Information society
The mission of the Communication Initiative is to facilitate thinking on the future and development of communication and to advocate the importance of communication for sustainable development. Their website provides news on projects and events in the scope of the Communication Initiative, interviews with communication experts, scientific theories on communication and related topics such as theories on how people change behaviour patterns. One listed project is an environmental information network in Ghana, designed to strengthen communications between public authorities, research institutions and NGOs. Links to non-profit, governmental, academic and UN organisations, foundations and broadcasting companies can be found and online discussion forums for technology, communication trends, development issues, evaluation and geography are available. The latest issue of The Drum Beat, the organisation's newsletter, is now online, featuring jobs for communication specialists. The Drum Beat provides information on programmes, communication trends, new websites, upcoming gatherings and new publications. Several international donors including USAID and the European Union fund the Initiative. See http://www.comminit.com.
Pollution control
The World Bank's branch organisation, New Ideas in Pollution Regulation (NIPR), runs a website maintained by the World Bank's Economics of Industrial Pollution Control research team, part of the World Bank's Research Program. NIPR is intended to communicate new research findings and program ideas while not representing official World Bank policy. Several new studies dealing with industrial pollution control have been published on the site including a comparative study of twelve formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe entitled Transition to Markets and the Environment: Effects of the Change in the Composition of Manufacturing Output. Authors of the study question whether the transition to a market-driven economy exacerbates environmental degradation or if environmental improvements complement economic transition. There are also new links on the NIPR site's link-page called OnTheNet. One is UNEP's State of the Environment Reports, which provide essential, country-specific background information available for many Eastern European and Central Asian nations. The NIPR site has also recently introduced a new list of upcoming conferences on industrial pollution control. See: http://www.worldbank.org/nipr.
Follow-up to London99
News on environment and health issues is available from the website of the United Nations Environment and Development UK Committee (UNED-UK). The ninth issue of the Environment and Health newsletter is now online with stories on Russia's intensifying nuclear problems, Germany urging a tighter European chemical policy, briefs and opinion pieces. The site includes an impressive database of organisations and individuals based in the UK dealing with environment and health issues. Note that the successful discussion listserver, which was in use for the London99 process (eh99gen@oneworld.org), has been transformed into a general environment and health discussion list, now called env-health-list@onelist.com. The list will continue discussions on the future of the London99 process and will foster networking on environment and health issues, primarily in the Pan-European region.
