Dear Colleagues, Demos, a public policy research NGO, is catalyzing the creation of a wiki site that will monitor environmental issues around the world. They are looking for people to contribute to the initial material for the wiki. Please see the announcement below and contact cdev...@demos.org if you are interested. Thank you.
A Proposal for an Environmental Wiki June 2010 Overview Demos is catalyzing the creation of a wiki site that will monitor environmental issues in most countries of the world. This project will fill a major vacuum of information on the environment: There is currently no centralized effort to track the environmental records of different countries in a way that is accessible and covers the full spectrum of important issues. This project will bring together a broad range of collaborators academics, NGOs, local activists to undertake this effort. The Concept The issues affecting the ecological health of this planet are by definition global. The practices of industry and the action of governments have important environmental ramifications that extend beyond the territorial boundaries they operate in. Yet too often it is difficult to get detailed information about what is happening environmentally in various countries. Often countries simply lack the resources or expertise to gather and compile this vital information. And, anyway, dependence on official sources can leave important information obscured. Meanwhile, data that is available from university projects, like Yales Environmental Performance Index, or think tanks like WRI, can be too technical for many users. Another problem with existing sources on country-specific information is that they are static. Reports issued last year can be overtaken by events. Collectively, however, environmental organizations, scholars, and activists from all over the world have a deep reservoir of information on environmental issues within most countries and the ability to update that information constantly. What Demos aims to do is connect those people, unlock their collective knowledge, and share it publicly in an online community. Especially important will be the potential of this effort to empower people with specific local knowledge to speak out on the environmental degradation that is happening in their communities in real time. Absent such a venue for sharing information, crucial trends may remain undocumented and largely unknown. Our Approach Demos vision is the creation of a wiki site that eventually covers the environmental issues affecting all 192 countries in the UN system. Our first step will be to recruit a core group of contributors expert, activists, and academics to seed the initial content of the site. This core will organized into volunteer administrators for each region of the world, and then groups of volunteer editors and contributors for each specific country. Each country team will provide content describing the environmental issues affecting a given country, the nature of government policies on the environment, and content related to corporate practices, local environmental activism, and other relevant topics. Once a critical mass of information had been assembled the site would be opened to the public and allowed to function in a traditional wiki fashion. Our core of editors and administrators would have to remain actively involved to guide contributors, monitor content and quality, and help shape the wiki into a unique resource for information about international environmental topics. Staffing this effort will be done by a senior employee at Demos who functions as a recruiter of, and coordinator between, the core group of volunteer administrators and editors. If you are interested in participating please contact Chris DeVito at cdev...@demos.org.
