Environment and Sustainable Development - United Nations ...

organizations and governments, with special attention
given to developing countries where capacities to respond
to the issue are in short supply.
The biosecurity project started by assessing the issues
and needs of the targeted audience and identifying the most
urgent priorities through a Tokyo Roundtable on
Biosecurity in March at the UNU/IAS. Following the
Roundtable, attempts were made to establish contacts with
major stakeholders and potential sponsors, and in April,
during COP6, UNU/IAS and Institute of Global
Environment and Society (IGES) jointly convened a side
event on the “Bonn Guidelines on ABS (Access & Benefit
Sharing): Toolkits for Playmakers.”
The first capacity development programme targeted
Central Asia and Mongolia, an area that ranks high in the
need for human capacity development. At a week-long
capacity building workshop held in Mongolia in June-July,
all the participating countries agreed to establish a regional
network, with assistance and coordination from UNU/IAS,
to promote and further assist in cooperation on biosecurity
and bioresources issues. Further activity is planned in
collaboration with UNEP.
In early October, an expert scoping meeting involving
representatives from the countries in the five UN regions
and from major intergovernmental organizations met in
Malaysia to assist with preparations for the open-ended
October expert workshop in Kuala Lumpur on capacity
building in access and benefit sharing called by the parties
to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Information Technology and
Environmental Issues
The focus of the current phase of the project on
“Information Technology and Environmental Issues” is the
effects of the information technology revolution on climate
change. The main objectives are to establish UNU as a
credible research presence in the field and to raise
awareness of this new area through dissemination
activities, including public events and online training
courses.
With respect to the first objective, four in-house articles
were accepted for publication in international journals in
2002. The main dissemination activity was a two-day
international symposium on “Information Technology and
the Environment” held in September in Tokyo – the first
major event focusing on this topic to be held in Japan.
Project results were also presented at several international
conferences around the world.
Internet Access in Africa
In all but a few cases, the countries of Africa are at early
stages of Internet adoption and the structure of their
Internet services markets is still embryonic. UNU/INTECH
launched an exploratory empirical investigation of the
pattern of adoption and of constraints to the use of the
Internet in universities Africa. This cross-country study,
which in addition to empirical data utilized interviews with
over two hundred academics in 10 universities in Kenya
and Nigeria, found that academic use of the Internet in
Africa is constrained by both structural factors
(telecommunications and connectivity infrastructure as
well as income levels at the aggregate country, individual
and organizational levels) and cost-related factors (local
telephone and Internet service provider subscription fees).
This study represents an important first step in
understanding the ways in which information and
communication technologies are being adopted and used
within higher education in Africa. Because initial
investment costs limit the ownership of PCs, most
academics are forced to seek Internet access in “cyber
cafes” and other public places. Given that schools are the
gatekeepers of advanced technologies as well as the first
users of the Internet in most countries, low Internet
penetration in universities remains a problematic
proposition; the kinds of state support that led to the rapid
diffusion of the Internet in the USA and other Internet-rich
countries is yet to be seen in African countries.
This exploratory project suggests that much remains to
be understood about the pattern of diffusion and usage of
the Internet in Africa. Research needs to be carried out on
the ways in which the Internet can benefit knowledge
diffusion in poor countries, such as creation of an optimal
situation of networking among academics in Africa and
colleagues in advanced nations. Particularly important is
elucidation of the role of institutions (broadly defined) in
promoting Internet adoption and usage in African
universities and societies.
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