As it is defined by wekipidia Sustainable Development is a socio-ecological process characterized by the fulfillment of human needs while maintaining the quality of the natural environment indefinitely, in another word if we want to reach our role, economic, societal and environmental advancement, development must be managed by a comprehensive approach, and if the environment is degraded and the natural resources are abused, then the rate of economic growth cannot be sustained.
Today we live in a world that a lot of people call it “The Information Age”. Information and Communication Technology plays a big role in sustainable development. ICT’s can help and be applied in a lot of sectors, it can help and benefit government or non-governmental organizations to improve the world socio-economic conditions, it helps increasing opportunities for equality, improve the performance of business and the efficiency of markets, as it empower citizens and communities, and increase their access to knowledge, and I think that it is possible, because technology can help developing countries to catch up without doing the same mistakes that developed countries had, and as examples of the possibility of ICT in helping Sustainable Development is two stories about china.
The first story or example is the “SDNP” (Sustainable Development Networking Programme). SDNP has helped China build the very first node for the country’s programme and has facilitated a network among local communities, and the Chinese Government has invested a large amount through a national science and technology programme to encourage information-sharing, and as a result, a substantial quantity of information, contributed by ten ministerial information agencies, has become available on Internet regarding China’s overall status in natural resources, environmental protection and natural disasters, plus that the UN helped china to facilitate the development of information technology, using local language, in order to serve the needs of local people. The second example or story is also about china.
This time this example will show the benefits of applying ICT in speeding up development. As the most of us know china has a big problem concerning the environment, which is associated with development itself, and because of that they decide to use new technologies to transformtraditional industries that extensively consume energy, and materials and pollute heavily, plus they are planning to be out of extreme poverty in the near future. Because of ICT in Sustainable development, they learned that if the environment is degraded and thenatural resources are abused, then the rate of economic growth cannot be sustained, they learnt it the hard way, but now they got it, and other developing counties will learn too and they will not have or repeat the same problems.
Another good example that I found online on the "development gateway" website by john Daly is: Radio - since the development of transistors, radios have become pervasive in developing countries. There are more than 800 community radio stations in Africa alone. The obvious indicator of the impact of radio is that radios are so widely owned and used. Examples of the dissemination of agricultural market information and health information via radio have documented narrower benefits.
References:
[http://topics.developmentgateway.org/ict/sdm/previewDocument.do~activeDocumentId=604856?activeDocumentId=604856]
[http://www.sdnp.undp.org/stories/china.html]
[http://www.acca21.org.cn/swang.html]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Sustainable_development]
[http://old.developmentgateway.org/node/133831/bboard/message?message_id=161581&forum_id=225450]
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