Issue No.15

Contents:
1. GENERAL NEWS
A. WTO AND UNEP ESTABLISH DEEPER COOPERATIVE LINKAGES
B. WHO OWNS THE SKY?
C. GLOBAL CHANGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE LINKS
2. THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE TO INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY ICT
A. E-Commerce in the USA
B. E-Commerce in the Future
C. Telematics in Europe


1. GENERAL NEWS

Quote of the week: "The more important a technology is for the environment, the less it looks like anything having to do with traditional environmental activity. ...Our society is poorly equipped to understand or encourage this," Braden Allenby of AT&T (see Story 2B below)

A. WTO AND UNEP ESTABLISH DEEPER COOPERATIVE LINKAGES

Will trade policy continue to upstage climate policy after Seattle? The Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development ICTSD in Geneva, Switzerland, offers a coherent compilation of opinions entitled "The Aftermath of Seattle: A Summary of Competing Claims", http://www.ictsd.org/html/weekly/story5.15-12-99.htm

In its previous briefing, ICTSD reported on a key issue to which an answer had been pending ever since our London conference report (Computers and Climate 1(1999)4), and reporting from a conference that was announced in our calendar.

Executive-Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Klaus Töpfer and WTO Director-General Mike Moore met on 29 November to discuss the working relationship between UNEP and the WTO. "UNEP is committed to this co-operation," noted Töpfer, "especially with respect to capacity-building for developing countries." Both Directors acknowledged that multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have equal status with WTO rules, though Moore remarked that this remains an untested area that UNEP could assist in clarifying. Töpfer argued that MEAs should be linked with the WTO.

According to a WTO press release, co-operation between the two secretariats will include the provision and exchange of relevant non-confidential information, including access to trade-related environmental databases, and reciprocal representation at meetings of a non-confidential nature. UNEP will also be playing a role in mainstreaming environmental considerations within the WTO, particularly for developing countries. "We need to ensure developing countries that environmental laws and the precautionary principle are not green protectionism; this can be achieved with more emphasis on confidence-building measures."

This echoed a key conclusion reached by a grouping of prominent environmental organisations that met on 29 November to forge a strategy for the Ministerial discussions. The groups included the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the World Conservation Union, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and the Global Environment and Trade Study. "A central reason for not putting environment on the agenda is reticence on the part of developing countries," said Daniel Esty (Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy); our effort over the next few days is to demonstrate that all countries have nothing to lose and everything to gain by including environment on the agenda. Some attendees to the meeting were less than optimistic about the prospects for a declaration by the end of the Seattle talks, let alone having environment inserted into a potential text. Esty points to posturing between the U.S. and the EU as one issue that could needlessly prevent the inclusion of environment in a declaration.

From List: BRIDGES Daily WTO Update (bridges@iatp.org), Date Posted: 12/02/1999. Copies in English, French and Spanish can be found on the ICTSD website at http://www.ictsd.org/wto_daily/index.htm

B. WHO OWNS THE SKY?
A new Sky Trust Initiative has been proposed by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) to benefit climate protection using means adapted from free enterprise, http://www.skytrust.cfed.org/faqs.html. Michael Calabrese, director of domestic policy
programs at the Center for National Policy (mailto: mcalabrese@cnponline.org), describes the Sky Trust Initiative and an alternative proposal from Redefining Progress, an environmental think tank on
http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue326/item7441.asp. The alternative would use emission permit revenue (and other pollution taxes) to lower the payroll tax, which finances Medicare and Social Security. A 10-page paper is available for download, http://www.rprogress.org/pubs/twnw/twnw_contents.html

C. GLOBAL CHANGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE LINKS
This Webpage at the Karlsruhe Research Centre, Germany, http://www.itas.fzk.de/eng/infum/gch_krk.htm, has many links and summaries of some past conferences, such as this one: "Modelling Climate Change and its Economic Consequences," a workshop held in 1998 to launch an interdisciplinary project. Although the results of the project won't be published until 2001, the workshop report can be ordered now, and is summarized here, http://www.europaeische-akademie-aw.de/grauereihe/e-graue-reihe-15.html

The Karlsruhe site also links through to several calendars of mainly American, scientific conferences, http://gcmd.nasa.gov/Confcal/other_calendars.html

Preview
We wish our readers a pleasant holiday season and transition into Y2K. The next issue of Computers and Climate, though, may be the last. The newsletter's current funding under the ASIS project is set to expire early next year. Several avenues to continue funding are being explored. Readers who know of possible means should contact ruddyconsult@imailbox.com

2. THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE TO INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY ICT
A. E-Commerce in the USA
A new report has been published by the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, a non-profit organization outside Washington, DC, that helps companies and public institutions reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.  Dr. Joseph Romm is executive director of the Center and lead author of the report The Internet Economy and Global Warming: A Scenario of the Impact of E-Commerce on Energy and the Environment, http://www.coolcompanies.org/ecom.

B. E-Commerce in the Future
Brad Allenby of AT&T predicts another "gale of creative destruction" like Schumpeter's, http://www.att.com/ehs/newsletter/this_issue/page_3.html. We thank Nevin Cohen mailto:nevincohen@yahoo.com for these two news items, organizer of a mailing list called e3digital@topica.com, to which you can subscribe at http://www.topica.com

C. Telematics in Europe
Proceedings of the IST Environment Conference, "Telematics Solutions for Sustainable Development" held in Munich, June 21-22, 1999 including panel discussions on the contribution of ISTs to sustainable develeopment are also now available online under: http://www.rec.org/REC/programs/telematics/cape/munich/munich.html