Baltic Internet network
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PRESS RELEASE 1996-06-18
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTIONS AGREE ON
BALTIC REGION INTERNET CO-OPERATION
A Baltic Sea region environmental network on Internet will be
developed. This was agreed last week by representatives from
35 major environmental information centres and institutions, in ten
countries around the Baltic Sea, during a workshop in Stockholm
hosted by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the
United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP's) GRID-Arendal
centre.
The co-operative partnership network is called BALLERINA, which reads
BALtic Sea Region On-Line Environmental Information Resources for
INternet Access. BALLERINA is intended to support the development of
the Baltic region Agenda 21 program that was agreed on at the Visby
Summit in May.
The co-operative partnership network has two main objectives. First, it is
supposed to bring more substantive and relevant environmental information
from the Baltic Sea region to Internet. Second, it is intended to make it e=
asier
for the increasing number of Internet users to find Baltic Sea region
environmental information by offering a 'top-level' BALLERINA WWW
home page.
- The use of Internet as an efficient and powerful means to communicate
and disseminate environmental information is rapidly increasing. While
this can be done on an single institutional basis, recent experiences have
shown that the establishment of co-operative networks are more promising,
says dr. Sindre Langaas, UNEP/GRID-Arendal centre.
This is in particular so for international regions unified by common
environmental concerns, such as the Baltic Sea region. The Great Lakes
Information Network (GLIN) in North America (concerned with the
bi-lateral Great Lakes) serves as a model for BALLERINA.
Further information:
Internet: http://www.grida.no/ballerina/
Dr. Sindre Langaas, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, phone: +46-8-161737,
e-mail: langaas@grida.no
OErjan Lindberg, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency,
phone: +46-8-6981282, e-mail: Orjan.Lindberg@environ.se
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Arne Sjoeqvist
INFOTERRA/Sweden
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
S-106 48 STOCKHOLM
ars@environ.se Tel:+46 8 6981273 Fax: +46 8
6981400
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