supply and demand for products, business opportunities and about the rules and conditions for trading, says Issa Benjamin Baguian, the Director of Trade Point. Internet trading enables e-Businessmen to reach out to a large number of customers. The Internet multiplies the number of potential buyers, and enables many other customers to access a virtual market. In offering their products to richer markets through the wide reach of the Web, sellers have full scope to negotiate the best price for their products. This possibility led Boubacar Kouraogo, an oilcloth dealer who was looking for PVC tubing, to contact Trade Point Burkina; “I was looking for the addresses of foreign suppliers and contacts to import tubing. I had heard that the Internet was effective and gave access to the whole world.” While some merchants have found e-Commerce to be a bargain, others see the Internet as a myth and remain sceptical about using the Web for transactions. The main criticism is that customers are used to sampling a product, to see, feel, taste or handle it before buying, which is not possible if you are buying on-line. The CDS coordinator’s answer to that complaint is simple; “One can always send samples to buyers.”
The profits of e-Commerce Being self-taught in terms of e-Business, the CDS uses search engines such as Google or Yahoo to find its customers. Starting in 1999, this method has enabled them to attract countless clients all around the world. CDS customers are located in Europe and in America. Their August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
market continues to grow. “Our rate of exports has increased by about 30%. At present, we are in negotiations with the American market and if it succeeds, our export rate will increase 100%. When we started on the Internet, we went from 200 million to 300 million CFA francs (US$ 0.32 million to 0.56 million). In 2005, we hope to reach 600 million CFA francs (US$ 1.1 million),” observes Charles Yvon Tougouma, CDS coordinator. In addition to its financial benefits, the speed of the Internet for commercial activity also saves time for businesses and reduces costs. “Compare the speed and cost of sending documents by mail or by fax. With the Internet, we can send a large amount of information; our correspondent receives it very quickly and can reply immediately. It costs less too. Savings in time also mean financial gains,” according to Issa Benjamin Baguian. The Internet enables CDS and its members located in the different provinces of Burkina, to communicate quickly and exchange documents concerning specific orders. Many of the suppliers are located in areas that are not well served by regular mail and would not otherwise receive useful information on a timely basis. So, use of the Internet for internal communication offers real benefits. While there are advantages of using the Internet for commercial activities, obtaining the material that promotes a presence on the world screen involves costs that can be more or less expensive.
The cost of e-Business To create a virtual boutique, advertise the products available and sell them on the Internet involves enormous costs. Trade Point Burkina offers website creation and hosting services to its clients at a cost of 250,000 CFA francs (US$ 466). Websites that include a database cost 1,500,000 CFA francs (US$ 2,800). According to Benjamin Baguian, “The service we offer provides an opportunity to be known and connected to 144 trade centres around the world.” In addition to the cost of designing a website, there is also the cost of equipment. The purchase of a computer and accessories, such as a modem and printer, adds about 1,500,000 CFA francs, not to overlook the cost of training someone to operate the system, connection charges and other costs. Internet payment services do not exist in Burkina yet as quality of service, protection of personal information and transparency of trade practices are still lacking. In Europe and in the United States, the use of bank cards as a means of payment over the Internet is in decline. New payment methods, such as electronic transfers, cell phone payment and micro-payment by means of an electronic wallet are being developed. In the global trading village, Burkina Faso cannot afford to be caught far behind. Despite the small number of e-Business firms in Burkina Faso, those who do make use of the Internet remain optimistic about its utility. “The Internet is a trade escort. The customer isn’t the only viewer; the whole world is watching. Those who don’t want to get involved will soon be left out,” insists Alphonse Ouédraogo. For further information contact iConnect coordinator Sylvestre Ouédraogo, sylvestre.ouedraogo@univ-ouaga.bf
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Z OOMING I N
Business social initiatives Sudhir K Sinha is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expert and has a wide and varied experience of working with corporate and NGOs both on CSR issues. A social activist, who did his post graduation in Rural Development, worked for almost 18 years as Hony. Assistant Secretary of Tata Steel Rural Development Society. He worked with Partners in Change (PiC) – an NGO promoting CSR in India before joining Moser Baer India Limited as Head – CSR. Pushing stakeholders’ model of CSR and Sudhir K Sinha Head–CSR, Moser Baer India Limited
aligning corporate philanthropic initiatives with MDGs in India are his two personal agendas.
CSR has nowadays become a buzzword in both corporate and social sector. What is the driving factor for corporates to take up CSR so seriously? The most important reason to undertake CSR initiatives is to be a good corporate citizen. Such initiatives essentially help companies to improve their relationship with local communities, build a good public image and thus improve the brand value of companies over competitors. For some companies, the compliance with the legislation is the driving factor. Though a large range of factors drive CSR initiatives, I would put all of them into three major categories - to have social license to operate business, to mitigate reputation and operational risks and to ensure higher sales volume. When and where did the CSR movement start and at what level? The history of CSR is as old as business is. However, the recent history goes back to the seventeenth century when excesses of the East India Company were commonly expressed. In 1790s, the England witnessed the first large scale consumer boycott over the issue of slave harvested sugar which finally forced importer to have free-labour sourcing. In India, JN Tata in the beginning of 1900 wrote to his sons “to pay back to society….”, the values which resulted in to several ethical, social and environmental practices that got well integrated into business culture in Tatas. What are the most common agendas and programmes covered under CSR initiatives? The philanthropic mode of CSR dominates and therefore companies prefer to contribute to welfare programmes under health, education and relief mostly. The stakeholders model of CSR, which overarches workplace issues, human rights issues, customers’ expectations and aspirations, suppliers’ issues, environment and etc, has still far way to go in India. As regards corporate partnering with NGOs, PiC’s survey indicates that 16% companies had worked in partnership with NGOs. But, there are companies that have their own institutions foundations/trusts. Alternatively, companies get their CSR programme implemented through their internal functions. I would like to suggest corporate that they should hire CSR experts by creating separate division of CSR.
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What is the most common and sustainable funding mechanism for CSR initiatives? There is no established mechanism for committing resources. Generally, companies allocate some budget for the community development programmes. It depends mostly on the ‘profit’ of the company. Charity Aid Foundation has been promoting Payroll contribution this as ‘Give As You Earn’ and as a result companies such as Price Waterhouse Coopers and Glaxo SmithKline in India have provided opportunities to their employees to support their chosen charitable causes. How effective is CSR in building a socially sensitive brand for an enterprise? Nike suffered the consumer boycott of its products in the mid 90s. It learnt from their mistakes and attacks from NGOs and today it has emerged as one of the most progressive global corporations as it improved its CSR practices. There are several examples as to how CSR has helped companies improve their brand image over its competitors. The best example in India is Tatas. What is your viewpoint in relation to controversies on CSR? CSR is a dynamic business process that mitigates the concerns and aspirations of stakeholders. However, CSR in its limited ‘form’, using this as instrument only towards mitigating business challenges in short term does not long last and therefore be dissuaded. What is the future of CSR initiatives? In a globalsing world where companies are increasingly relying on brand strength to add value and product differentiation, and where NGO-driven consumer activism is increasing, role of CSR will be inevitable as it makes good business sense. Still, CSR is in evolving process and therefore there is no uniformity in approach. How do you think evolving CSR strategies can help to integrate UN Millennium Development Goals? Corporate can link up their philanthropic or community development initiatives with MDGs in order to achieve the global goals locally. Secondly, they can reduce the impacts of their operations at the work place linking those with MDGs. Finally, corporate can use their influence or economic power on improving the policies which would help country achieve the MDGs. i4d | August 2005
August 2005
ICTD Project Newsletter WOUGNET, “Women need to have a say in what applications are developed and promoted, and the only way is to get more women into the labs and factories. Universal access entails a gendered approach as well as gives women a chance to access learning and training opportunities, which will in turn build women’s technological capacity.” (www.woughnet.org )
Areas of focus
Mahila Samakhya Karnataka Training Programme in progress
Mahila manthana: Using ICTs for women’s empowerment Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can create, disseminate, store, bring value and manage information in a way that few could have imagined. ICTs have made it possible to reach the unreached women. It has provided them with an opportunity to participate in their own economic and social progress, and make informed decision on issues that affect them. This issue of the ICTD Project newsletter thus reviews some of ICT for development initiatives for women and how ICTs have helped in the empowerment of women. The latter part of the article shall deal with the lessons from these projects in context to the Mahiti Manthana project, supported by NISG and implemented by IT for Change, a Bangalore based NGO working with Mahila Samakhya – Karnataka.
Introduction Since early 1990’s ICTs have been increasingly used by women and women’s organisations, for networking and political advocacy. ICTs hold the potential for giving women new space, for political action across national boundaries, for economic gain through support for establishing local enterprises, and for enabling access to markets. Using ICTs to broaden perspectives, build up greater understanding, and initiate interactive processes for information exchange can aid women
greatly. But the need to view women as active interpreters of information has been resounded increasingly across the globe. A number of valuable resources are available on the web to assist organisations working with women to learn and use these digital technologies. The Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) is a non-governmental organisation was set up to develop the use of ICTs among women as tools to share information and address issues collectively. Says Dorothy Okello of
Globally, the projects around the world that focus on gender and ICT for empowerment can broadly be grouped into projects that focus on (i) access to information for livelihoods; (ii) using other ICT tools like community radio; (iii) creating storehouses of data; (iv) education and training of women; (v) supporting women entrepreneurs; and (vi) linking of women producers to global markets.
i Livelihoods information access In Eastern Europe, the Council of Women Farmers, and the State Committee of Ukraine for Entrepreneurship Development, UNDP in cooperation with an NGO has started a telecentre project in Ukraine to provide information on agriculture and farm management for supporting women farmers who identified lack of information and networking tools as the major obstacle for improved incomes from farming. The purpose of the telecentre is to provide access to information that is critical for their livelihoods Telecentres have been set up by many government agencies as well as NGOs all across the country. The most important services that are provided relate to livelihoods issues. Self Employed Women’s Association in Gujarat, India, has set up Technology
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Information Centres (TIC) in 11 districts in Gujarat with the objective of providing crafts related skills, computer skills, other multi-media skills, and organizing and leadership training using ICTs effectively. Connectivity through information networks can support women’s access to information, covering technical information on sustainable agricultural practices and innovations, market news and agricultural commodity prices, weather predictions and rainfall patterns, recommended crops for the season and information on institutions that provide expertise and training.
ii Using other ICT tools like community radio, video etc. The Deccan Development Society (DDS) has trained poor dalit (the Indian social classification for the poorest and untouchables in the caste system) women in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh to use the video to represent their lives and redefine their status. Community radio has become a popular media for women and can play important role for empowerment and the right to information for rural women. DDS has also set up a community radio station in Machnoor village, with a 100-watt FM transmitter with a 30-kilometer radius reach. Supported by UNESCO, a small team of dalit women have recorded over 300 hours of programming on issues related to women’s empowerment, agricultural needs of semi-arid regions, public health and hygiene, indigenous knowledge systems, biodiversity, food security and also local song and drama. Using multiple digital technologies among the communities has proved to be very successful in initiating women to new technologies and empowering them. Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) has used the video as a tool of women’s empowerment from the mid80s onwards. SEWA’s cooperative, ‘Video SEWA’, has produced video footage on many issues including livelihoods of poor women. It has used
the medium to share information with their own members and also as a tool for training and teaching new skills, and to reach policy makers. Also, SEWA’s satellite technology programme has enabled the organisation working in over 10 districts of Gujarat, to provide information on topics like Panchayati Raj (village governance institutions), nursery raising and forestry management, savings and credit through the use of satellite cable. Since a number of women farmers and skilled worked in rural areas are unlettered, they prefer to learn about the new methods and market information through the video, phone, radio.
iii Creating storehouses of data Women’s groups have been organised in self-help groups, which focus on savings and micro-credit programmes as a way to access small loans to start and run their enterprises. This requires learning a number of management activities like record maintenance, fund transfers, etc. The Collectorate of West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh, has introduced a software solution package called ‘Mahila Spurthi’, that can do most of the credit related operations. SEWA started using ICT by piloting its computerisation for a few activities like savings and crafts activities limiting itself to one district. Today SEWA has successfully developed software which generates various customised reports such as community-wise artisan members, embroidery- wise member lists, grade-wise member lists.
iv Education and training of women The Delhi based Studies in Information Technology Applications (SITA) provided computer skill training to poor and disadvantaged women. The aim was to empower low-income women from rural, suburban and urban areas, through computer training, customised to meet the demands of both the public and private sectors and generating rural employment.
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Datamation Foundation’s ICT Centre at the Babool-Ulm-Madarsa, Seelampur, North-East Delhi has been operating since March 2003 to take ICTs closer to Muslim women, whose mobility is restricted by cultural prescriptions. The corner stone of the project is the use of CDs for building skills of women. More than 40 vocational and skills-enrichment modules which include bead-making, dressmaking, carpentry, embroidery, candle-making, mehndi (henna), handbag-making, tailoring, etc. have been developed for income-generation.
v Supporting women entrepreneurs Self-employment through ICTs is another income-earning area for the poor women. The Village Pay Phones project of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is a success story. The banks lend money to rural women to buy cellular phones, which serve as Public Call Offices (PCOs). Due to cultural barriers women often cannot leave their homes to far away places. These mobile PCOs also provide an opportunity for women to get development information through the support of the NGO’s databases. A pilot program involving 300 villages revealed that women were earning about US$700 per year after covering all their costs, over twice the per capital annual income in Bangladesh.
vi Linking of women producers to global markets One of the most powerful applications of ICT in the domain of knowledge networking is electronic commerce. eCommerce is a field which, with organisational support, can provide enormous opportunities for poor women producers to meet up the challenges of selling their products in the global market. SEWA’s Trade Facilitation Centre has considerable success in its e-Commerce endeavours supported by its websites www.banascraft.org , www. kutchcraft.org and www.sewamart.com In Lethem, a village in Guyana, an organisation ‘Rupununi Weaver’s
Society’ formed by indigenous women of two tribes revived the ancient art of hand-weaving large hammocks from locally grown cotton and then took their exquisite wares online (http://www. gol.net.gy/rweavers/ ). Last year, they sold 17 hammocks to people around the world for as much as $1,000 a piece- a gigantic sum in this part of the world. PEOPLink (http://www.peoplink.org/) has been helping women communities traditionally involved with handicrafts to put their products online in the world market. It is building up a global network of Trading Partners (TPs) that will provide services to several communitybased artisan producer groups and promote them to retail and wholesale buyers in the industrialised countries.
The Mahiti Manthana Project The above given projects provide insights for the newly launched project called Mahiti Manthana which is being implemented by IT for Change (ITfC), a not-for-profit organization, (www. itforchange.net) under the Women’s Empowerment theme of the ICTD Project being implemented by NISG. The project is a response to a felt need of an established grassroots programmeMahila Samakhya (MS) and is being piloted in three talukas of Mysore district of Karnataka- Hunsur, Nanjangud and Periyapatna. MS is active in 9000 villages of 60 districts in 10 states of India. The Mahila Samakhya, Karnataka (MSK) works in 9 districts of Karnataka. ITfC works in the domain of technology for social change and has been partnering with MSK on producing digital content and supporting the development of ICT based knowledge management processes in the organisation. This project strives to fulfill multiple objectives at local and institutional level. It attempts to build the knowledge and capacity of the self-help groups; address the communication needs of the ‘sangha’ women and the adolescent girls besides building and sustaining the capacities of the MSK resource persons at various
levels. Three other key objectives focus on intra-organisational knowledge sharing and process; access to knowledge and expertise through helpline, access to justice and legal redressal processes (both formal and informal) and strengthen the government linkages.
Meeting the knowledge needs of ‘sangha’ women The motto of Mahila Samakhya is ‘education for empowerment’. This project will make available the opportunity of using digital audio-visual multimedia, chiefly VCDs and textual media to maximise absorption of information and capacity by ‘sangha’ women. Other digital technologies like digital text, computers, e-mails, custom software, telephones, etc. will also be used to serve the objectives of MSK’s activity. So while some ‘sanghas’ will be provided the basic equipment to access audio-visual content (VCD players with TV sets and tape recorders) the others will have full-fledged networked computers and peripherals. VCDs will be developed in-house on important themes and well catalogued for easy referencing.
Addressing communication and identity building needs Participatory video techniques will be used and street plays, important ‘sangha’ meetings and other ‘sangha’ events like interactions with panchayats and government officials will be video recorded. ‘Sangha’ women will be encouraged to video-document their insights and representations for advocacy and for seeking intervention from authorities. A monthly newsletter will be brought out for the Mysore district programme of MSK, with content contributed by ‘sangha’ women, ‘kishoris’ as well as by the MSK functionaries. Digital content produced locally will also be put on the cable TV. As local media capability and processes are built, introducing community radio will also be explored.
Meeting ICT needs of adolescent girls (kishoris) The information and communication needs of the young adolescent girls or ‘kishoris’ will be met by providing elementary computer literacy, leveraging IT to make available reading material in print, providing life skills and conscientisation modules. The processes of making a vast choice of reading material available to ‘kishories’ will be worked through an innovative system
Kishoris at an information dissemination program
over a digital platform called the ‘IT Enabled Library Extension Service’ (ITELES). The ITELES software will allow ‘kishoris’ to browse a complete list of books and journals available at city/ taluka libraries. The request for books from each ‘sangha’ will be aggregated and during the next visit of any member to the taluka, books due for return will be carried back, and the requisitioned books collected.
Capacity building activities The key resource persons are the Senior Resource Persons, Junior Resource Persons and Cluster Resource Persons at the district, taluka and cluster levels respectively. Increasingly, the Executive Council (EC) members of the federations and issue-based leaders of ‘sanghas’ will also emerge as key resource persons. All these resource persons will be trained to access content from computers at the Taluka Resource Centre. Significant amount of content, organised through a customised Content Management System (CMS), and interactive training modules, will be prepared for the resource persons.
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Knowledge management activities of MSK New ICTs to support and develop efficient information and communication processes for the entire organisation of MSK will be used. It will cover knowledge management tools, and digital platforms for better planning across the tiers of the MSK. This entails internal office automation processes and promoting the use of emails.
‘Sangha’ formation and oath taking in progress
Other operational processes that will be automated include a Project Management System (PMS) for MSK project monitoring and reporting; developing an MIS (Management Information System) for periodic reporting; Extending the MIS system to cover the subsequent levels of the talukas and villages; Digital support for SHG accounting, micro-credit and finance management through SHG accounting systems; and Significant and meaningful web presence through an organisation web-site.
Running ‘Santhwana’ helpline for redressal and justice The ‘Santhwana’ helpline will be operated from the three taluka Mahiti Manthana Kendras to provide access to legal information and redressal, and to processes of justice. The helpline will develop call-centre capabilities with voice mail, effective call-classification and content support through custom software, call recognition and recording, call classification for differential processing, call-forwarding and teleconferencing with third parties,
linkages with experts and with support agencies like banks, etc. Telephones will be the main channel to access the helpline. ‘Sampark Sakhis’ (communication facilitators) at the helpline will be trained to give information support as well as linkages to experts and government authorities.
Strengthening linkages to outside agencies MSK women will use the offline digital multi-media (VCDs or video compact discs) for making petitions to government. The taluka Mahiti Manthana Kendras will serve as the key digital connection for this purpose. The project will also explore using simple egovernance software with the district administration, for better efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of linkage processes.
Extending the services for self-sustenance Once the ‘sangha’ is capable of, and comfortable with, employing the new ICTs for its own purposes, the Mahiti Manthana Kendra will be converted to a community telecentre, providing a range of information and services to the wider community. The project will also develop links with the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). Financially sustainable Mahiti Manthana Kendras are expected to come up in other places with little or no additional investments. The model after piloting in Mysore, will be absorbed in MSK activity throughout Karnataka and then throughout the 10 states in which MS operates.
Project initiation activities ITfC’s project management team will network with the management structure of MSK, and a variety of expert consultants of the project. The Project Co-ordination office will be in Bangalore, Content Distribution Unit, Training Unit and Technical Support Unit will be in Mysore and the Mahiti Manthana Kendras at taluka and village levels.
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The project is in a needs assessment and a baseline survey phase. Since Mahiti Manthana is a meta-intervention, aiming to strengthen an existing intervention (Mahila Samakhya, Karnataka or MSK), the needs are being assessed at two levels. One, at the level of the ‘sangha’ women - for women’s empowerment, possibly through telecentres providing the information and communication needs of the whole village. The second level of survey is at MSK level, exploring how can the new technologies be used to make training and capacity building processes more efficient, what knowledge bases can be built which are easily accessible, how can MSK’s internal information and communication can be made more efficient etc.
References • Gurumurthy A, A review of ICT Initiatives that focus on Disadvantaged Women in South Asia, http://www. unifem.org.in/ bridging_the_gender/ • Nath V, Empowerment and Governance through Information and Communication Technologies: women’s perspective http:// www.cddc.vt.edu/knownet/articles/ womenandICT.htm • Lennie J, Rural women’s empowerment in a communication technology project: some contradictory effects http://rights.apc.org.au/gender/2005/04/ rural_womens_empowerment_ in_an_ict_project.php • Kole E, Internet Information for African Women’s Empowerment http:/ /www.xs4all.nl/~ekole/public/ VIIOpaper.html • http://www.un-instraw.org/revista/ hypermail/alltickers/en/0107.html • http://www.kfaw.or.jp/english/ 00_10th1.html • http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/ egm/ict2002/reports/week1.html • www.grameen-info.org NISG and i4d reserve the right to reprint articles produced for the ICTD section of the i4d magazine and website, with due credits to NISG and i4d. Please write to the editor for any request of reprints.
Books received Task Force on Environmental Sustainability Environment and human well-being: A practical strategy Authors: Don Melnick, Jeffrey McNeely, Yolanda Kakabadse Navarro, Guido Schmidt-Traub, Robin R. Sears Publisher: UNDP, 2005, Pages: 160 ISBN: 1844072282, Price: 45 USD This report is environmental analysis by the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Environmental Sustainability with a focus on action plan for the Task Force. The book is structured in two parts and six chapters. Part one (chapter one, two and three) traces the existing problem and explains the need for and the complexity involved in operationalizing environmental sustainability. The book traces key issues of environmental degradation and explain clearly and concisely the link between environmental sustainability and other Millennium Development Goals. While the first part focuses on what drives environmental change with an analytical framework of case studies and regional diagnosis, part two traces the possible ways of investing in environmental management for different ecosystems. The book concludes with principal implementing strategies for national and regional implementation mechanisms which is useful for policy makers at the same to those who are trying to navigate their way through the varied terrains of the Millennium Development Goals. Environment and Human Well-Being, in conjunction with the flagship publication Investing in Development, is one of 13 thematic publications that comprise the UN Millennium Library.
ICT Policy: A Beginner’s Handbook Editor : Chris Nicol Publisher: Association of Progressive Commons, 2003, Pages: 140 ISBN: 1-919855-10-6, Price: 10 USD (Plus postage and packing) “ICT Policy: A Beginner’s Handbook” takes the mystery out of information and communication technology (ICT) policy. Whether one is a member of the civil society organization, a researcher, an activist, a journalist looking for background information, or someone who is simply interested in the topic, this book will help to get grips with the key issues in the field. This book aims to guide non-specialist through some of the policy issues of communication and sharing of information and August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
enables its readers to engage effectively with the decision-making process. The book identifies issues and addresses then without using technical jargons. It provides concrete examples of recent policy landmarks and debates, as well as background knowledge that will serve as a basis for further investigation. The books is divided into four parts that explains ICT policy, the Internet as a media, how policy and regulations are decided, with an appendices in the end designed to help the readers understand some of the technical terminology. The list of organization at the end also gives an idea of who is working in the field and also how to get in contact with them. This book was a result of a multi-stakeholder partnership between the Association of Progressive Communications, the leading international civil society group on ICT policy issues, and the common wealth Telecommunications Organizations.
Information Technology Security Handbook Authors: George Sadowsky, James X. Dempsey, Alan Greenberg, Barbara J. Mack, Alan Schwartz Publisher: Global Information and Communication Technologies Department, World Bank, 2003, Pages: 389 ISBN: 0-9747888-0-5 This is a practical guide to understanding and implementing IT security at home on in business environment. The book although aimed primarily for readers in developing countries, provides best practices valid in any situations. In addition to summarizing current physical and electronic threats to IT security, the handbook also explores management practices, regulatory environments and patterns of cooperation that exists among businesses, governments, professional organaizations and international agencies. The handbook is structured in five parts that elaborates the general issues of security in an electronic age, security options for individuals who use computing and networking resource for a variety of purposes, administrative and policy aspects of security from an organizational point of view, security issues that needs to be handled at the governmental level and guide to helping system and network administrators to perform theoir duties effectively. This Handbook, funded by a grant from the infoDev Program of the World Bank Group, provides technology-independent best practices as well as recommendations for particular IT environments.
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Rendezvous D ISCUSSION M EETING
ON
C OMMUNICATION R IGHTS , J UNE 30, 2005, D HAKA , B ANGLADESH
Establishing communication rights A discussion meeting on ‘Communication Rights in the Information Society: Bangladesh Perspective’ was held on June 30 in Work for a Better Bangladesh (WBB) Trust auditorium, Dhaka. The meeting was attended by the teachers, journalists, NGO representatives, professional groups, CSOs and the members of the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Bangladesh chapter. The speakers emphasised on analysing the Bangladesh situation regarding communication rights and find out strategies to uphold it. The speakers also said about the hindrances of establishing communication rights due to a number of obstacles like official secrecy Act, corporate control over information, political influence and the influences of power holders, etc.
Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, Convener of CRIS Bangladesh chapter delivered his introductory speech mentioning the necessity of widening the CRIS campaign raising a number of issues on communication rights perspective in Bangladesh. He also explained from the CRIS charter the elements of communication rights, which are based mainly on the four pillars - creating spaces for democratic environments, reclaiming the use of knowledge and the public domain, reclaiming civil and political rights in the information society and securing equitable and affordable access. He demanded resistance to information becoming a commodity under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs-Intellectual Property Rights regime of World Trade Organisation (WTO-GATs-IPR). Professor Lutfor Rahman, Vice-Chancellor of Pundra University of Science and Technology stressed to widen the CRIS campaign among the students so that they take necessary measures to establish rights of the people who are vulnerable.
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Arshad Siddiqui, a media activist and member of ‘Janaadhikar Andolon’ emphasised how to make substantial contribution to the field of communication while rhetoric triumphs instead of activities. He stressed to communication rights education at the grassroots level and develop easy materials for disseminating them at all levels. Samar Roy, Director of Media Professional Groups stressed the importance of this campaign and widening the activities. Dr. Tapan Bagchi, a working journalist of a renowned daily ‘Amader Somoy’ said of formulating a communication policy in Bangladesh and urged to make pressure to the government. AHM Bazlur Rahman, Executive Director of Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) spoke on strategies to work further over the issue. He said about different forms of communication like theological communication, political communication, population communication, etc. and stressed in all aspects Bangladesh lag behind in communication rights. Sohel Aorangajeb, an ICT expert said that communication rights is a vast area and stressed to formulate strategies and build up people’s capacity to claim their rights on communication. The speakers gave importance of preparing position paper and country situation on communication rights. A number of activities have been planned as a draft to implement as a short term basis which are mentioned below: • Disseminate the CRIS charter (Bangla version) countrywide; • Organise grassroots and national level meeting/dialogue on communication rights; • Form an online discussion group to disseminate information regularly; • Develop a CRIS Bangladesh website and update time-to-time; • Organise consultation meet of the staff of CRIS local network organisations oncommunication rights; • Publish a report on the current status/situation analysis of Bangladesh on communication rights; • Review different policies e.g. communication policy, ICT policy, copy rights and patent law, etc to identify the gaps and prepare a set of recommendations to further work over the issue in own perspective; • Develop networking and coordination with WSIS process to pursue integrating CRIS mandate; • Facilitate people’s access to and control over ICTs analysing IPR regime, WTO and contextual framework; • Publish booklet, poster etc for opinion mobilisation to build a knowledge society which will bridge the gap of digital divide. For more information visit www.voicebd.org/cris.htm
i4d | August 2005
Rendezvous SECOND A NNUAL C ONVENTION OF N ATIONAL A LLIANCE ON M ISSION 2007, J ULY 10-12, 2005 N EW D ELHI
Finding ways to realise a national dream The second Annual Convention of the National Alliance on Mission 2007 and the First Convocation of the Jamshedji Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity (NVA) was held on July 10-12, in New Delhi, for ushering in ICT-led development in
The president of India APJ Abdul Kalam sharing moments with NVA fellows.
rural India. Speaking on the occasion, President A P J Abdul Kalam said,“VKC (village knowledge centre) is one of the essential components for realising our goal of graduating into a knowledge society and lead to the transformation of the nation into a developed country before 2020,” The President of India inaugurated the First Convocation of National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity. The National Alliance is Chaired by M S Swaminathan, and its partners like Nasscom Foundation, represented by Sukanya Rath as the Secretary General and One World South Asia, represented by Basheerhamad Shadrach, and Geeta Sharma who serves as the Operations Manager. Prof Arunachalam and Senthil Kumar from MS Swaminathan Foundation serve as Secretaries. “I am sure that ultimately the National Alliance will be able to develop a user owned and managed network, which will help the rural population in terms of information,” Kalam said. He also expressed hope that these centers will provide valuable information for agriculture, weather, health, fishermen, craftsmen, traders, entrepreneurs, unemployed youth and the students. In this year’s National Budget, the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram recognized the Mission 2007 as a national initiative and supported it by joining the Alliance with a commitment of one billion rupees from the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
being operated by NABARD. Mission 2007’s objective is to facilitate and accelerate, through multi-stakeholder collaborations, the provision of knowledge centers in each village. In its first phase, the target is to reach 240,000 panchayats (locally elected, governance body) and the final goal is to reach all the 600,000 villages in India. A parallel session was the first convocation and PRA (participatory rural appraisal) meeting of the Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity fellows. The academy strives to create several hubs of knowledge, which will be useful as a resource centre. The parallel sessions of deliberations were intense and were facilitated in 4 languages. There were participants from 15 states. The Union Commerce and Information Technology Minister, Dayanidhi Maran said it was time to use Information Technology (IT) and software skills to improve the social and economic conditions of the rural population. Technology should be harnessed to change the face of rural India by providing urban amenities to the underprivileged in the rural areas, he said. The inaugural session was followed by a series of brief presentations by experts from the corporate sector, content providers, technology providers, key practitioners, and academics. The panel that oversaw this session included Namrata Bali (Sewa), Vasundhara Raje, (Chief Minister of Rajasthan state), MS Swaminathan (MSSRF)and Sayeda Hamid (Planning Commission). On the second day, after a plenary presentation, the participants broke up into several task forces covering content, capacity building, coordination, etc. They then came back to a final plenary, including the sharing of the PRA exercise of the volunteers. Basheerhamad Shadrach presented an overview of the policy directives and the commitments needed to realise the mission objectives. Two other Union Ministers, P Chidambaram and Mani Shankar Iyer – representing Finance and Panchayati Raj respectively were present in the final plenary. They reiterated their support to help mobilize the administration to enable this ambitious project into action. There are already 10,000 VKCs in the country, including the ITC’s e-Chaupal’s 5000. There are a number of business models of running a VKCs. Some are social entrepreneurship models, others are being run and managed by NGOs and civil society organisations, and panchayats or communities run others. For more details, log on to www.mission2007.org Report by Jayalakshmi Chittoor jchittoor@csdms.in
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Bytes for All... July 2005 at BytesforAll discussion group, as usual, was another exciting and happening month with very interesting and insighntful discussion, thanks to resourceful contributors. The following is the brief summary of various discussion threads
Open Source OpenMEDnic archive A step-by-step guide for using the OpenMED@NIC Archive and any other EPrints based Archive. http://openmed.nic.in/135/ CiviCRM 1.0 Beta announcement CiviCRM is an open source, internationalised, nonprofit-centric constituent relationship management core. It is designed to handle common contact and relationship needs (CRM needs) in the nonprofit and non-governmental sectors. CiviCRM will form the basis of a number of end-user targeted applications including CivicSpace 0.8.2 and the Social Source Foundation’s donor/ constituent management, broadcast e-mail and online donations solution. The CiviCRM Team is proud to announce the release of CiviCRM 1.0 Beta. http://www.openngo.org/
launch of Edusat, the world’s first dedicated education satellite by A P J Abdul Kalam, President of India by connecting 15 teacher training centres and 50 government schools through satellite in Kerala. Edusat is a collaborative project of ISRO, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, State Departments of Education and the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Growing demand for an interactive satellite based distance education system through audio-visual medium, employing Direct To Home (DTH) quality broadcast prompted the government to launch it. Africa’s first NEPAD e-School launched in Uganda The first New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) eschool on the African continent, the Bugulumbya Secondary School in Busobya Village in the Kamuli District of Uganda was launched by Uganda’s President Museveni on 18 July 2005. The Bugulumbya school has computers and accessories, server, Internet, electricity, mobile telephone booster mast, computer desks, DSTV, e-health facility, and trained teachers. The 10-year NEPAD flagship e-schools initiative involves the establishment of an Africa-wide satellite network that will connect the schools to the Internet as well as to points within each country from which educational content will be fed to the schools on a continuous basis. http://www.nepad.org
Site watch
BBC open source
Women in Global Science and Technology, WIGSAT
This site provides information about and links to British Broadcasting Services (BBC) open source projects. It lists projects developed by the BBC where the source code has been released as open source. The site doesn’t cover the many open source projects to which the BBC has contributed, but only those that the BBC has initiated and managed itself. http://www.bbc.co.uk/opensource/
Women in Global Science and Technology (WIGSAT) promotes the contributions women make in science and technology for development. It also helps NGOs, governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies and women themselves to understand the gender dimensions of science and technology and the implications of this for development policy and practice. WIGSAT provides services in the area of gender, science and technology for development, with a special focus on information and communications technologies. It also acts as a broker or disseminator of information and resources. http://www.wigsat.org http://GSTGateway.wigsat.org
ICT4D ITU hones in on digital divide The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has launched a new development drive designed to bring access to information and communication technologies to the estimated one billion people worldwide who are still without access to a telephone. Called ‘Connect the World’, the initiative is designed to encourage new projects and partnerships to bridge the digital divide. http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/current1.html
Education
Seed savers’ network Australian NGO which views seed-saving as a vital means of preserving genetic resources. It provides financial and educational assistance to community development projects, and open-pollinated seed stocks (as an alternative to their hybrid and genetically engineered counterparts) to individuals, groups and communities. http://www.seedsavers.net The Equator Initiative
A revolution in Indian education Education in colleges and schools across India’s villages and urban areas will not be the same from July 28, 2005, onwards after the
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The Equator Initiative is an UNDP partnership programme that aims to reduce poverty through conservation and biodiversity sustainability in the region between 23.5 degrees north and south i4d | August 2005
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Bytes for All... of the Equator. This zone holds the world’s greatest concentrations of both human poverty and biological wealth. The project based in New York was launched in 2002. http://www.undp.org/equatorinitiative
Events and announcements Announcing the APC Betinho communications prize in 2005 In 2005, the Association for Progressive Communication’s (APC) Betinho Prize will be offered in recognition of community initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean that use the Internet and other networks to access markets, skills and opportunities to derive real economic benefits. The US$ 7500 prize is open to civil society organisations, community-based groups, networks, and social movements anywhere in Latin America and the Caribbean. Applications will be accepted in Spanish, Portuguese and English. Deadline for nominations is October 16, 2005. http://www.apc.org/english/betinho Scholarships for women bloggers Blogging company Six Apart has announced thet they will offer five scholarships for women bloggers interested in attending the upcoming BlogHer conference, which will focus on the role of women in blogging culture. http://www.sixapart.com/about/corner/2005/05/upcoming_ bloghe.html http://www.blogher.org/
Digital Learning 2005 Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) is organising a one day seminar on October 18 on ICT and education during Conflux 2005 on the theme ‘ICT and Education: Challenges and Practices’. The objectives of the conference will be to create a platform to interchange the views of experts and professionals who are associated with various important issues of ICT implementation in education sector. The keynote address will be on ‘Learning ICT and Learning through ICT: Prospects and Challenges’. The following four themes will be covered in four sessions of the conference: • Tools for Learning through ICT: Availability and Scope, • e-Learning: Best Practices and Challenges, • Open Source in Education, • Policy and Advocacy: Critical Issues. Applications for slot and paper presentations to be sent to sejuti@csdms.in. The last date for receipt of abstracts is September 15, 2005. ‘Knowledge Networking for Peace: Rhetoric or Reality?’ on July 27-29, 2005 at Kathmandu, Nepal. The primary objective of the workshop was to build community of practice for peace in South Asia using various online and other forms of knowledge sharing. http://www.sapnepal.org.np/k_network_peace.php Microfinance workshop
The Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) conference will held in Cape Town, South Africa on August 22-30. It will include more than 90 selected presentations, workshops and panels relevant to the social appropriation of ICT for local benefit. http://www.cirn2005.org
ekgaon Technologies and Community Enterprise Forum India (CEFI) have entered into partnership for initiating series of workshops aiming at identifying priorities, analysing technologies and enabling communities to specify there requirements from ICTs and evolve learning for stakeholders. The workshop named as ‘ICTs for Communities: Learning Workshop Series’ was held on August 1-2, 2005 at Sevaiyoor, Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu, India. www.microfinance.in
Call for abstracts - Unite For Sight’s 3rd Annual International Health Conference
Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) conference in Jordan
Unite For Sight’s 3rd Annual International Health Conference, ’Empowering Communities to Bridge Health Divides’ will held in Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. on April 1-2, 2006. It is calling for posters about the use of IT and technology to bridge health divides in developing countries. Unite For Sight is also encouraging submission of proposal for a poster presentation at the conference site. Unite for Sight’s conference is for all professionals and students involved in medicine, health education, health promotion, public health, and international service. http://www.uniteforsight.org/2006_annual_conference.php
The conference Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) will held in Amman, Jordan on October 1-3, 2005. This will be the largest-ever global gathering of media development professionals, The aim of the conference is to begin to address challenges and opportunities facing the media development sector. http://www.gfmd.info/
CIRN conference 2005
South Asian workshop on knowledge networking Bellasap in coordination with South Asia Partnership (SAP) International and SAP Nepal organised a South Asian workshop on August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Bytes for All: www.bytesforall.net Bytes For All Readers Discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ bytesforall_readers Bytes for All Summary Archive: http://www.bytesforall.net/ Summary/ Bytes for All discussion summary compiled by: Farah Mahmud, Bytes for All, Pakistan
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D ISASTER F EATURE
Geography of disasters Since the terrific Tsunami of last year, one shake of the earth crust in any corner of the globe makes us afraid, especially when it is somewhere in the islands or coastal areas. All of us are living on disaster prone areas, may be of different natures, types and intensities, and the interesting fact is that disasters vary in terms of nature, type and intensity as per the geographical locations. Around the Pacific Ocean, there is the ‘Ring of Fire’ where active breaking of the earth’s crust occurs causing earthquakes. The earths crust is divided into several semimobile layers called plates (resembling layers of thermocol over the surface of water)that floats over the ocean surface. Important plates interacting in the region are the South American Plate, the Nasca Plate, the Pacific Plate, and the Philippine Plate. There are smaller plates in the inland seas that surround this region. Numerous countries here have been affected by catastrophic earthquakes, such as Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, Mexico, Philippines, Guam, People’s Republic of China, Marianas, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Australia and other regions that border chains of volcanic islands in the Pacific. Volcanoes are located mainly along the Pacific Rim that cover the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. Tsunamis, tidal waves generated by earthquakes, affect many of the coastal areas of the region. Tropical cyclones or typhoons are common in the Asia-Pacific region specially over the north-west Pacific, during June and November. Here examples have been sited from some countries of Asia to show how the locational factors matter to cause disasters.
Armenia • Located on Alpen-Himalayan and Balkan-Carpathian seismic zone that becomes a plate-boundary, and therefore hit by earthquakes frequently.
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Bangladesh
Indonesia
• Located on a path of cyclones spawned at Bay of Bengal makes Bangladesh one of the most affected country by windstorms. • The devastating damage by cyclones to this country in terms of the number of disasters and the damages. • Bangladesh is located in flat land with less than 20 metres above sea-level except the North and the steep range of hills in the south-east, and accordingly monsoon floods cause damage.
• Earthquakes affect because there are seismic belts running through the country, and moreover there are 129 active volcanoes and accordingly volcanic eruptions often happen in the country. • Floods tend to occur in rainy season and drought in dry season.
Cambodia • Floods of the Mekong River caused by the monsoon. • Landslides causing devastating damage • Paddy field damage by drought.
China • About 80 per cent of China’s territorial area, 60 per cent of its large cities and 70 per cent of its urban areas with populations over 1 million, are located in seismic zones and is effected by earthquakes allmost every year. • It owns a vast land and large population, and also has been hit by various natural disasters. The numbers of people killed and affected by natural disasters are the largest in the world. • Floods cause the most massive impact on the country, followed by droughts and earthquakes.
India • Located in a natural disaster-prone area, affected by windstorms such as cyclones, originating at the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, causes floods in several coastal parts of India. • Earthquakes caused by active crustal activity of Himalayan mountains. • Floods caused by monsoon. • Drought in arid/semiarid areas. Historically, drought damages are the largest in the country.
Japan • Located not only in typhoon prone area, but also on Pacific earthquake belt and the volcanic zone that are on very active plate boundaries. It is located in the Pacific-Rim Seismic Zone and suffers, on average, a massive earthquake (Richter scale 8.0 or more) once every 10 years and a large scale earthquake (magnitude 7.0) once a year. • Also it is attacked by various other natural disasters such as typhoons, heavy rains, heavy snowfalls, debris flow, landslides, volcanic eruptions, etc. every year. • The economic damage due to natural disaster is the largest in the world.
Kazakhstan • Located at the foot of Tian Shan and Altai Mountains and often has an impact of earthquakes caused by crustal deformation and natural disasters such as debris flow and floods.
Kyrgyztan • Covered with 94 % of mountain range that is over 1,000 metres above sea level and the 40 % of the range is alpine area with over 3,000 metres high altitude. They inherit distinctive natural disasters of mountainous range such as earthquakes accompanied with active crustal deformation. • Floods are caused by melt water of snow and landslides. Source: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/ public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN009693.pdf http://www.rrcap.unep.org/apeo/Chp1hnathazards.html i4d | August 2005
What’s on Botswana
Italy
31 August-02 September, 2005 World Information Technology Forum Gaborone
19-20 September, 2005 Financing Cooperation to Bridge the Digital Divide Turin
www.witfor.org
http://www.todigitalworld.org/index.php?lang=eng
Canada 24-28 October, 2005 E-Learn 2005 Vancouver British Columbia
27-28 October, 2005 Lesser Used Languages & Computer Linguistics Bolzano
http://www.aace.org/conf/eLearn/call.htm
http://www.eurac.edu/Org/LanguageLaw/ Multilingualism/Projects/Conference2005.htm
Dominican Republic
Kenya
03-07 October, 2005 World Congress of Computer Law, Information Society, Electronic Government and Cyberspace Regulation Santo Domingo
07-10 September, 2005 Mapping for Change International Conference on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication Nairobi
http://www.funglode.org/v-mundial-di/ default2.htm
http://pgis2005.cta.int/
Egypt
Slovenia
06-08 September, 2005 ICT-Learn 2005 The Fourth International Internet Education Conference, Cairo
19-21 October, 2005 e-2005 e-Challenges 15th Annual Conference supported by the European Commission Ljubljana
http://www.distant-learning.net/index.shtml
http://www.echallenges.org/2005
Hungary 26 October, 2005 ICET 2005 International Conference on Educational Technology, Budapest
South Africa
South Korea 22-26 August, 2005 NWeSP’05 International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices Seoul http://nwesp.org/
Switzerland 19-30 September, 2005 PrepCom-3 Third Meeting of the Preparatory Committee of the Tunis Phase Geneva http://www.itu.int/wsis/preparatory2/pc3/
Tunisia 14-16 November, 2005 WFIS 2005 World Forum on Information Society Digital Divide, Global Development and the Information Society Tunis http://irfd.org/events/wf2005/
16-18 November, 2005 WSIS: World Summit on the Information Society Phase 2, Tunis http://www.itu.int/wsis
United States 14-16 September, 2005 Millennium +5 Summit New York http://www.un-ngls.org/MDG/unaction.htm#1
24-26 August, 2005 CIRN2005 The 2nd Annual Conference of the Community Informatics Research Network Cape Town
23-25 September, 2005 The 33rd Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy Arlington, Virginia
http://www.cirn2005.org
http://www.tprc.org/TPRC05/2005.htm
17-19 October, 2005 Conflux 2005 The e-Government Conference New Delhi
29-31 August, 2005 7th Annual Conference on World Wide Web Applications Cape Town
25-26 May, 2006 ICTD2006 Berkeley California
http://www.conflux.csdms.in
http://www.zaw3.co.za
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/events/ictd2006/
http://www.ijit.org/icet2005
India
Get your event listed here. www.i4d.csdms.in/events August 2005 | www.i4d.csdms.in
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I N F ACT
Discovering the decay The figure shows the combined land-surface air and sea surface temperatures (in oC) 1861 to 1998, relative to the average temperature between 1961 and 1990.The mean global surface temperature has increased by about 0.3 to 0.6°C since the late 19th century and by about 0.2 to 0.3°C over the last 40 years, which is the period with most reliable data. Recent years have been among the warmest since 1860 - the period for which instrumental records are available. Warming is evident in both sea surface and land-based surface air temperatures. The warming has not been globally uniform. The recent warming has been greatest between 40°N and 70°N latitude, though some areas such as the North Atlantic Ocean have cooled in the recent decades. Source: http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/17.htm
Precipitation has increased over land at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially during the cold season. Decrease in precipitation occurred in steps after the 1960s over the subtropics and the tropics from Africa to Indonesia. These changes are consistent with available data analyses of changes in stream flow, lake levels and soil surface. Precipitation averaged over the earth’s land surface increased from the start of the 20th century up to about 1960, but has decreased since about 1980. There is a lack of data on precipitation over the oceans. Source: http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/18.htm
Over the last 100 years, the global sea level has risen by about 10 to 25 cm. It is likely that much of the rise in sea level has been related to the concurrent rise in global temperature over the last 100 years. On this time scale, the warming and the consequent thermal expansion of the oceans may account for about 2-7 cm of the observed sea level rise, while the observed retreat of glaciers and ice caps may account for about 2-5 cm. The rate of observed sea level rise suggests that there has been a net positive contribution from the huge ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, but observations of the ice sheets do not yet allow meaningful quantitative estimates of their separate contributions. The ice sheets remain a major source of uncertainty in accounting for past changes in sea level because of insufficient data about these ice sheets. Source: http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/19.htm
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i4d | August 2005
Department of Information Technology Government of India. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. National Institute of Smart Government. United Nations Development Programme. Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance. Danish Technological Institute. Technical University of Denmark. global e-schools and community initiatives. Internet Service Provider Association of India. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The Society for Promotion for e-Governance. Software Technology Parks of India. Conflux 2005 Department of Information Technology Government of India. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. National Institute of Smart Government. United Nations Development Programme. Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance. Danish Technological Institute. Technical University of Denmark. global e-schools and community initiatives. Internet Service Provider Association of India. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The Society for Promotion for eGovernance. Software Technology Parks of India. Department of Information Technology Government of India. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. National Institute of Smart Government. United Nations Development Programme. Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance. Danish Technological Institute. Technical University of Denmark. global e-schools and community initiatives. Internet Service Provider Association of India. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The Society for Promotion for e-Governance. Software Technology Parks of India. Department of Information Technology Government of India. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. National Institute of Smart Government. United Nations Development Programme. Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance. Danish Technological Institute. Technical University of Denmark. global e-schools and community initiatives.
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