The Commons Newsletter. Vol. 1, No. 1. Nomination of Stockholm Partnerships for 2004 WTN Environment Prize

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

This won't happen very often I promise you, but there has been enough going on of late in and around The Commons that a quick newsletter seemed like the most efficient way of putting before you the latest news and events. This targeted special number in support of of the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities is specifically intended to provide you with easy to access background information on and working links to our in-process nomination of the Partnerships for this year's World Technology Award for the Environment.

This is, as always in The Commons, an open interactive working process and partnership, and we very much hope that once you have had a look you will want to add your voice to ours for the nomination. This you can do by clicking here directly to the informal 'guestbook' that we have created to this end and once there to share easily your views and recommendations on this with your colleagues here and with the judges for the WTN award.

If you have any questions all you have to do is click the Contact Us link just about and you will find all you need to get in touch. Email and phone work just fine, but best of course is a visit to Paris.

Eric Britton

1. Background: WTN 2004 Prize Nominations: Environment & Technology

We have nominated for the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities for the 2004 World Technology Award for Environment, both for its outstanding accomplishments in the field of sustainable development and social justice, and in parallel for its reliance on low-cost SOA communications technologies to get the job done. A draft statement of the proposed nomination appears below. Your comments and suggestions on it are warmly invited. The partnership theme which was the keystone of the SPSC events from the beginning is just as valid here as in the more formal program itself. And while this award is intended for the accomplishments of the City of Stockholm and the team behind the program in making it happen, it is also a vote for the future.

Outreach to support WTN nomination

This nomination is being supported by an international outreach effort which has just gotten under way (15 June), but which we hope will be useful to bring in ideas and support from a wide range of people and groups who feel that this is an initiative that is worth building on in many respects. For more on this, and in order to add your comments and recommendations to they final nomination, we invite you to go to The Commons and click Stockholm Nomination. From that point the process should be clear.

Note: The short supporting form you have here has been prepared to be quickly handled and thought provoking. It is organized in four brief sections: 1. Your quick self-identification; 2. Overview of the main accomplishments of the Partnerships; (3) You counsel on Next Steps and finally 4. Your Message to Stockholm. The true power of this process is in its being able to attract many voices and diverse points of view, and then put this important collective message before those who are able to decide about how best to build on this.

Thanks for joining us on this.

* Click here to add your voice

* See what has been said thus far

* Views from many places

2. The World Technology Awards

"The World Technology Awards have been created to honour those individual leaders or, at times, co-equal teams from across the globe who most contribute to the advance of emerging technologies of all sorts for the benefit of business and society. We especially seek to honour those innovators who have done work recently which has the greatest likely future significance and impact over the long-term. The WTN awards are about those individuals whose work today will, in our opinion, create the greatest "ripple effects" in the future... in both expected and unexpected ways."

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3. Proposed WTN Nomination Text

"The Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities has made an enormous contribution since 2001 in encouraging and awarding outstanding local initiatives aimed at advancing the agenda of sustainable development and social justice in countries around the world. I am honored to be able to nominate the Stockholm Partnerships for this year's World Technology Award for Environment, both for its accomplishments in its chosen target area of sustainability, and the manner in which it is showing the way for creative public/private partnerships which demonstrated how technology can be used efficiently to move us toward a more sustainable world.

"The 2002 events and prestigious prize ceremony hosted by the City of Stockholm in the Great Blue Hall with the gracious participation of His Majesty the King of Sweden in presenting the awards to the selected projects of the "Stockholm Bouquet" are best seen as capping steps in a long and careful process of international cooperation and exchange. (The picture just below shows the final Stockholm Bouquet presentation.) Over the preceding eighteen months a true international partnership was fashioned, starting with a world wide outreach effort and eventually leading to the high profile nomination and media and other support of no less than 228 sustainability projects from more than 50 countries world wide.

"The decision to honor above all low cost projects based on local initiatives and moving ahead on the strength of the strong commitment of individuals and volunteer groups working without compensation and not always supported by government and other actors, brought honor to the Stockholm team as well. Likewise the aggressive outreach to find and reward projects in which women play leading roles and others where children are directly involved as active participants was and is of greatest importance.

"While the final week-long events in Stockholm in 2002 were the most obvious accomplishment of this effort by the city and its partners, the fact that the entire preparatory program was one hundred percent mediated by what was called the "electronic environment" has an important role in this nomination which also needs to be noted. This last was driven by the web, supported by email and a number of interactive e-tools built into the program -- including the aggressive use of low cost videoconferencing technology which permitted most of the preparatory activities to be carried out without extensive air travel (and the negative environmental impacts that it necessarily crates).

"The WTN 2004 Environment Award will serve both to highlight the considerable achievements thus far of the Stockholm Partnerships, and to encourage the city and its partners to continue and expand their activities along these lines in the years ahead. It also provides a clear statement from the international technology community as represented by the WTN that we understand the links between technology and sustainability are vital and need to receive far more attention in the future than they have thus far."

For further information on the original Stockholm Partnerships program, please consult www.partnerships.stockholm.se. For information on the international reactions and proposals for its extension in the future, go to The Commons at http://ecoplan.org and click WTN Nomination.

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4. More on the Partnerships

The Vision:

The vision of the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities is to gather comprehensive knowledge and information on the most innovative and inspiring sustainability projects from all over the world in a grand exposure of urban solutions and to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and technology from these initiatives. The Stockholm Partnerships has as its mission to facilitate for those who represent hands-on projects, volunteer groups working often on their own, national or local governments, industry, non-governmental organizations, academia, media, finance institutions, international organizations, etc. to share knowledge and experience in the field of applied technology and management.

The programme set out to create bonds and networks between projects, individuals, non-governmental organizations, companies, experts and cities. The backbone of the Stockholm Partnerships is a conviction that many creative solutions to common problems of cities already exist. However, we know much too little about them. The Partnerships takes direct aim at this challenge.

In focus for the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities are the respective roles of individual innovating groups, industry, local government and communities in enabling sustainable urban development, and how these roles evolve and influence each other. Stockholm Partnerships aims at bringing together stakeholders from local government, business and non-governmental organizations from all over the world to try - in a collective effort - to bring new energy into the process.

The Stockholm Partnerships had as its first objective to seek out successful urban development projects around the world to find the necessary ingredients for success. It is recognized that different cities in different parts of the world will elaborate different models for sustainability strategies, based on the specifics of the local situations. The Stockholm Partnerships initiative will make an effort to map and disseminate some of the most innovative strategies, their implementation and the technology that make them work, in order to inspire others.

The Partnerships highlights development projects in cities from all over the world that show innovative solutions for sustainable development in urban areas. Some may be based on policy, others on technology and yet others on proactive initiatives by communally based actors, but they will all have one thing in common: to demonstrate in practice that sustainable urban development is possible.

The 2002 Awards and Events

The three-day June 2002 celebratory event, the first of its kind, was multidimensional in the sense that there was a conference and an exhibit along with the dialogues and the award session. During the meeting, the international delegates, representing all possible stakeholders, participated, viewing and discussing the pre-selected competitive, sustainable urban solutions from many parts of the world, from developing as well as industrialized countries and countries with an economy in transition. The Stockholm celebration was an important event in linking history with the future. First of all, the date chosen for 2002, 5 June, is the worldwide-recognized World Environment Day. This day was inaugurated at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which indeed took place in Stockholm. Thus, the first Stockholm Partnerships event commemorates the thirty years since the milestone conference that the United Nations organized in Stockholm. Another reason for taking stock of developments and looking into the future is the fact that Stockholm was celebrating its 750 anniversary as a city.

Yet another reason to celebrate is that the plan of action also known as Agenda 21 was agreed upon exactly ten years prior to the dates of the Stockholm Partnerships. Additionally, a few months after the events in Stockholm later the World Summit on Sustainable Development, was to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, offering one of the conduits for showcasing the findings of the event in Stockholm.

Intense discussions on examples of solutions to the problems of urban sustainability took place during four days in the first week of June. The concluding event gathered 360 delegates from all corners of the world. Many came to represent their projects and partner organizations but many delegates were also there out of curiosity to see and learn from the projects. The highlight of the event was the Awards Ceremony that took place in the evening of June 5th, on the 30th World Environment Day. The King of Sweden handed over 14 awards for the "Stockholm Bouquet" in what was described as a ritual for sustainable development.

The exhibition that was inaugurated on Tuesday June 4 had all 60 Ambassador Projects also served as the main rallying point for all delegates between sessions. Thursday and Friday were dedicated to open group discussions - the Thematic Dialogues - on four central themes: knowledge sharing, the market and sustainable development, sustainability in the information society, and responsible urban governance. The distribution of delegates between these sessions was a little uneven, but still all four reports contain highly relevant recommendations and conclusions. These reports formed the cornerstones of the "Message to Johannesburg" from the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities. .

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5. About the World Technology Network

The World Technology Network (WTN) is a cross between a global meeting ground, a virtual think tank, and an elite club whose members are all focused on the business or science of bringing important emerging technologies of all types (from biotech to new materials, from IT to new energy sources) into reality. WTN's membership is comprised of over 700 individuals and organisations from over 50 countries judged by their peers to be the most innovative in the technology world.

WTN brings key players together - from the most cutting-edge technologists to the most forward-thinking financiers, from the most conceptual futurists to the most grounded entrepreneurs, from the most insightful science writers to the most savvy marketers, from the most big-picture government officials to the most focused policy analysts, and from the world's leading corporations to the world's newest start-ups - helping to make things happen sooner and better than they might have.

WTN exists to "encourage serendipity" - the happy accidents of colliding ideas and new relationships that cause the biggest breakthroughs for individuals and institutions. WTN works to accomplish its mission through global and regional events for its members (and others) to help make connections amongst them, and to examine the likely implications and possible applications of emerging technologies. WTN also seeks to provide useful information and provoke action through its publications.

The World Technology Awards are presented each year to the outstanding innovators from each sector within the technology arena, both as a way to honour those individuals and as a vetting process to determine the newest WTN members. The Awards are announced each year in a gala ceremony at the close of the annual World Technology Summit.

The 2004 World Technology Summit will take place on October 7-8, 2004 in San Francisco, California. Following on the success of the previous three World Technology Summits (2001 in London; 2002 in New York; and 2003 also in San Francisco), the 2004 World Technology Summit will be a 2 day gathering of many of the most innovative people in the technology world, concluding on the last night with the 2004 World Technology Awards gala ceremony. Delegates to the Summit will primarily be current WTN members and 2004 World Technology Awards nominees. Additional delegates places will be available for others.