The Need for the Mobilized Global Conscience for Sustainable Environment and Development

"There is a need for our urgent action to take good care of our nature and cope with a thorny issue of climate change." ICT is a means to reach a developmental and environmental sustainability end.

Greetings to You All

I am very pleased to share with you all the cyberspace communication to address the urgent issues of our fragile world today ranging from economics, the depletion of natural resources, society, food security to human life. We are now at a real peril as each nation or country is trying very hard to develop their economies without concrete mechanisms to deal with the externalities from economic growth and expansionary trade worldwide. When there is no linkage amongst capitalism, globalism, information technology, economics, social science and political science, the human atrocity definitely emerges out of the uncontrollable ecological and environmental problems.

If it is for the sake of charity, cooperation, harmony and humanity, our planet and earth can no longer sustain our present human social and economic activities for the sake of high competition dictated by the market economy, crony capitalism, economic development without ecological conscience and the developed world keeping providing instructions and orders to the less developed one, as well as the predominant diverse national interests rising above our collective efforts of mankind for the better together.

In order to well address the issues of climate change, there should be a permanent institution composed of budgets, funds and measures. From the advanced countries, they should provide some sorts of funds for the developing world to properly deal with the side effects of climate change. The motto of the world should stay within the ecological premise that nature loves us as we love it. The destruction of environment for the ultimate aims of social and economic development brings in the calamity for us as citizens of the world.

I do see Information Communication and Technology as very essential and strategic to the closed caring of our fragile ecological system. Also, I do believe that the ICT for development and poverty reduction becomes key to the developing and less developed countries to keep pace up with the developed one in terms of better living conditions and balanced growth with sound environmental management. In this way, sustainable and clean environment does match the principal concept of sustainable development for everyone.

The globalized seminar on ICT and environment is somehow a useful tool for the debate among the participants to raise concerns about the high exposure of ecology to climate change, global warming and the destruction of the nature by all kinds of means and human actions.

The workshop, I hope, will equip us with awareness and knowledge in the role of ICT for the simultaneous development with healthy and sound environment. Experiences in the domain from specialists and experts of all strata of life do definitely contribute to the mobilized force of ecological and environmental conscience. I also anticipate the technological and electronic divide among the haves, the have-nots and the inaccessible to be bridged significantly. Then, ICT starts to turn itself into a new phase of social and economic development inclusive of clean and good environment.

On this occasion, I am very pleased to partake in the workshop on ICT and Environment to be organized by the Swedish University of Agriculture in coordination with the SPIDER Center. We highly appreciate SPIDER, in particular its director, Dr. Afzal Sher and the Swedish University of Agriculture as well as other involved Swedish stakeholders for having extended the invitation to us to this very crucial event.

I look forward to having active cooperation among all participants.

Thank you for your collaboration and attention.

PHNOM PENH, 03rd March 2008

By Dr. CHHUN Vannak
Associate Dean of Graduate School of Management,
and Academic Professor of Pannasastra University of Cambodia (PUC),
Advisor to the Ministry of Environment &
to H.E. Dr. MOK Mareth, Senior Minister and Minister of Environment
KINGDOM OF CAMBODIA

Rasmus Larsen

Greetings!

I work at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), primarily with our msc programme in Integrated Water Resource Management. Together with colleagues at SLU I am organising this upcoming workshop in ICT and Environment.

My most memorable experience in relation to ICT and environment may be the video-conference seminar we had in the Network for Integrated Transboundary Water Research (NITWAR) last yr with the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction based in Kampala, Uganda. It was a special feeling connecting across time zones and distance with Kennedy Igbokwe and his colleagues, and their partners from the university in Kampala as well as the district fisheries and natural resource management officials from Lake Kyoga. Students from the msc programme in IWRM were present and enjoyed a good two hrs dialogue.

My main aspiration for the workshop is that we may identify and see emerge effective ways of enabling fruitful collaboration amongst a diverse group of people all summoned by an interest in how ICT tools can be applied in the broad field of environmental work. I look forward to learn more about how technical solutions can be employed in harmony with values of democracy, gender, and stakeholder dialogue!

Best wishes
Rasmus

Hi there,

How do you stand on three legs and put equal weight on all three? How many intellectual legs can we develop? For me this workshop can give us an answer.

ICT is traditionally very technology oriented. Environmental issues are mainly taken up by environmentalists, and nowadays also by politicians. ICT and managing the natural resources and the environment is done by people, people with different ideas, wants, backgrounds, focus, capacity, training etc. This is why I think we cannot talk about environment without talking about people, we cannot talk about ICT without considering the people using the technologies.

For this event we are asking people to make an effort and try to stand on three legs: environment, ICT and people, in presentations, discussions and in other interactions. We are looking forward to an event where we can start thinking in new directions, triggered by meeting people with different ideas and backgrounds then ourselves.

I am an anthropologist by training, I have been working in the interface between science and practice for ten years. Since two years I am working as a project coordinator at SLU.

See you in April!

Welcome to the blog!

Dear Participant!

Warmly welcome to the blog and the preparatory exchanges before the workshop!

Preparations and introductions
We encourage you to introduce your-selves and your work by answering the three questions below:

1) What would you like us to know about you?

2) What has been your most memorable experience working with ICT and environment related questions?

3) What do you hope will emerge from the workshop in April?

You can answer these questions by composing and publishing a post here on this site - click 'new post' in the upper right of the blog. You can also use the 'comment' option below each post to respond to interesting topics raised by others. If you have any questions or comments pls contact the organiser at any time!

By sharing who we are and what we do in advance of the workshop we believe that the exchanges in Uppsala 7+8 April will be more fruitful. We look very much forward to the exchanges with you all on this blog and to meeting you in person in Uppsala! We encourage all of us to use the blog in an interactive way, and hope that the presentations may start various conversations, which may already before the workshop help us into a constructive dialogue.

Programme and more details
We will in few weeks time upload the programme for the workshop and the participants list!