Exploring the further Evolution of Local and International Web Portals to Promote Global Convergence towards increasing Collective Intelligence
The Concept:
ICT4SD = Information and Communications Technologies for Sustainable Development. The Planetwork Summits explored the idea that Information Technologies have a role to play in promoting more socially just and sustainable societies. The idea of the Green Century Institute’s Green Community Network was to promote Eco-Living Solutions as part of the tipping point towards a sustainable global society. The goal is to link people in the Bay Area and on a larger level in CA and USA to tools, networks and resources that can enable an effective and rapid movement towards economic decentralization, self-governance, sustainable development, fair trade, etc.
Goal and Vision: Connecting Vision with Current Best Practices
Develop online platforms that provide micro-business incubation services to communities in emerging markets enabling them to provide more sustainably produced Fair Trade goods to affluent markets such as the Bay Area in a way that is similar to what Global Exchange is now doing with coffee and other products. Considering already existing networks further pull the resources together to develop a marketplace to facilitate sustainable development in a way that promotes not just economic exchanges but also to facilitate a knowledge exchange between cultures.
The Practice:
Groups like Global Exchange and World-Centric in developing practical, grassroots driven Fair Trade models provide an alternative for CAFTA, NAFTA and neoliberalism. They are based on an authentic commitment to the people and the ecology of this planet and is grounded in practical results and programs that move us towards the dream of living in harmony with the people and the creatures that we share this planet with.
