THINK of a prime minister, or a president or a corporate chief executive being bombarded with a million e-mail messages, urging him or her to support a particular environmental initiative or to stop doing something they shouldn't be doing.
According to Robert San George, communications director of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Internet holds "huge potential" as an international campaigning vehicle for the environment.
"There are clear early signs that properly designed Web sites can attract people by providing participation and involvement on issues that interest them," San George says.
Addressing a recent conference in Cardiff on environmental reporting, he predicted that we would start seeing the Web as an important campaigning tool within two years.
"For the first time in modern history, the Web will empower NGOs (non-governmental organisations) to reach a mass audience cheaply and directly in other words, bypassing the news media. Up to now, this has only been possible with a large advertising budget, which is out of the question for virtually all advocacy organisations.
"If you accept the notion that the growing environmental crisis will inexorably become a priority issue in the coming years, then the World Wide Web certainly will play a crucial role in mobilising public support for action.
As the Web develops into an important information resource, it is no wonder that NGOs have been "frantically trying to figure out for the past 18 months or so how to use the Web to their best advantage".
The WWF's site is now the largest single information source on nature conservation, with more than 6,000 pages of text, videos and photos amount in to virtually the entire product of WWF. It is accessible to anyone with a computer and," modem (at http://www.idl.com/ as is Greenpeace, (http://www. green peace. org) and even An Taisce (http://www. commerce. ie/ca/antaisce/)
. ONLINE SUMMIT: How underdeveloped countries acquire and diffuse knowledge is the topic of TechNet's first electronic "think tank conference" The online discussions (see http://www. worldbank.org/html/ fpd/technet) over four weeks will involve about 20 experts from government, industry, academia, NGOs and the World Bank.
