The Electronic Tools Task Force

Printable version

Second Task Force Meeting, January 26-27, 2004, Geneva

The second Meeting of the Task Force on Electronic Information Tools was held in Geneva, 26-27 January 2004. The meeting report is available. Representatives of 22 governments, the Commission of European Communities, the European Environmental Agency, UNEP, international and national non-governmental organisations, and regional organisations were represented. The meeting was chaired by Svetlana Zhekova (Bulgaria) and the vice-chair (elected during the meeting) was Chris Jarvis (United Kingdom).

Before the meeting Task Force representatives were asked to submit their answers to a questionnaire on the use of electronic tools within the UNECE region in the implementation of the Aarhus Convention. The results of the survey were presented by the Secretariat.

Participants gave presentations on recent developments as well as good practices in the use of electronic tools to promote the implementation of the Aarhus Convention. Among them were the Task Force Secretariat’s report on the outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society, and UNECE’s presentation on its activities promoting better information management in support of environmental assessments in Eastern Europe, the Caucuses and Central Asia (EECCA). Among the good practices presented were:

an electronic portal linking the websites of environmental NGOs from South Eastern Europe, presented by BlueLink Network;
development of an integrated information system by the Ministry of Environment of Hungary, presented by a representative of GRID-Budapest;
environmental management informational system in Flanders, presented by a representative of Belgium;
government web-resources at the national and sub-national level in Russia including a search system and interactive access to information in 89 regions presented by Russia;
a programme on development of national web portals in countries with economies in transition presented by Milieukontakt Oost-Europa;
completion of an inventory and needs of environmental libraries, collections and services in CEE and publication of a report on environmental information systems development and future priorities in eight countries and territories in South Eastern Europe;
the representative of UNEP presented the latest developments of three environmental information initiatives in which UNEP was involved: the UNEP.NET project, the ECOLEX global environmental law gateway, and the Science Initiative; and
Sixteen case studies related to the use of electronic tools to promote the implementation of articles 4-9 of the Aarhus Convention, prepared by REC.

Developments related to the Convention’s new web-based Clearing House Mechanism, managed by UNEP-Grid, were reported by Nickolai Denisov and Stephen Lapointe. Johannes Mayer (Austria) presented an informal document, “Draft recommendations on the more effective use of electronic tools to provide public access to environmental information.” Delegations provided comments and agreed to finalise the text of the draft recommendations (see Annex 1 of the Report of the Meeting for the current draft) at the next meeting of the Task Force.

Finally a proposal was made to develop an electronic data repository for easy access to drafts of official documents circulated by members of the Task Force.

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