_ The Zero Emissions Strategy Conference
_ The Zero Emissions Strategy Conference
Paris, 1 September 1997Dear Colleagues,
Herewith we invite you to join an experimental "virtual science policy conference" which has recently gotten underway via the World Wide Web. A collaborative international undertaking organized originally on the request of Robert Ayres, director of INSEAD's Center for Management of Environmental Resources, the preparatory run-up to the conference that took place over the last month was jointly sponsored by the United Nations University and its Institute for Advanced Studies , the French Ministère de l'Environnement, and EcoPlan International. The conference has been planned and developed by us here at EcoPlan together with the help of numerous colleagues quite literally around the world, and is being run under my direction.
The month of August was given over to a pilot run, to developing a first round of supporting material and content and, above all, to developing and fine tuning the World Wide Web site and various other tools of the conference (which turned out to be no simple task). We thought you would prefer to be informed when things were far enough advanced to permit easy and efficient access to the conference. This is now the case, and the conference will be continued out through the end of this month in an attempt to make inroads on its dual objectives (see below). Incidentally, if you wish a quick overview of the project and progress to date, you can consult the What's New page. Should you do that, you will notice that we have broken a cardinal rule of most official conferences: we have tried to make it fun!
The UNU and the Institute for Advanced Study (lAS) have two relevant concerns in their sponsorship of the pilot run. One is a hope to use the conference as a means for getting expert feedback concerning the future direction of their Zero Emissions Research initiative (ZERI). The other is to use this to develop a base of concrete experience that could be useful for making informed decisions about a long term project to develop a worldwide "Virtual University", including both technical aspects of interaction via Internet and curriculum. In his original letter of introduction to the trial project last month, Robert Ayres set out his priority objectives for the Zero Emissions portion of the conference in these words:
" Specifically, we seek advice for the next stages of the program. We also are looking for good ideas for case studies of these 'third generation' eco-technologies, and not incidentally qualified people to undertake them. We hope that a funded research program will emerge from this, but are NOT in a position to discuss potential sources or allocations of funding at this stage, certainly not "on the air". People who do research for a living know that funding only follows good research proposals. It does not precede them. I won't say much more about this here, since you will find extensive background material on the Website that will introduce you to the ideas involved."Our objectives here at EcoPlan in sponsoring and running the conference were rather different. For a number of years now we have been asking ourselves and nyon eelse who would listen: why is it that the science and policy communities (including their governmental and ngo allies) have been so grossly unsuccessful in making any real, bottom-line dents in the sustainable development issues to which so much research, publication and conferencing is being devoted. All the good words are there, but somehow, despite the combined intelligence and sincerity of the main actors, the nitty-gritty details of policy and practice (i.e., what we all do in our daily lives) are simply not following.
After a number of years of work and observation in the two areas concerned (i.e., the issues of sustainable development and those of the 'new media'), we felt it was time to begin testing these new approaches to "knowledge and consensus building" in a specific, recognizable, hands-on situation. We thus decided to use this virtual conference as a means for further probing this embarrassing slip twixt the cup and the lip. This test run is making use of quite a range of technologies and operational procedures, of which the WWW site chosen for the conference is only one. But you will see more on all that when you join the meeting.
So there you have it. If we have touched your interest at all, your next move should either be to go on line with the conference at http:// www.the-commons.org/zero-ems, or to contact us via email (or other means) at the various contact points listed below. Incidentally, we have tried hard to make it not only instructive, but also fun. For a taste of the latter, you can begin with a sampling of the What's New pages. We look forward to hearing from you and to seeing what we might be able to accomplish if we put our heads together on this. It is a truly worthy challenge and it will be interesting to see who responds and how they make use of the conference and its tools.
With all good wishes,
__ Welcome to the Virtual Conference
