The Role of Informatics in Sustainable Development

A Workshop at Case Western Reserve University on 8 February 1996

Chuck Lankester, Director

Sustainable Development Networking Programme of the

United Nations Development Programme

I am nervous. After all you are an experienced group from development agencies and to make matters worse you have paid for this presentation and I am not an expert in computer mediated communications! I have, however, worked 30 plus years in economic and social development and for the past three years I have been directing a programme to help developing countries secure access to sources of information that can help them in their drive to achieve sustainable development. I will share this experience with you today. My remarks reflect my personal position. I understand you are beyond halfway in this course, so I may be recapitulating a little, but I expect it is sensible to verify we agree on the concept of sustainable development and to understand how we reached the level of concern we all share about reaching this goal. I intend to comment on some of the tools we have traditionally engaged to work toward sustainable development, and then to address in some detail the role of information and communications in this challenge.

Route to Sustainable Development

This has been an arduous and lengthy journey, both progressive and incremental in its movement, and clearly there is still a long road to travel.

In the 1960's we began to heed the first serious alarms that the finite limits of village earth could not forever accomodate the growing population. The initial policy response was to focus on aggregate economic performance. A healthy economy, strong exports and a positive trade balance were amongst the tactics that would place the developing countries on a sound footing toward attaining sustainable development. In retrospect not only was the concept naive, but we even used misleading indicators and mislead ourselves as a result into thinking that a high GNP meant responsible progress. Tragically we were not factoring in the consequences of massive clear-cutting of forests, the depletion of fishing stocks, or other non-sustainable activities.

Then in the 1970's came an emphasis on government intervention to improve socio-economic conditions with massive programmes to improve urban housing, the quality of health services, raising literacy rates and education standards as a whole, etc. With the 1980's came a renewed sense of citizenship, a concern for stewardship and husbandry of our natural resources, broader participation in governance, and most of all a determination to address the national and international consequences of years of neglect of our biosphere. And we learned of different interpretations of sustainable development, though the definition from the Report of the Brundtland Commission, "Our Common Future" is perhaps the best known.

"Assuring that development should meet our own present needs without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs".

Then came the 90's; the wall came down and the bipolar world with its horrendous expenditures on armaments and accompanying tension gave way to the euphoria of peace and development. Do you remember "the peace dividend": our dream that military expenditures could be redirected to raise living standards in the Third World?

Now, as the twentieth century draws to a close we have re-tooled our understanding of sustainable development to include the necessary social dimensions and we speak of sustainable human development.

"Sustainable Human Development (SHD) is development that does not merely generate growth, but also distributes benefits equitably: it regenerates the environment rather than destroying it: sustainable human development empowers people rather than marginalising them: enlarges their choices and opportunities and it provides for peoples participation in decisions affecting their lives. SHD is development that is pro-poor, pro-nature, pro-jobs, and pro-women. It stresses growth, but growth with employment, growth with environment, growth with empowerment and growth with equity".

Now if you are worried I am about to launch into a detailed review of progress toward SHD relax, for that is for someone else to tackle another day. I will only summarise my own views and say that many indicators are cause for strong concern; just look at the loss of tropical forests, my particular speciality for the past 20 plus years. Despite major international efforts the annual losses have kept mounting and if they are stabilizing or possibly even declining now it is simply because there is little accessible forest left to exploit. But there are good signs too, such as recognition of the reality of global interdependence; the growth of constructive activity outside governments which I will comment on later; and the realization that when serious problems are confronted the political will can be mobilised and a combination of incentives, regulatory devices and new policies put into place to address the problem. But we must stop reacting to crises and learn to anticipate and address them punctually, fairly and in a responsible technical and socio-economic manner. So progress is certainly chequered.

Global Concerns

We probably agree on the principal global issues of today. Security is certainly a major issue, yet it is not the territorial security we worried about during the 'cold war'. Today few wars and conflicts are transboundary, rather they are domestic - uncivil wars is a better term than civil wars - and they are the consequence of inequity, intolerance, fear and frustration. Today about 70,000 children will be borne to families with incomes of about $1 per day, and the chance that most of them will see a fifth birthday is small. Over the past thirty years the gap between those who have it and those who strive for it has opened not closed. That gap between the top 20% of the population and the bottom 20% has more than doubled. In 1965, the gap was thirty fold: today it is sixty fold. Inequality, impoverishment, under- and unemployment; the statistical and often visual decline of our natural resource base; despoilment of our environment evidenced by urban decay and the discovery of more hazardous waste sites, idled fishermen in their ports; these are features which breed despair, tension and political instability.

And there are environmental challenges. Many we do not fully comprehend, which tends to create a preoccupation they may be uncontrollable. For example, there is global warming, though today we argue less about whether it is happening and more about whether there will be a 1.5 degree or a 4.5 degree C rise in average temperature over the next 50 years. And there is biodiversity. When I first started to speak out on this subject fifteen years ago, my colleagues thought me unbalanced. Then we worried about the possible loss of up to 10 species per day. Today we worry about hundreds, and we have still no idea of the extent of biodiversity on our planet or an understanding of the significance of most life-forms in our quest to reach sustainable development.

And there is ozone depletion, which we cannot improve over the next 20 or 30 years because of the endurance of the chemicals we have already pumped into the atmosphere. However, in this subject area there are encouraging signs because once there was reasonable agreement on the evidence, the community of nations showed a remarkable degree of international cooperation in taking steps to mitigate the consequences, steps which have been progressively tougher as the evidence hardens on the consequence of the release of ozone-depleting chemicals. Perhaps for the first time when the collective backs of all nations were up-against the wall they took quite decisive action.

Water availability and equitable distribution is another rapidly emerging challenge that already causes national as well as international unrest. And desertification, where the evidence is stark, relentless, yet somehow more remote and impersonal; here the collective international response has been almost inconsequential. And of course the biggest worry is population growth, with 90% of future growth occurring in the developing countries and Nigeria forecast to have a population in the year 2020 that will be roughly the equivalent of the whole African continent today. This growing population has justifiable aspirations to attain the standards of living we experience in the west, yet we know our global village simply cannot tolerate the consequences of such economic and industrial activity, which means our own standards must be adjusted downwards.

Remedial Measures

What do we have in the bag to address this list of global concerns? Our traditional tool has been economic aid and technical assistance. The Earth Summit called for the massive allocation of additional capital resources, but this has not been realised. Indeed official development assistance has declined, from perhaps $60 billion plus in 1992 to perhaps only $50 billion in 1995, and the forecast looks gloomy. We are in need of creative and successful new ideas for raising funds for development assistance since it appears unlikely that in the short and perhaps even the medium term governments will readjust present fiscal policies and accounting practices thereby stimulating real progress toward sustainable development. Taxes on air travel, levys on primary products imported from developing country producers and carbon sink exchange programmes are amongst the ideas being floated and no doubt there wil be others.

Since we are meeting here in the U.S.A., let me add that in this country, once the biggest donor, there is a growing apathy and disillusionment and even a worrying swing back to an isolationist policy. Today the US is no longer the biggest donor, indeed on a per capita basis the US falls to the bottom of the list of eighteen principal donors, a measure as you will of individual sacrifice. The development community has to bear part of the blame for this decline and improve its outreach and explanation of why the West must be concerned about the needs of the developing world and do not for one second doubt the deadly truth of this relationship. I am reminded of a recent poll in which 75% of American respondents said they thought their country gave too much aid for development, yet on learning it was only a fraction of 1% of GNP 75% then said they thought the USA provided too little aid. There is challenge but also comfort in those findings.

Trade instead of aid was a recent reaction in the capitals of some consumer nations, yet 75% of total foreign investment in the developing world only reaches 12 countries: 6% of foreign investment reaches Africa; and only 2% of foreign investment reaches the 47 least developed countries. Clearly little relief is likely from this quarter.

What other tools are there? Dialogue. Yes, there is the UN and its family of specialised agencies with many impressive recent accomplishments, yet the Organization is disparaged. And we are in the trough of an unprecedented fiscal crisis which renders it impossible to undertake the reforms our principal donors are calling for before they will pay their bills. It is depressing for staffers who have given their careers to trying to make the world a better, a more equitable place. Strong corrective action and leadership from the UN and its family of agencies appears unlikely in the short term, let's say the next 3-5 years, which are so critical if we are to prevent more crises instead of reacting to them.

Can we expect a call on moral ethics and religious values to aid our cause? I am skeptical, especially in the light of ongoing conflicts, the rise of extremist and conservative forces, and the seemingly endless preoccupation with personal instead of community gain. Yet we must perservere. We in this hall today need to reflect that our children will consume 20-30 times more resources than their counterparts in the Third World, and I believe they are more uncomfortable with that knowledge than their parents. Our children cannot follow our path and consume 75% of the world's resources and cause 75% of the pollution. I, for one, do not believe the focus on consumerism and materialism can endure. Our children are too bright not to realise they can and must help to reverse this trend of inequality. There is hope here, but it may be difficult to both mobilise and organise.

The Information Revolution

Against this background I want to talk about a new, exciting and powerful tool that has unexpectedly come to hand. I refer to the communications revolution, our sudden ability to provide tens of millions of people with access to information which helps them participate in the decision making process and thereby improve their standard of living and facilitates attainment of that vision we all share, sustainable human development.

When did access to information become an issue? Certainly in the early prepcoms for Rio it was not seen as a key item, but by the time the final preparations for the Earth Summit were in hand, and especially during the conference itself, the importance of transparency in the presentation of information and the need for routine, affordable access to development information had become a critical objective. Chapter 40 of Agenda 21, the strategic document for forward global development, was the result. And what has happened since Rio? Disappointingly little. I have already noted the decline in aid. Yes, agreement on the Climate Convention and the Biodiversity Convention, but the real story since Rio has been the amazing engagement of NGOs, national and international, in the development agenda. And what has made this engagement so extensive and productive has been the explosion in the communications industry. Just think of it: 727,000 computers on the Internet in 1992 and 10 million today, reaching perhaps 100-150 million regular users. And we do not know where this revolution is taking us. Even its gurus find more applications every day. So this new tool represents a big new hope, indeed we know today that decisions taken by an uninformed public sector or for political expediency will be improved by an informed, open debate amongst knowledgeable partners from various sectors of society, especially if the debate engages those who will be directly impacted. But let it be noted that there is need for more than anecdotal evidence in the benefits of access to information. I noted this when I spoke earlier this week to the Secretary General's Advisory Board on Sustainable Development, and I also commented that dollar for dollar the provision of affordable access to information was perhaps the best conduit toward sustainable human development.

Make no mistake, the information revolution is the single most powerful change -event - of this decade. It brings great benefits, but also risks such as the further marginalization of the uninformed and the acquisition of even more power by those who are already powerful. The revolution places us on the cusp of a new paradigm in economic and social development, and we are all affected. A part of this paradigm shift is political. The bipolar world seems to have ended (although 1996 is shaping up as a critical year to confirm this), central planning is weakening, and there are new and exciting possibilities for dialogue. Cooperation and trade opportunities are likewise opening on every continent based on the market economy. The challenge is to direct these fresh opportunities toward our development objectives. Indeed SHD is an impossible, unattainable dream without access to information and knowledge and the ability to transfer this at the twitch of a mouse. The information revolution is of inestimable significance to all players and it is of inestimable promise to the developing world in particular.

Features of the Revolution

This is a revolution driven by technology and market values. Several features are noteworthy:

• costs have declined due to the use of technologies including broad banned fibre optics, spectrum management, and compression. A transatlantic link today costs one tenth of the price in 1987 and will cost 1/100th by the year 2000. Similarly transmission costs in 1990 have been reduced by a factor of 10,000 since 1975, and are becoming very affordable;
• the power of computers has increased still further and the cost of computing has similarly declined by a factor of 10,000 since 1975. We have seen a move from clumsy, centralised main frames to small, powerful, and friendlier Personal Computers; and there has been the technological merging of the telecommunications and the computing industries which has permitted the storage, manipulation, processing and transmission of voice, digitised data and imagery. And the cost of manipulating and transmitting this data will soon be close to zero.

What are some other features of this revolution? Well the dependency of economic activity on access to information was already noted, and better, faster access to more information is resulting in a blurring of the borders of economic activity. There is a globalization of the world economy and several shifts in the nature of the economy can already be detected. Firstly, it is more service oriented. It is more knowledge dependent and the necessary mix of job skills is changing. This economy is also much more competitive. The distance between producers and consumers, between buyers and sellers is no obstacle, so more people are competing to provide services. Providers are fighting and consumers are benefitting. Certainly there are regulatory challenges, but those are being addressed one by one. And the economy is becoming more transnational in nature. This is both good and bad. On the positive side, corporations in the consumer nations can more easily operate overseas. At the same time, we all are informed about unscrupulous practices where the social, economic and environmental costs of offshore ventures have been all but completely ignored, or where cultural values have not been respected. But there are also great opportunities for partnerships that result from this globalization of the economy, which can be beneficial for developing countries.

On the downside the competitiveness in the new global economy is stressful, and often high risk. The performance of employees, employers, corporations and even national economies is under constant scrutiny as never before. Indeed it is the availability of new information and the ability to analyse and process it which will enable the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development to formulate indicators of progress toward sustainability and to compare the performance of nations against objectives, to rank performance and to report on performance to the General Assembly.

Benefits and challenges

Many of the effects of the communications revolution sound downright nasty, but beware the leader who fails to appreciate its significance. For there are also considerable rewards for nations which adapt and use the new technologies. For example, a project I was recently associated with benefitted greatly from hundreds of inexpensive solar-powered hydrometerological monitors that gave far more comprehensive coverage than could be afforded with field workers. The monitoring of global change, changes in atmospheric warming, in ozone depletion, in tropical deforestation and desertification is more affordable, accurate and frequent than we dared to hope even 5 years ago. And the education field has been impacted. We no longer need to spend tens, if not hundreds of thousand of dollars to train veterinarians and agricultural extension agents. All they need now is a laptop and basic training in how to interpret the CD-ROMS they carry with them. There are major implications here for the reallocation of scarce capital resources by development planners in the Third World. And most of us here are familiar with other applications such as long distance learning and the advent of telemedicine.

Several developing countries have already profited from the revolution. India, for example, made an early political commitment with the result that today Indians can be found in computer industries all over the world. Access by Indians to information is already well organised and widespread, and US corporations like Motorola are having their software designed and manufactured in India. And China has used computerised information to leapfrog from the abacus to use of electronic data, avoiding several costly intermediate steps. From the cold, snowy suburbs of N. York I can directly determine flight availability for my next holiday in Barbados, review accommodation options, book my golf tee times and reserve tennis courts. Here in Cleveland you can buy and sell real estate or cars over the Internet; order pizza with a choice of toppings; trade stocks and bonds and we can all become publishers by operating a website. But the technology brings new challenges, one of which is learning how to use the vast store of knowledge now at our fingertips. We also need to worry down the road about the impact of this revolution on cultural and ethical values; on family life and children's education; whether access promotes consumerism; and whether the impact on sustainable development will be positive. Will you reduce travel because of the ability to collect data from distant locations, or will there be a temptation to travel more and physically interact with friends found through the computer. We do not know the answers; we need to start thinking about these issues.

So our world has become even smaller, more exposed, and far more interdependent. And that interdependency is interesting to development practitioners, because it strengthens the debate with the donor nations that it is profoundly in their interest to assist the developing nations in the collective quest for sustainable human development. But the challenges in the developing world remain huge, including a shortage of human and financial resources, weak infrastructure and the consequences in many countries of civil unrest. For example, in Angola the hardware and software to set-up a node of the Sustainable Developing Networking Programme (SDNP) was supplied, only to find we needed the air conditioners as well. And because the supply of electricity was unreliable we had to provide a generator, and then fuel for the generator. And after careful training of our project manager we lost him to assassination when he did not hand over the keys of his car fast enough to bandits. It can be a struggle, but we have nonetheless made remarkable progress and will endure. And the demand for information from all sectors of civil society in the developing countries is astonishing, insatiable in fact, even in where until recently the State controlled access to information and discouraged independent reflection. Our SDNP operation in Kiev, Ukraine, for example, handled over 11,000 requests for information last week from every imaginable sector of society, and this still only about two years since the office was opened.

There are barriers to bringing this information revolution quickly and effectively to the developing world. Most telecommunication agencies are monopolies, their regulations are cumbersome, restrictive, and out of line with today's needs. They are frequently ill informed about technological requirements and increasingly challenged by the private sector. Many PTT authorities risk becoming dinosaurs and we know what happened to them. And they are often unaware of the increasingly vital role they can play by improving communications and access to information. Moreover, when they have realised the explosive growth of the industry some authorities have been tempted to set exorbitantly high tariffs and charges for connectivity, thereby further impeding economic and social development. And most developing countries face huge capital cost outlays to update and extend their services, yet the investment climate they offer is usually unattractive. Privatization of many services is thus seen as an increasingly significant trend, with the hope that competition in the market place will result in improved service and lower costs.

Conclusions

The amazing benefits of the information revolution and its contribution toward sustainable human development are only now becoming apparent. The scope, scale, and nature of technological advances remains remarkable and its further potential astonishes even the most informed every week. The revolution presents real opportunities for developing countries. They can leapfrog over generations of previous technology and equipment and find themselves on a more level playing field amongst nations with developed economies.

The broadening of participation by all sectors of civil society in decision making is truly happening, and the breadth of coverage is already exciting with almost unlimited extension. This is seen as very positive in terms of genuine, informed participation in decision making. But there are associated risks. Information can make an already powerful elite even more powerful; and the ignorant and unconnected can be further marginalised. Pilot programmes to extend coverage to the millions of rural poor needs to be begun now, focusing on very low cost and tough, simple technology. Preoccupation about the intrusion of information that is offensive to the cultural and social values of many societies is genuine and needs to be addressed, but addressed in a manner that does not move backwards toward broad censorship and the denial of access to the vast majority of information that is beneficial. Studies to quantify the benefits of access to information are needed to counter-balance the negative impacts which often receive disproportionate attention in the media. And some complex issues need attention, such as the impact of the communications revolution on ethical, cultural and family values. But the benefits of the revolution are overwhelmingly positive on balance, and provide an exciting new tool for development planners and a reason for optimism on the bumpy road toward sustainable human development.

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