WRI is evolving into being more than a think tank. Here’s a perfect example. Starting in 1992, I was involved in the 2050 project that WRI did with Brookings and the Santa Fe Institute. We were looking at long-term sustainability issues over the next 50 years. Out of that came my book, Which World? Scenarios in the 21st Century, published in 1998, which has opened some new audiences to WRI because it speaks in journalistic language about scenarios for the future.
When we started the 2050 project on long-term sustainability, it was a fairly analytical, academic kind of study. But out of that came a book came some ideas about how one might use these emerging new information technologies to accelerate development. WRI is now carrying this forward, beyond the inception of the idea, to form partnerships that can actually put the idea into action.
For example, I’ve helped with others to develop our Communication 2000 Program. This internal capacity-building effort applies new communication technologies in areas where we see the greatest need for future growth: to expand WRI’s outreach and facilitate work with partners. In combination with some of the digital map tools and indicators that WRI has been developing, these new communication channels will give someone managing a forest, grassland, or watershed in a developing country access to information tools never before available. And, of course, there are a lot of resource managers in the world, and that looks like a market, both to the people who sell the software or provide the communication links and to those who provide the data.
From these projects came the idea to develop a private sector conference on the use of information technologies for sustainable development, both for increasing human welfare directly around the world and for enabling better management of natural resources. The idea is essentially to use these very powerful technologies for a broader purpose, which is largely one that the companies involved haven’t understood might be an important market for them. So we’re starting by developing this conference as a way to bring producers and potential users of technology together. By bringing them together, we can help them to form partnerships that will put the idea of sustainable development into action.”
