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« October 28, 2007 - November 3, 2007 | Main | November 18, 2007 - November 24, 2007 »

November 6, 2007

ENB Appeal

 

Dear Colleague;

 

It has now been fifteen years since we first published the Earth Negotiations Bulletin during preparations for the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. During this period we have grown from just the three of us at the Earth Summit to a team of more than eighty part-time writers, digital editors, translators and logistic coordinators from thirty-two different countries. With a full time staff of only seven people (including our French and Spanish translators) and four part-time staff, we will have organized conference reporting from more than seventy international meetings in 2007.

 

Our publications now include the Earth Negotiations Bulletin in English, French, Spanish and sometimes Japanese, the Linkages website at http://www.iisd.ca, Linkages Update (our fortnightly publication that lists new additions to the Linkages website), the MEA Bulletin (in cooperation with UNEP Division of Environmental Law and Conventions), coverage of side events at major negotiations with our publication ENB on the Side, and periodic reports from about forty meetings each year where we are hired by the organizers to provide conference reporting services. As well, we manage seven announcement lists, linking members of these policy communities: AFRICASD-L, BIODIV-L, CLIMATE-L, CHEMICALS-L, FORESTS-L, OCEANS-L and WATER-L. Our website, Linkages, received more than forty-six million hits last year!

 

Our objectives have always been clear. By providing free, neutral, timely and authoritative information to policy makers we level the information playing-field and improve international environment and sustainable development governance. As “knowledge brokers” we synthesize down enormous quantities of information into useable formats, without any political objectives, and disseminate these using the latest in information technologies.

 

And, for fifteen years, we have provided all of these services for free to you, our subscribers.

 

However, the real costs of producing the Earth Negotiations Bulletin and our other products are approximately US$2.5 million per year. Some of these costs are paid for by the meetings organizers who hire us to provide our conference reporting services from their non-UN meetings. However, for the coverage of the alphabet-soup of the multilateral negotiating calendar, like UNFCCC, IPCC, CBD, UNCCD, CITES, CMS, UNEP GC, CSD, UNFF, ITTO, PIC and POPS, we still need to raise about US$2 million dollars per year.

 

We need your help in raising money for two very important projects. The first is the continuation of our coverage of African regional meetings and the second is for our general ENB proposal for the rest of this year.

 

1) AFRICAN REGIONAL COVERAGE: Two years ago, we approached the Government of South Africa Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) with the idea of providing support to the NEPAD and Africa Union regional ministerial meetings, such as the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN), the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), the African Ministers’ Conference on Science and Technology, as well as other regional meetings that shape the African environmental and sustainable development policy agenda. The African Regional Coverage (ARC) project is the result of the identified need to give African meetings and activities a higher exposure to the international community, reversing the information flow and giving African policymakers a voice in their own priority setting. This three-year project was presented to the South African DEAT, who agreed to provide the first year funding of US$195,000 with the understanding that IISD would undertake fundraising for the second and third years of this project from developed country and intergovernmental organization donors. Activities began in June 2006 and the first year funding will be exhausted by the end of November 2007.

We are urgently seeking support for the second and third years of this project, particularly as preparations are now underway for the next UN General Assembly Special Session on Africa in September 2008.

Our funding proposal for this project, which includes extensive sections on the project’s outputs in the first year, overview, context and description of activities for 2008-2009, can be downloaded at http://www.iisd.ca/africa/IISDRS_African_Regional_Coverage_Project_2008-2009_Proposal.pdf

2) SUPPORT FOR THE EARTH NEGOTIATIONS BULLETIN: As we approach the end of 2007, with some major meetings such as the First Meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on Mercury, the Twenty-Seventh Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Third Meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee of the Stockholm Convention and the UNFCCC COP13 and Kyoto MOP III on the horizon, we are still short of our fundraising goals.

We have received funding (or assurances) from all of our Sustaining Donors for 2007, including the United Kingdom (through the Department for International Development – DFID), the Government of the United States of America (through the Department of State Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs), the Government of Canada (through CIDA), the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Germany (through the German Federal Ministry of Environment - BMU, and the German Federal Ministry of Development Cooperation - BMZ), the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Commission (DG-ENV) and the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea. We have also received funding, commitments or reasonable assurances from many of our General Supporters: the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the Government of Australia, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management, the Ministry of Environment of Sweden, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, SWAN International, the Japanese Ministry of Environment (through the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies - IGES) and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (through the Global Industrial and Social Progress Research Institute - GISPRI). In addition, funding for translation of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin into French has been provided by the International Organization of the Francophonie (IOF) and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and funding for the translation of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin into Spanish has been provided by the Ministry of Environment of Spain.

Our funding proposal for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin in 2007 can be downloaded at http://www.iisd.ca/proposal/ENB%20CY%202007%20Funding%20Proposal.pdf and individual proposals for coverage of the meeting on Mercury in Bangkok is at http://www.iisd.ca/proposal/ENB%20OEWG-1%20Mercury%20Proposal.pdf , the POPS Review Committee at http://www.iisd.ca/proposal/ENB%20POPRC3%20Proposal.pdf and for our coverage of side events in Bali at http://www.iisd.ca/proposal/ENBOTS%20UNFCCC%202007%20Proposal%2017%20July%202007.pdf

 

 

How can you help us keep our African Regional Coverage project going and make sure we publish the Earth Negotiations Bulletin at meetings between now and Bali (and beyond)?

 

1) If you are a representative of a donor organization or government and would like a formal letter requesting support for any of these activities, please let me know at kimo@iisd.org (or forward this email to someone within your organization or government with your recommendation for support);

2) If your government ministry, international organization or foundation is not yet a donor or has not contributed in 2007, let me know the name and contact information for the individual responsible and I’ll be pleased to send him or her a proposal and letter of request;

3) As a user of the information we provide, please let our current donors know that you appreciate their contribution to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin and encourage them to both continue and possibly increase their support in 2008.

 

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin and our other products are susceptible to the fate of any free resource; undervalued for their real costs until diminished or exhausted. Please help us by contributing back in your own way to make sure that this flow of information on international environment and sustainable development policy is, itself, sustainable.

 

 

Regards,

 

Kimo GOREE (on behalf of the ENB Team)

 

 

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Langston James "Kimo" Goree VI
Director, IISD Reporting Services
International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) -- United Nations Office
300 E 56th St. Apt. 11A - New York, NY 10022 
IISDRS Office phone: +1 646 536 7556 Direct Line: +1 973 273 5860
Fax: +1 646 219-0955 Mobile phone/SMS: +19172934781
Blog: http://www.kimogoree.com Skype: kimogoree

Email: kimo@iisd.org MS Messenger: kimo@iisd.org
Where: November NYC, 1-16 Dec in Bali

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