INFOTERRA & ELCI Sign Agreement
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10/5/96
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UNEP and ELCI sign Agreement on Capacity Building, Sharing
Information for Decision-makers and the Future Role of
Non-governmental Institutions
Nairobi, 23 April 1996 --
An important partnership agreement was signed here today by
the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
Environment Liaison Centre International (ELCI) in order to
increase mutual effectiveness for the implementation of
Agenda 21. The cooperative agreement was signed by Harvey
Croze, UNEP's Assistant Executive Director and Rob Sinclair,
ELCI's Co-Executive Director.
The endorsement of Agenda 21 as a global plan of action by
over 179 countries at the United Nations Conference on the
Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992
reinforces the significance of existing initiatives such as
the INFOTERRA Programme of UNEP and the Environment Liaison
Centre International. Several Chapters of Agenda 21 directly
deal with issues such as:
* Capacity Building - (Chapter 38);
* Information for Decision-making - (Chapter 40) and;
* The Role of Non-governmental Organizations - (Chapter
27);
which both UNEP and ELCI have been addressing since their
inception.
INFOTERRA, UNEP's global environmental information exchange
network has effectively established national focal points in
171 government designated sites and provides substantive
information on environmental issues through national,
regional and global networks. The network maintains an
active publication programme both electronically, through the
INFOTERRA Internet subscription list as well as through
traditional printing of directories and sourcebooks in
priority environmental subject areas. In addition, INFOTERRA
supports national, regional and global capacity building
programmes in environmental information
dissemination and management.
ELCI, a Nairobi based global network of more than 850
non-governmental organizations drawn from more than 107
countries works on environment and development issues in
order to "facilitate the voice of the grassroots", by
fostering communication, information and skills between
groups as well as developing mechanisms for such efforts.
UNEP and ELCI have formalized cooperation through a
Memorandum of Understanding in order to promote both
INFOTERRA/UNEP and ELCI initiatives as well as compliment
each other. In essence, UNEP works closely with the
governmental/intergovernmental sector and provides relevant
sources on environmental information, whereas, ELCI works
with the NGO/grassroots sector which constitutes a
large client base of users of environmental information.
As agreed in the MOU, UNEP will encourage INFOTERRA national
focal points in each country to collaborate with major NGOs
on the organization of information in order to promote the
sharing of environmental information between the governmental
and non-governmental sectors. This will be accomplished by
active participation in the compilation of information
published at the country level as well as submissions to the
INFOTERRA Directory of Sources. UNEP and ELCI will conduct
joint network promotion activities in order to make available
to present and prospective users the importance of
environmental information in sustainable development policy
planning and operational management. ELCI also agreed to
involve the Southern Africa Subregional INFOTERRA
Network (SASIN) national focal points in the implementation
of their Information Exchange Mechanisms Project (IEM).
UNEP's Assistant Executive Director, Harvey Croze, "Welcomed
even closer links in the long history of cooperation between
UNEP and the ELCI, particularly given 'the leadership and
responsibility from this venerable NGO in supporting regional
and global efforts to improve communications flow and
networking between people, their NGOs and governments".
ELCI's Co-Executive Director Rob Sinclair commented that,
"In the global endeavor towards environmentally sustainable
development, local communities remain the field of action for
the majority of the world's population, where culturally
unique responses are needed to solve economic, social and
environmental problems. Yet, in this age of globalization,
the underlying causes of so many of these problems are
increasingly beyond the control of local populations. In such
a situation, information-sharing and building better ways to
communicate are vital, and ELCI's and UNEP's joint
undertakings to linking communities, NGOs, and governments is
an important step."
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON INFOTERRA:
INFOTERRA, one of the most comprehensive integrated
environmental information networks in the world, operates as
a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of international
scientific and technical environmental information.
Operational since 1977, the Network, consists today of 171
national focal points (NFPs), a UNEP based headquarters in
Nairobi, 10 Regional Service Centres (RSCs); and
34 Special Sectoral Sources (SSS's).
The network provides governments, industry, researchers and
the general public with access to a vast reservoir of
environmental information gathered from approximately 8,000
national and international expert institutions from various
sectors, including governments in the UN common system, NGOs,
industrial/commercial, enterprises and academia in more than
a thousand priority subject areas. The network processes
more than 50,000 environmental queries annually.
The primary network operational tools are the INFOTERRA
International Database/Directory of Sources, the INFOTERRA
Thesaurus of Environmental Terms, available in English,
French, Spanish, and Russian, sourcebooks in specialized
areas of expertise and the INFOTERRA Internet Subscription
List. In addition, INFOTERRA has identified 34 centers of
excellence, known as Special Sectoral Sources (SSSs), which
provide highly specialized scientific responses to user's
queries covering a range of environmental priority areas.
Many of these are within UNEP and other UN agencies, but
others are national or international research institutions,
and the private sector enterprises. Detailed and tailored
responses are provided to INFOTERRA queries, in different
forms including; bibliographic references and abstracts,
documents, articles, technical reports, lists of consultants,
and database output.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON ELCI:
The Environment Liaison Centre International (ELCI) is a
global network of 850 non-governmental and community-based
organizations working on environment and development.
ELCI's mission is to "Facilitate the Voice of the
Grassroots". Central to this aim is the mandate to develop
and promote mechanisms through which people working at the
grassroots level in various regions of the world can exchange
a wide range of information on environment and development in
a much more organized and sustainable fashion".
ELCI, headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, maintains a close
relationship to the UNEP and ELCIs 85O organization members
from 107 countries. Over 75% of this membership is from
developing countries, making ELCI the world's largest network
of southern non-governmental organizations. ELCI maintains a
database on over 8,000 organizations with whom regular
communication strengthened, primarily through publication
efforts.
ELCI recognizes as a fundamental principle the need to
stimulate community-level action based activities upon
establishment of appropriate information exchange mechanisms
that will enable grassroots organizations to access and
disseminate information on environment and development on a
sustained bases.
For further information, please contact:
Beth Ingraham
Information Officer, INFOTERRA
Environmental Information Networking
Division of Environmental Information and Assessment
Tel: (254-2) 624299, 621234
Fax: (254-2) 624269 or 226949
E-Mail: infotinf@unep.no
WWW : http://unep.unep.no/home.htm
Telex: 22068 UNEP KE
Edward Alitsi, Coordinator, Information Exchange Project
Environment Liaison Centre International
P.O. Box 72461
Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: (254-2) 562-015, 502-022, 562-172, 562-172
Fax: (254-2) 562-175
E-mail: elci.gn.apc.org
Telx: 2340 ELC KE
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