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Minister stephen - My Blog
Minister stephen - My Blog
Internet Governance & Sustainability
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The Internet is considered by many to be the global infrastructure of the information society, the most critical piece of the economic, social and cultural foundation of our time. Internet governance can be used to gain a sustainable and freer future, with less poverty and a cleaner environment as long it is not stifled by regulators who are ill equipped to regulate a global community with needs unique to each local, socio-economic, and geographic User. Governance has been on the international agenda for a relatively short time, starting when ICANN was created in 1998.

As the Internet has matured various methods and trials for governing digital communities are now common place, most especially in virtual worlds like 2nd Life, and also in more conventional communities such as eBay or MySpace. With the coming of even greater experiments in Internet Governance are tried, such as the FDU ( Free Digital Universe) "Digitatorship", we expect this issue to become a high priority of International regulatory bodies. Competing regulatory entities from countries who are also competing for trade surpluses, are a big part of why we have a global environmental crisis on our hands in the first place.

Hear me I beg you people, the law forums in which corporations, governments, and all fictional bodies politic are contractually bound to operate is "Competitive." Debt money is created and it trickles down to the Earth paying the bill, the interest on the loan adds insult to injury by creating trickle down poverty - only now it's reaching the 1st world too. Look who you are asking now to solve to the problem, Corporations who have a fiduciary duty to serve their shareholders first (anything else would be illegal), countries their citizens, Trusts their beneficiaries, etc... If we want to really address the environment (reality, Earth, Substance) we will need to "GET REAL" - have living people (all of us) take responsibility by enough peers stepping up and creating a global association where cooperation gets everyone more than competition, a free space.

Additionally, we living people (souls) will need to provide the corporations a place they too can cooperate and still benefit - as long as they behave - like in a Church parking lot fundraisers, where corporate competitors become cooperative Vendors for that day in order to both access the people coming to the Church fundraiser - they can both profit and support the community in this type of instance. A law forum where competition is set aside for the good of all, yet still allows everyone to prosper, would be a excellent Governance system. One is even designed and close to being tested, it should get exciting soon, the Information Age is maturing.

It is my hope that the living people who are the real stakeholders will mature in use of this tool for humanity by participating here, on the WECANSOLVEIT platform, and through participation in open Internet communities working toward sustainable economic eco-systems. If peers (living people) don't speak up, by default it will once again be left to powers that be to provide regulation.

International dialogue tending toward greater regulation has been ongoing since 2003, when delegates to the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) concluded that Internet governance concerns went beyond web names and numbers. Decisions taken around this wider set of issues will have important implications for sustainable development. Examples of points of convergence between Internet governance and sustainable development include:

1. The dependence of developing countries and development organizations on the stability and security of the Internet. The case of Zimbabwe's country-wide interruption in service illustrates this point;

2. The role of the Internet itself in supporting better institutional governance (for example, in facilitating institutional accountability and transparency and citizen participation in governance activities. As the Louder Voices report points out, a significant portion of developing countries do not have the capacity to realize or take advantage of these opportunities); and

3. Internet-enabled global knowledge sharing and management (for example, in the areas of health; food, agriculture and biodiversity; education; and science and technology).

The WSIS Working Group on Internet Governance developed this working definition of Internet governance, which was adopted by the WSIS governments in the Tunis Agenda (2005):

...the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.

This definition is helpful in that it enumerates the stakeholders and some of the challenges facing Internet governance; however, it provides no direction as to what a system, or a combination of systems, of Internet governance would require in order to be sustainable.

One of IISD's strategic objectives is to advance sustainable development by contributing to institutional transformation, particularly through promoting the principles of accountability, participation and legitimacy.

The final meeting of the Word Summit on the Information Society in November of 2005 in Tunis saw the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), aimed at providing a "multi-stakeholder" space on a wide range of topics related to Internet governance. IISD's participation in the first meeting of the IGF focused on strengthening the role of young people in the process and on contributing to discussions around the links between the governance of the Internet and sustainable development.

Following the meeting, IISD helped organize and moderated one of the three thematic weeks of the electronic consultation among young people on Internet governance issues. The discussion archives can be accessed here.

Read about the differences between Physical Governance and Digital Governance.


May 2, 2008 | 3:13 PM Comments  0 comments

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