European ECO Forum and IHEAL
Joint Recommendations on
Electronic Tools
to the Aarhus Convention
Meeting of the Parties
(DRAFT)
Lucca,
Italy
October 21-23,
2002
We,
the nongovernmental environmental citizens organizations of European ECO Forum
[http://www.participate.org/] and
Interactive
Health Ecology Access Links (IHEAL) [http://www.iheal.org/] jointly ask the Parties and Signatories
to:
Develop
national structures, mechanisms, and alternative applications and infrastructure
to improve the ease of use and free and equitable access to information, and to
take into account the list of possible actions to further the use of electronic
tools in the implementation of the Aarhus Convention prepared by the Task Force
on Electronic Information Tools at the Arendal Workshop (8-9 March 2002)
[http://www.rec.org/e-aarhus/links/Documents.html];
Attend to the distinction
drawn between access to information and accessibility and usability of
information by end-users, and note the need to adequately develop international
strategies to overcome challenges to the accessibility and usability of
information.
I. Task
Force on Electronic Information Tools
We
welcome the offer of the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water to lead the
Task Force on Electronic Information Tools and to prepare a more precise mandate
of the Task Force for 1st Meeting of the
Parties.
We
stress the need for the Task Force on Electronic Information Tools
to:
Prepare
a scoping study of end-users in order to further understanding of end-user needs
and perspectives, including:
»
Cognitive needs - end-user
friendliness and understandability of electronic environmental
information,
»
User preferences in
information technology delivery systems (Internet, printed materials, public
displays, wireless media, etc.),
»
Development of broadband
technologies and implications for end-user accessibility,
»
Low-cost, alternative
applications and infrastructure (open source software [http://www.opensource.org/], donated
hardware),
»
The needs of vulnerable
groups including low-income, underserviced, handicapped, gender and marginalised
communities,
»
End-user training in data
collection, interpretation and electronic presentation. Case studies of best
practices in community-based initiatives in these areas should be
undertaken;
Prepare
a feasibility study regarding the establishment of end-user ‘knowledge shops’
and virtual community resource banks [http://www.livingknowledge.org/];
Support
development of end-use training modules in information access, community
monitoring, data collection, interpretation, and electronic
presentation:
Consider a future meeting
specifically on the role of public participation in all aspects of electronic
environmental information production, interpretation, dissemination and use, as
vital for the successful implementation of the Aarhus
Convention;
Invite the participation of
consumer, health, labour and other civil society representatives in the Task
Force on Electronic Information Tools in order to further understanding of
end-user perspectives and needs.
II.
Use of Electronic Tools in
future PRTR Protocol and Aarhus Convention Clearing-house
We
welcome the work of the UN ECE Aarhus Convention Secretariat to provide free
Internet access to Convention-related documents [http://www.unece.org/env/pp]; and further
Welcome the contributions of
the
»
Working Group on Pollutant
Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR) [http://www.unece.org/env/pp] and
Dutch Ministry of Environment for development the pilot PRTR Virtual Classroom;
»
Czech Ministry of
Environment and Environmental Partnership for Central Europe for development of
PRTR Benchmarks; and
»
The Access Initiative [http://www.accessinitiative.org/]
for development of measures of compliance with Principle 10 of the Rio
Declaration [http://www.unep.org/unep/rio.htm],
»
Environmental Management and
Law Association (Hungary) for development of an interactive Internet map server
to facilitate access to the future Hungarian PRTR system
[http://www.emla.hu/cgi-bin/mapserv.cgi?map=/home/emla/maps/prtr/prtr.map&mod]
Recommend that the PRTR
Virtual Classroom [http://prtr.intranets.com/], PRTR
Benchmarks [http://prtr.ecn.cz/] and other relevant
electronic tools and compliance methodologies be integrated into a future Aarhus
Convention Clearing-house to promote low-cost, user friendly access to
environment information;
Recommend incorporation of
interactive map server technologies into national environment and health web
portals, and the future Convention Clearing-house;
Stress the public need for
further integration of health and environment information through integration of
web portal and metalinked databases, such as IHEAL, into the future Convention
Clearing-house;
Note the benefits of open
architecture in the design of electronic tools as a means of promoting access to
source code and ease of integration of electronic tools in the widest variety of
information systems;
Recommend inclusion of
multilingual translation and posting features on Convention Clearing-house and
related electronic web portals;
Support development of
common designators (metatags) [INSERT A LINK TO YOUR NOTE] to promote access to
networked databases in support of the Convention;
Take note of provisions on
information exchange in other international instruments, in particular, Article
9 of the Stockholm Convention on POPs’ obligation for a clearing-house mechanism
[http://www.chem.unep.ch/sc/] which
includes information provided by Parties, intergovernmental and nongovernmental
organisation;
Urge attention be given in
the design of the future Aarhus Convention Clearing-house to such parallel
efforts underway in other international initiatives.
Submitted for comment by
Michael Stanley-Jones on behalf of IHEAL
Please send comments to iheal@zpok.hu or msjones@svtc.org
The
public is in need of easy to use tools to access, extract and organize
information provided through public access initiatives. These tools will have to
be designed to enable
·
understanding of existing
protocols.
·
easy adaptation to emerging
protocols.
·
offering new protocols for
existing information providers.
·
provision of easy to use
tools to encourage new information providers.
It
is best that public access and participation tools be developed in conjunction
with the development of new information protocols, such at the Aarhus Pollutant
Release and Transfer Register Protocol (PRTR).
2.
Serving up databases as web pages
·
Several free standard
approaches exist and are in use today.
·
Allows users to access
databases without understanding or requiring knowledge of
databases.
·
Allows shared administration
with levels of authentication and authority.
·
Examples of well-known
technology include PHP, MySQL, Perl-CGI, JDBC.
3.
Moving Beyond Links
·
Links provide only a crude
cross-referencing between web pages.
·
A finer grain approach to
information is desirable.
·
Adding metatags to existing
web pages provides such an approach.
·
Metatags may be implemented
with minimal administrative overhead.
4.
Metatag implementation
distinct
users.
·
Metatag implementation at
portals (UNEP-Infoterra, IHEAL, future Aarhus Convention
Clearinghouse)
·
Metatag implementation by
current information providers (PRTR Virtual Classroom)
·
Metatag implementation and
public participation.
5.
Metatag implementation at portals
Ecology and health portals,
such as IHEAL, could take advantage of metatags to
access, cache, and
distribute information.
·
Metatags may be added to
cached pages at portals.
·
Portals could access and
cache database information using HTML or XML.
·
Information would be
available to the public in an integrated format.
6.
Metatag implementation at current information
providers
Individual web sites could
add metatags to their pages. This would allow public access tools to extract
information without portals reviewing the web pages.
·
To be feasible, metatags
must be implementable with minimal administrative cost.
·
Metatags would be limited to
a small, easy to understand set, to encourage
implementation.
·
Metatags could be added to
web pages with all commonly used web authoring and administration
tools.
7.
Metatag implementation and public participation
·
The public could extract
information without reviewing large numbers of web pages. This allows
individuals to access a broader range of sources of
information.
·
The public can more easily
submit information to information providers.
·
The public could exchange
information without participation of information
providers.
·
Individuals and groups could
organize information that could be communicated to other individuals or
groups.