Sustainable Development Page 1
(ECP and CTSP grantees, reports, and other sites of interest for
conservation geography, mapping and GIS. Grantees are coded by
program and year of grant at the end of their name/state, i.e. e91 means
ECP grant in 1991. c=cstp, cm=ctsp-mac, cs=ctsp-software)
The Alaska Institute for Sustainable Recreation and Tourism, Juneau AK cm96.
(Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association, P.O. Box 22827,
Juneau, Alaska 99802-2827 (907) 463-3038 - FAX: (907) 463-3280 awrta@alaska.net)
"The Alaska Institute for Sustainable Recreation and Tourism (AISRT)
funds research and educational projects that support sustainable use of
Alaska's natural resources by the tourism industry and recreation users."
Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, Arkville NY cs97.
(Route 28, Arkville, NY, 12406. Tel: (914) 586-2611, Fax:914-586-3044,
Email: cccd@catskillcenter.org, GIS contact: Helen Budrock)
"The Catskill Center for Conservation
and Development is a member-supported, not-for-profit regional conservation
and advocacy organization serving the six-county Catskill Mountain region
of New York State. The Catskill Center advocates environmental quality,
encourages economic and cultural development, assists in environmental
planning, and works to build a strong constituency for the protection
of the irreplaceable resources of the Catskills." After receiving
their CTSP software grant, they got $26,000 from a local foundation to
buy hardware and build their GIS lab. GIS
STATUS 10-99: "In all, we obtained approximately 50
data coverages/themes (many, many more if you count by individual county,
topographic quad, or other unit area). Many of these coverages we further
selected, clipped, merged, or otherwise refined to fit our area of interest.
A significant amount of time was spent organizing the data into various
files, and then setting it up in useful ways in the GIS. General views
were made for statewide data, Catskill regional data, data by Catskill
county, NYC Watershed data, Catskill Forest Preserve data, demographic
data, etc....The first significant GIS application to be worked on, was
the creation of digital maps for our
"Virtual Farmer's Market" web site project.
The Virtual Farmer's Market is an Internet site designed to increase people's awareness
of Catskill agriculture, and help provide an outlet and increase the market for farm
products in the region. Farms throughout the Catskills volunteered to have information
about their farms listed in the database and advertised on the site. The
GIS was used to create county-by-county maps of participating farm locations.
The maps were labeled with prominent villages and roads, and were made
as aesthetically appealing as possible for display on the Internet....Eventually
we also want to create an "electronic atlas" of the region which will
be available on the Internet." Among their other PROGRAMS
are Environmental
Education, Streamwatch, Watershed Youth Summit, Land
and Water Conservation: "identify, monitor, and respond to environmental
issues pertaining to the Catskill region, and to take pro-active steps
toward the preservation of naturally sensitive, ecologically important,
or aesthetically or recreationally critical lands and waters in the Catskill
region. " Community
Outreach & Planning Assistance Program: "We recently created
a hands-on program of technical assistance to community residents interested
in making a difference in the future of their communities. Dubbed the
Community Empowerment Initiative, this grass roots pilot project leads
residents through a facilitated planning process that includes leadership
development training, community visioning, and the creation and implementation
of local projects geared toward community revitalization. "
The
Earth Council, Costa Rica. (Secretariat: San José, Costa Rica Executive
Director: Maximo Kalaw email:earthnet@terra.ecouncil.ac.cr. See also:
Earth Council Institute-Canada
(Hosted by IISD) 255 Consumer's Road, Suite 401 North York, Ontario, Canada
M2J 5B6 Telephone: 1 (416) 498-3150 Fax: 1 (416) 498-7296) "In Rio,
both governments and citizens elaborated a framework for guiding the world
community towards a more secure, sustainable and equitable future. In
the final analysis, however, the results of the Earth Summit will depend
on what governments do to follow-up and carry out its agreements, with
the active participation of civil society. The Earth Council was established
to support and lend impetus to this process, as part of its broader objective
of 'Making Sustainability
Work.'"
Eastern
Maine Development Corporation (EMDC), Me e99. (One Cumberland Place,
Suite 300, Bangor, ME, 04401 GIS Contact: John Holden, Community Economic
Development Specialist, Data Center & GIS Manager, Tel: 207-942-6389, Email: jholden@emdc.org)
"Our role, as a nonprofit regional planning and development agency,
is to help deliver GIS technology to the communities and businesses we
serve....As a result of our recent proactive GIS activity, we are getting
a lot of interest in using GIS in local communities, particularly in our
coastal areas. We are proposing to initiate a participatory GIS (PPGIS)
program in our coastal communities. The focus of this PPGIS will be to
work with local fishers, marine scientists, and marine regulators to identify
the most suitable locations for marine aquaculture activity. More generally,
we are getting much more interest in help communities who do not have
GIS to prepare GIS products to help with their local land use planning
(e.g., shoreland zoning)."
Ecologically Sustainable Development, Elizabethtown NY cm96.
(P.O. Box 848, 2 Church St., ELIZABETHTOWN, NY 12932. Tel: 518-873-3200,
Fax: 518-873-2686 Email: esd@igc.org. or: adkdan@igc.org. Robert C. Glennon, CEO.
GIS Contact: Daniel Plumley) "ESD has headed specific demonstration
sustainable development projects in Russia funded by the United States
Agency for International Development. These include: model regional sustainable
development for a wildlife refuge; community redevelopment for ecotourism;
sustainable forest management and manufacturing; model farms based on
sustainable agriculture; historic district redevelopment; model sustainable
development for a natural anthropological reserve; model sustainable development
combining anthropological, park and wildlife resources; and technical
assistance to implement the Comprehensive Program of Land Use Policies
of the Lake Baikal Region through institution building....ESD's original
goal for the start-up GIS program was to bring equipment and software
in-house in order to be able to perform GIS analysis in the United States
complementary to our overseas pilot GIS programs in the Lake Baikal region.
Development of in-house GIS capability in the United States would also
benefit ESD's sustainable development work in northeast China (the Chinese
portion of the Ussuri drainage), Lake Hovsgol and northern Mongolia (the
Mongolian portion of the Lake Baikal drainage), as well as potential projects
in Nicaragua and elsewhere. In July 1996, using GIS compact disk ARCINFO
and ArcView data derived from ESD program work in the Baikal region (readable,
presented and reviewed by ESD staff on the CTSP Grant equipment), ESD
and the Buryat Regional Department on Lake Baikal presented our joint
GIS land use planning project involving the Selenga River delta, a RAMSAR
Convention-designated wetland of international importance, and a critical
waterfowl and fisheries spawning habitat on the eastern side of Lake Baikal
in the Republic of Buryatia, to the Gore- Chernomyrdin Commission at a
meeting held in Moscow. Both Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin
commented most positively on the value of the work in assessing environmental
constraints and options...Notable too was the completion of ESD's Ussuri\Wusuli
River Watershed Project which among other things developed a GIS- derived
ARCINFO sustainable land use plan for the last remaining Siberian tiger
habitat in the Russian Far East and northeastern China.
Global Network of Environment and Technology, Va.
(Global Environment and Technology Foundation, 7010 Little River Turnpike, Suite 300
Annandale, Virginia 22003. Tel:703-750-6401, Email: getf@getf.org. NEVADA OFFICE:
5250 South Virginia Street, Suite 295., Reno, Nevada 89502 Tel: 775-827-4040,
Tom Harvey, Founder)
GNET Project:
"The Global Network of Environment & Technology (GNET®)
contains information resources on environmental news, innovative environmental
technologies, government environmental technology programs, contracting
opportunities, market assessments, market information, current events
and other material of interest to the environmental technology community...The
site made possible by a cooperative agreement from the Federal Energy
Technology Center (FETC) and the Department of Energy Office of Science
and Technology (OST)."
EARTHMAP Network.
Proposal: "The international community's ability to
respond to a wide range of environmental, sustainable development, and
humanitarian concerns is at a crossroads. Never before have scientists
collected so much data on environmental variables, but also never before
have we faced such a rapid pace of profound ecological, economic, societal,
and political change. Never before have we had the array of technical
tools--from satellites to portable computers--for earth science analysis,
but never before have we been deluged with so much disparate and redundant
bits of data that we have trouble comprehending the information available,
its quality, and its relevance, or even communicating with those working
on a particular issue or in a particular place. Never before have we had
such a broad based international commitment to tackle transnational environmental
problems--from oil spills to drought--but also never before have we had
such a multitude of life-threatening humanitarian crises. While these
dilemmas will be with us permanently, the international community can
help rationalize and systematize environmental and sustainable development
data collection and analysis by building and sharing an easily accessible,
spatially accurate, digitized base map of the earth's features. No such
common geospatial reference base exists, despite very expensive investments
in remote sensing technology and cartographic production. A digitized
"global map" — built up over time and with varying scales in
different places depending on the data generated from specific projects — would
enhance local and regional decision making on a broad range of sustainable
development-related problems. It would encourages the integration of text,
tabular, and spatial data and provide a common platform for earth science
data research. Finally, it would stimulate internationally the pragmatic,
cost effective application of earth observation satellite data and geographic
information systems (GIS) technology, particularly in poor countries where
the most difficult resource management decisions must be made"
LINKS
FAO Sustainable Dimensions (Sustainable Development Dept). (FAO, Viale
delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy Tel.: +39.0657051 Fax: +39.0657053152)
"Recognizing the need to take a more holistic and strategic approach
to development support and poverty alleviation, FAO established its Sustainable
Development Department in January 1995. The new department serves as a
global reference centre for knowledge and advice on biophysical, biological,
socio-economic and social dimensions of sustainable development."
SECTIONS: People, Institutions, Knowledge, Environment. Must See:
Global Climate Maps, with free download of 53 georeferenced maps.
FAO Sustainable Development GIS. (Sustainable Development Dept. Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Viale delle
Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy. email: Agromet@fao.org) (Mr. Henri
Carsalade Assistant Director-General Sustainable Development Department
Tel: (+39 6) 57051, Fax: (+39 6) 570 53064, Email: Henri.Carsalade@fao.org)
The SD dept. "serves as a global reference centre for knowledge
and advice on biophysical, biological, socio-economic and social dimensions
of sustainable development. providing a series of 53 global climate
maps (including Koppen maps) in geo-referenced digital format, plus the
image display and analysis program WinDisp (for Windows), for free downloading.
Tools are provided to extract statistics from images by polygons, to compare
differences, convert formats, and export images to ASCII grids and the
GIS software IDRISI. The maps and colour palettes, zipped by type, plus
WinDisp, are available now from SDRN's FTP site. Refer to the READ.ME
files for additional technical details." SEE:
Geographic Information Systems in Sustainable Development:
"Most sustainable development decisions are inherently multidisciplinary or
cross-sectoral, because they require trade-offs between conflicting goals of different
sectors. However, most natural resource development agencies are single-sector
oriented. Geographic Information System (GIS) technology can help establish
cross-sectoral communication - by providing not only very powerful tools
for storage and analysis of multisectoral spatial and statistical data,
but also by integrating databases of different sectors in the same format,
structure and map projection in the GIS system. The importance of this
integrated approach to development and management of natural resources
have been emphasised in many international fora on sustainable development."
See also:
FAO Global Climate Maps. See also:
FAO World Soil Resouces Map
"The World Soil Resources Map was produced by the Soil Resources Management and
Conservation Service (AGLS) of the FAO Land and Water Development Division (AGL)."
See also:
FAO Global Land Cover Land Use Classification Program. See also:
FAO/UNESCO Digital Soil Map of the World (1:5,000,000 scale).
All text by the respective organizations/authors
January 2, 1997
Web layout & design: Charles Convis, ESRI Conservation Program
April 2, 1996
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