Forum EKS Engineering the Knowledge Society Geneva 12th December 2003

1. Forum EKSEngineering the Knowledge SocietyGeneva12th December 2003 « Sustainable Development and Information Society, from Rio to Geneva » René LONGET, President of equiterre Parter for sustainable development, Geneva-Zurich Forum EKS 12.12.2003

2. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Citizenship needs and means acces to information, ability to deal with information • Thus Information is a very important issue • 1) Information means knowledge • 2) Information means capacity to understand what happens • 3) Information means freedom from false believings, means more selfconfidence. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

3. Sustainable Development and Information Society • More information technology gives not automatically more and better information. • Information technology can enable ignorant people to come to awareness • Information technology can make that isolated people get connected • Information technology can enable a society to better fact finding and so to monitor its own development • But no one of this important goals will become reality without a serious effort and a strong political will. The technology alone will not achieve this by herself. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

4. Sustainable Development and Information Society • The information technology: • Is relatively cheap • Is not complicated to handle with • Is very supple • It is much more difficult for a censorship to combat Internet publications than to close traditional edited newspapers (examples: Iran. Zimbabwe, China...) • The information technology helps to build up the civil society and citizenship specially in the Third World. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

5. Sustainable Development and Information Society • If information technology means no limit to communication, • How stop the invasion of indesirable e-mails? • How combat racist, pornographic, violent messages? • How eliminate paedophile webpages? • Without eliminate the freedom of exchange political opinions and scientific - and other - informations through all the world wide net? Forum EKS 12.12.2003

6. Sustainable Development and Information Society • The information technology can enable people to become better informated, enable governments and civil society organizations to get a better monitoring of the development of their country or city • But what’s the message passing through the new opened channels? • We can suggest in the Third World, through the global soap-opera-programms diffused by the most TV channels, that people in the industrialized world are all rich, lazy, whit big cars, big swimming-pools and plenty of beautyful girls around them… • And enclose the people in all the world in a virtual reality that will substitute to the real world and undermine the will to change it. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

7. Sustainable Development and Information Society • The lesson of all this is that never a new technology is able to give us social, ethical or human progress without a good social, ethical and human accompaniment. • This is the real issue, not only to deal with the so-called digital divide, but to assure that the information technologies will help to improve our societies and our lives. • The accompaniment is also of eminent importance in the field of environnemental issues. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

8. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Environmental issues of the wide spread of technologies of information: • Materials (poisonous for the environment, perhaps also for men, if misused or abandoned without treatment) • Ability to be repaired • Ability of its components to be recycled • Is there an life-cycle approach in the branch? • Which amount of toxic or not toxic waste? • Which increasing of the global energy consumption? What origin of this energy, specially in the Third World? Forum EKS 12.12.2003

9. Sustainable Development and Information Society • To assure the goals of sustainable development, we need a better information capacity • To have a better information capacity we need to use the information technology in a certain sense. • This should be the goal of the Summit on Information Society now held in Geneva. • To this purpose it is of great importance that this Summit made the link to the other Summits of the UN in the Nineties and the beginning of this Century: Habitat, Social Summit, Alimentation, Rights of Women, Development, Millenium, etc. The UN should not separate the results of all these Summits and unite them in a global view. • This view exists, it is the view of Sustainable Development, as reassigned at the WSSD at Johannesburg 2002. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

10. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Sustainable Development means to face the real needs of our world. • What’s going on in the real world today? • Globalisation divides as well unites us • The most important of our time issues are: • Guarantee of Human rights all over the world • Assuring of peace and coexistence between different cultures • Implementing of a sustainable way of Development all over the world. • All our technical means should be employed to realize these goals. • This is naturally also true for the information technologies. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

11. Sustainable Development and Information Society • What aims Sustainability? • The most importants goals as noted in the Action Plan adopted at Johannesburg the 4th of September 2002: • Eradication of poverty • Changing of our ordinary patterns of production and consumption • Managing the natural resources basis of social and economic development. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

12. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Sustainability: • Answers simulteanously to the issues of poverty, inequal development and misuse of natural resources • Defined in 1987 (Brundtland-Report of the UN, entitled Our commun Future) • Recognized internationally by all States, organisms of the civil society, business, the UN, in Rio 1992 (UNCED) • Reinforced 2002 in Johannesburg. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

13. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Some social goals of the WSSD: • Halve by 2015 the proportion of people • whose income is less than 1 $ a day • Who suffer from hunger • Whitout acces to safe drinking water • Who not have access to basic sanitation • Ensure that children - boys and girls - will be able to a full course of primary schooling • Increase employment opportunities taking into account the fundamental rights at work • By 2020 achieve a sugnificant improvement in the lives of slum dwellers. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

14. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Some environmental goals of the WSSD: • Promote sustainable consumption and production patterns • Support of regional and national initiatives to accelerate this purpose • Delinking economic growth and environmental degradation through improving efficiency in the use of ressources and production processes (life-cycle analysis, polluter-pays-principle, consumer and producer information, increasing of eco-efficiency, support of cleaner production, improve social and environmental performances of business,encourage dialogue between enterprises and their stakeholders, use environmental impact assessment procedures). Forum EKS 12.12.2003

15. 20% of all inhabitants of the World use 45% of animal proteins, 58% of the energy, 84% of the paper, 88% of the vehicles. USA: 3% of the global population, 25% of the global energy consumption. In Johannesburg, commitments were made: Integrate energy efficacity and acessibilitxy into development programs With a sense of urgency substantially increase the global share of renewable energy Reduce greenhouse gaz emissions Implement transport strategies in the sense of sustainability. Sustainable Development and Information Society Forum EKS 12.12.2003

16. Sustainable Development and Information Society • 850 millions of human beings suffer from hunger • 850 millions are analphabets. • 1 billion have an income less than 1 $ per day. • 1 billion are without an acceptable housing. • 1,1 billion are without acces to water of drinking quality. • 2,4 billions have no acces to basic sanitation facilities. • We, the developed world and its technology, have the duty to assure a human development all over the world and the basic conditions of human dignity. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

17. Sustainable Development and Information Society • We must develop but not in the way we do this now, since the 19th and more the 20th century we are on the wrong way: • The oceans are overfished and many fish stocks are depleted • The climate change has obviously began • The threat over the non renewelable resources is real • The loss of biodiversity, and of the tropical forests is going on • Desertification is also going on • Pollution of atmosphere, water and soils is also a reality. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

18. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Within the last 50 years, the fossil energy consumption has been multiplied by 5 and the greenhouse gaz emissions have followed the same way. • But we notice extreme differences between the regions of our world: • 20 to/y/person in the USA, 10 in Germany, 4 in Mexico, 1,5 in Brazil, the quantities are much smaller in Asia and Africa • Acceptable level: 1 to/y/person. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

19. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Other environmental commitments taken in Johannesburg: • Prevent and minimize waste and maximise reuse • Sound management of chemicals though their life cycle • Protect freshwaters and introduce a sound management of the seas inclusive sustainable fisheries • Facilitate the protection of the ozone layer • Promote sustainable agriculture, land use, mining and forestry • Achieve by 2010 a significant reverse in the loss of biological diversity. Forum EKS 12.12.2003

20. Sustainable Development and Information Society • Sustainability and information society in the WSSD Action Plan • In many paragraphs of the Plan we find the necessity of information to assure monitoring, and good governance. • The Action Plan reassures that nothing is possible without the field work of scientists, the gathering of informations, the diffusion of the collected knomwledge about the state of sustainability. • But we have to underline that the information technologies have to be used to enforce sustainable development and to assure that the are not misused in the other way. • The should help in monitoring situations and in return in mobililizing people in direction of good solutions. • This should be the goal of the present Summit. Forum EKS 12.12.2003