WORKSHOP ON ICT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

I have been attending a two day workshop on this topic organized by Carnegie Mellon University and sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the United Nations and the World Bank.

The participants have noted that we can expect billions more people by 2050. and that in order to meet the economic goals that have been set, the Gross World Product will have to be about $140 trillion at that time. They further note that the world can not support that level of production using the methods used today.

Agricultural production would not meet demand, and agricultural resources (soils, water, etc.) would be unsustainably depleted. Energy resources would be depleted. The burden of pollution of water, soil, and the atmosphere would be huge. Deforestation, desertification, depletion of fisheries, and reduction of biodiversity would all be excessive. Human health and welfare would suffer.

I was surprised how little discussion of information and communication technologies there has been in the workshop, given its title.

Knowledge Based Efforts

From my perspective after a career in public policy, there are a number of things that have to be done to develop the public policies needed for sustainable development that require ICT. These things simply will not be possible without the technology.

First, development policies and programs, to be sustainable, must be knowledge based. It is imperative that there be a firm scientific basis, and I include social as well as physical and biological sciences in the needed base. The technology must be there. And there must be knowledge of current development efforts, their immediate impacts, and the social, economic and environmental trends that they fuel.

The scientific and technological understanding needed to describe and deal with sustainable development will not be achieved without major investments in ICT for the physical, biological, and social sciences, and the agricultural, biomedical, and engineering technology communities. Networking is critical.

Monitoring environmental changes and projecting them into the future must be done at local, national, regional and global levels. It requires unprecedented utilization of remote sensing, GIS, and other ICTs.

ICT and the Policy Process

It is a simplification, but consider policies:
· to the result of the efforts of activists;
· developed and implemented by policy makers, decision makers, influential elites, the media, and other key groups;
· with the support of the general public;
· and ideally with strong links among these groups to ensure accountability.

Activists promoting sustainable development must be able to network at local, national, regional and global levels. It occurred to me that if 40,000 people participated in the World Summit on Sustainable Development, each of them represented 150,000 other people of world’s population. The WSSD represents a exceptional event, but one that will only be repeated every decade or so. There is need for extensive and intensive networking of much larger number of activists at local, state, national, regional, and global levels. This can’t be done without the telephone, Internet, etc.

Policy makers and opinion leaders worldwide will have to be convinced of the importance of sustainable development, and will have to understand the implications of different policies and policy instruments. Achieving this at local, national, regional and global levels probably needs an unprecedented number of ICT instruments, from multimedia presentations, to policy modeling suites, to decision support systems, to distance education, to use of media for improving knowledge, attitudes and practices for sustainable development.

Developing public support for the policies that will have to be implemented will require mass media approaches.

I think that e-democracy approaches, combined with e-government are absolutely vital to developing the linkages that will make policy makers and implementers accountable to activists and the public for development, for poverty reduction, and for the sustainability of these efforts.

Empowerment with resourcefulness

Henry Mosley at the meeting pointed out that the most important issue is empowering the key actors with the resourcefulness to do what needs to be done for sustainable development.

I rather like the idea that when we think about intellectual activity, the basic element should not be the individual person, but rather the person with his/her “surround”. For me, my surround includes my PC, and a personal library of hundreds of books. I also like the idea of considering communities and organizations as intellectual units. I think knowledge is often socially constructed by groups, and that without looking at the group one can not understand intellectual processes. And clearly communication media are increasingly important in communications within communities and organizations, indeed new ICT are enabling radical restructuring of the boundaries of our communities and organizations. I think Dr. Mosley would agree that ICT can help improve the resourcefulness of people and communities, especially by improving their access to and power over information.

But the key actors are everyone. As Dr. Mosley pointed out, mothers are key actors in the home in promoting the health of their family members, and in developing and sustaining a healthy home environment. Farmers are key actors in the rural area. Engineers, business people, government officials, bankers, and drivers all must behave in ways that contribute to the sustainability of development. How do we go about affecting the behavior of the nine billion people who will be here in 2050, and the generations that will set the global stage for that future population. There is a huge job of education, continuing education, and reeducation to be done. I don’t see how that job can be accomplished without a radical change in educational approaches, and a radical development and deployment of ICT based learning tools. And I think that a massive effort to improve the ICT in the surrounds of people, and the communications among them is even more fundamental to achieving sustainable development.