The Use of Information

1
The Use of Information Comunication
Technologies to the Environmental Management
with Public Participation

• In the local governments members of Mercociudades
  Network
• Argentina, Brasil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay y
  Uruguay.
• Alén Pérez Casas .
• Environemental Management Secretariat
• International Development Research Centre -
  Canada

2
The Environemental issue in the Mercociudades
Network
MC is an association of 96 Municipal Governments
of principal cities of Mercosur, plus Chile and
Bolivia. The Technical Unit of Environment is
responsible of coordinate the cooperation
between the Municipal Environmental Secretariats
(M.E.S) of the local governments. We could detect
that more than 80 of tje Municipalities have a
special Departament or Secretriats working in
enviromental issues.
3
The -nvironment...

• Use of ICTs to study, monitoring and management
  the environmental issues.

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Environmental Information Systems and
  Databases...
• Control of processes with environmental impact...
• Remote Sensing of environmental variables...
• Computer Added Design (CAD) whit env. perspective
• Simulation, Modeling, Prediction, Interchange of
  Info..
• and...

4
-nvironment, the social dimension

• Use of ICTs for Social Participation in the local
  environmental management.

• The use of the WWW to access environmental
  information and databases
• The email, and the WWW as medium to demand, to
  denounce, to question, to interrogate, to
  participate, to make proceedings, to consult laws
  and regulations...
• The distance environmental education...
• The ICTs as tools for the social networks between
  NGOs, scientist, authorities, etc..

5
The society is prepared for participate
through the ICTs?

• The ICTs in the Cone South are well spreading.
  Although, most of the users are young people
  whith high income.
• The urban areas are much more
  informaticed in relacion with the national
  levels.
• Interntet access in cities with more than 1
  millon inhabitants
• 25 of the Argentinians,
• 26 of the Brasilians,
• 30 of the Uruguayan and
• 32 of the Chilenians,
• http//cyberatlas.internet.com

/ 100 hab.
( on national users)
http//www.ahciet.net/indicadores_por_pais
6
And the NGOs?

The Uruguayan NGOs are the most informaticed of
the region. The Argentinian NGOs have a similar
profile. The Brasilian are specially strong NGOs
and they use the ICT more and more. The surveys
indicate that less 20 of the NGOs use the ICTs
to comunicate with the local govenment.


Have PC 87 Internet 65 Pentium or
better 55 Scaner 45 Local Network 21 CD
burner 21


7
The Municipalities in the Web
The proportion of the local governments that have
web pages is still low. Worst is the case of
the Environmental Web page of the
municipalities. The best profile are from the
Brasilian cities, specially that more bigger The
bigger cities, and the rich ones are the most
developed in the use of ICTs.
Chile
Argentina
Brasil
Total cities Municipal Page Environmental
Page
8
The Metodology
Combined Qualitative and Quantitative aproach
Mainly descriptive and comprehensive Main
techniques Auto administrated Survey of
environmental local authorities via phone,
email, postal mail, fax. Interviews with
qualified informants and expert of the region
envirnemental and informatic process personally
by phone or email. Cibermetric and Semiotic
analysis of the Web Pages of the the Local
Governments and specially the Environmental
Secretariats. Indexing of sites detected in a
shareible Data Base. Backward Links Analysis
review fo the Amount of references that the
others web pages contain linking to the analyzed
page. Interns from the same site of the page.
(for example other pages of the Municipality.
Externs of any other site registered in
www.google.com
9
Global Environmental Change Dimension

• Try to Identify the difussion of the GECH issues
  through the municipal comunication channels.
• The uses of ICTs to monitoring quality of air and
  the sources of greenhouse effect gases.
• The explicits policies to reduce the incidence of
  the vulnerabilities of the population in relation
  of GCCH
• The public diffusion of forecasts about the
  possible local environmental changes and their
  impacts.
• The use of ICTs to the construction of a local
  env. public opinion
• The environemental education and remote
  technician trainning
• The public access to the scientific knowledge

10
Examples of Good Practices in the use of ICTs

• Sâo Paulo Information system of Areas Degraded
  (SIADE) in the section of Environmental Recovery
• Rio de Janeiro GIS to reduce the contamination
  of the Guanabara bay
• GIS for the epidemiological control of
  tuberculosis, dengue, viral hepatitis,
  leptospirosis, meningitis, rubella, etc.
• Santo André to combat the dengue, through the
  elimination of the mosquito Aedes Aegypt by
  fumigation oriented by predictions using GIS
• Belo Horizonte analysis of the Shantytowns
  (scale 1500) GIS y APIC
• Curitiba early development of (1983)
  Cartographic and Urban Analysis System
• Campinas organized a Seminary to collect
  Municipal Experiences in GIS
• Montevideo a Wide range of shape files of
  environmental, infraestructural and social data
  available on Internet...

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ICTs in Environmental Monitoring

• Sâo Paulo, Curitiba, Buenos Aires, Bahía Blanca,
  Montevideo.... made monitoring of the air
  quality, within fix and movil stations.
• Buenos Aires develop software to estimate the
  contamination of the urban air and to support the
  decision making.
• La Plata, Montevideo, Piracicaba cheap bio test
  with animals an vegetals sensitives to the
  polluting agents sharing information and
  publishing in Web.
• Río de Janeiro Information online about the
  quality of beaches and its rating for baths
  according to sanitary and environmental
  parameters.

12
Sâo Paulo
Rio de Janeiro
13
Porto Alegre
14
Buenos Aires
Montevideo
15
Bahía Blanca
Santiago
16
Principal Concepts

• The right of access to the environmental info is
  promoted in the Chapter 36 of the Global Agenda
  21. The Aarhus Convention is an excellent
  european example of the recognition of the
  importance of the development of electronical
  data bases accessible to all.
• The social awareness about of the GECH is founded
  in the information access to the knowledge and
  good practices. The access to the technologies is
  the fundamental gap between the regions, the
  local governments, and the civil society play
  fundamental roles in the difussion of apropiate
  technologies.
• The ICTs are a key of the development of the
  environmental approach scientifically,
  administratively, throuht the community opinion
  leaders...
• The local government of the Cone South are
  starting to develop this tools. The systemic use
  (to vote, to pay, to acquire) recive most
  importance that the participative use (to
  express, to request, to share, to collaborate)
• The construction of a participative governance
  processes is fundamental to improve the
  centrality in the local agenda for the
  environmental issues.

17
Questions, Commentaries, Critics...

• The Proyect Web Page
• http//www.ems-sema.org/mc/

• Muchas Gracias!!
• alen_at_internet.com.uy