| In the European Union both the Lisbon Strategy and national programmes intend to improve competitiveness in the
sector of information society technologies. The horizon of the Lisbon Strategy is 2010 and most european national programmes have similar
time frames. However, many trends and consequences of new technologies have a different time dimension and it has been the role of the Club
of Rome to focus on long term effects, especially in the environmental area.
Information and communication technologies have an increasing impact on nature. This impact does not only include enhanced facilities to monitor change
and provide politics with reliable data, it includes also problematic aspects, which did not play a role as long as there were some thousand computers on
Earth but which became very visible within the recent years. For example, IT is a large consumer of energy, both during production and during use.
IT ends up as harmful waste and has quite a variety of indirect effects. Instead of having the paperless office, we are flooded with paper.
Mobility and transport do not seem to be limited but enhanced by technology.
Finally, achieving a high competitiveness needs a long term horizon. Increasing environmental impact will require new solutions
and those countries and companies which think early about the future will be able to provide also tomorrow successful products on
the markets. How can we both increase competitiveness and provide IT products and services in an environmentally friendly way?
The symposium "IT and the environment" discussed problems and presented best practice. It showed that environmentally oriented innovation
is one of the key factors of competitiveness. The event was organised by the Finnish Association, the European Support Centre and the Brussels-EU
Chapter of the Club of Rome in co-operation with the Finnish EU Presidency and the Finnish Information Society Programme. |
