| BACKGROUND TO THE CITIES STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT PROJECT  |
The Cities State of the Environment Report on the Internet (CEROI), initiated by UNEP/GRID-Arendal, as a research project within the framework of Local Agenda 21 is to facilitate access to environmental information, which will enable sound decision-making and general awareness raising concerning local priorities in cities. The objective is to develop a concept for a simple, easily understood and user friendly Cities’ State of the Environment (CSoE) Report on the Internet. Greater Johannesburg is a pilot city (of 15 others), participating in a project to produce a CSoE Report, based on our own experiences, guidelines and need, to deliver an independent internet site that will feed into a pot of other internet sites from the rest of the pilot cities. The Greater Johannesburg State of Environment (GJSoE) Internet Report is designed to enhance decision-making for environmental protection and sustainable, as a baseline for future management decisions and as a benchmark against international trends. It is also designed to improve environmental education and training against decision-makers and the general public. Potential users of the GJSoE Internet Report include National, Provincial and Local level government, environmental advisory groups, environmental management practitioners, scientists and interested members of the public. The GJSoE Internet Report for South Africa would contain information on
This information will be presented using indicators for monitoring environmental quality discussed in the Table of Content. The GJSoE Internet Report is of strategic importance, and must contain relevant, scientifically accurate information on all aspects of the environment. This information must be presented in such a way that can be easily understood by all user groups and that can be easily revised, as updated information becomes available. This information would be presented using indicators provided by the Land Development Objective process for the Greater Johannesburg Council, with the opportunity to prioritise selected issues for environmental management, namely
The indicators of these selected issues are listed in the Table of Contents. The project now requires the assistance in analysis, compilation and presenting the information geographically for each issue. All copyright of the final GJSoE Internet Report and components thereof are vested with the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council.
SCOPE AND PHILOSOPHY Available information should be integrated and interactive (in terms of use and maintenance) in aid for decision-making. This will change the attitude, use, value and management of information. This project will make information available to the Internet user in an integrated and interactive (user and administrator) manner for decision-making by the reader. The web page will be done in a visual, easy to understand, well-structured and internationally comparable report and should be:
The Greater Johannesburg SoE Internet Report it is considered necessary to have two different sets of indicators to evaluate performance of both environmental and informative standards. When analysed together, these indicators would determine project tolerance towards all users. This brings a new dimension to the discussion and means that there should be information technology statistics which determine how many times the site will be accessed, the numbers of users reached, the different levels accessed, the time spent on each page and the date of access. These indictors are both quantitative and qualitative in nature and will inform the web administrator of the success or failure on the ‘Internet component’. |
