The process that was launched with the idea of setting up a climate change home page turned out to be much more interesting than we had initially thought. It has strengthened the capacity of the coordination unit and has helped to decentralize the preparation of the National Communication, thereby allowing full involvement of all relevant institutions despite their location. Overall, the use of the Internet is a new approach to try to assure quality and reliability of the work, it can facilitate awareness raising, increase efficiency, to allow for information dissemination, and, finally, to permit a better outreach of the Convention and its implementation in Brazil.

The existence and availability of climate change related information on the Internet of course does not ensure that all of the above-mentioned potential will be reached. This idea is only a seed thrown to the wind. We do not know where it will fall, and whether it will be sown. There are currently some severe drawbacks, such as the availability of Internet access in Brazil (currently limited to a rather small portion of the Brazilian population). On the other hand, the climate change issue is at this stage related mainly to scientists and technical experts, a group which generally has the capacity to access the Internet. We are in the very beginning of the development of this idea; much of its power is to be understood only in the coming years.

A brief description of some of the main outcomes we have identified thus far from developing the Brazilian site:

Strengthening of Coordination

Hosting the site gives additional legitimacy to the coordinating body. This means not only acknowledgment of the Ministry of Science and Technology for its role as the Brazilian implementing agency of the Convention, but also communication of all of the steps taken towards implementation. The home page is a venue where information can be both posted and retrieved. It is a focal point standing automatically 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Moreover, the site facilitates the coordination process, giving transparency and reliability to the process, and clearly setting up a formal channel to collect and disseminate information. It also makes it possible to clearly state the attributes of the coordination unit, to identify who is who within that unit, and to inform people of how they should address requests and questions.

The existence of the site allows the job to become a collective one, under responsibility of the coordinating unit. It provides an overview of work development and the level at which different institutions and experts are active. It also permits the identification of difficulties and creates a new forum for finding ways to solve problems and looking for new approaches. At the same time, making the work done by institutions and experts available on the Internet also gives greater exposure to participating institutions and individuals. In the process it creates a competition for more and better information materials, which helps to improve the quality of the work.

Related to the collective nature of the job, the existence of the site also facilitates the process in the sense that all responsibilities are clearly stated. Within the site there is the possibility to identify each part of the job with the corresponding coordinator (institution/expert) in charge of developing and preparing the respective activity being undertaken. This statement of attributes alone implies establishment (and, more importantly, acceptance) of responsibility for technical development and document preparation, plus acknowledgment by other institutions (independent of whether or not they are participating on the process).

Decentralization

The main difficulty identified was linked to large distances between main cities in Brazil. The Internet is a good solution to overcome this difficulty, provided there is a good telecommunication network. This is a severe drawback to the idea of using Internet. But the network conditions are rapidly evolving getting along Internet expansion, and the numbers of Brazilian users and sites are increasing exponentially. A few examples: there are some estimations that there were around 280,000 users and 200 home pages in Brazil as of March 1996. Just three months later, new estimations showed around 450,000 users and 4,000 Brazilian home pages. It is foreseen (using cable TV and mobile phones ownership as proxies) that by December 1996 there will be more than 1,000,000 people linked to Internet in Brazil. These estimations are based on the number of Brazilian hosts and the assumption that ten users are connected to each host on average.

The network conditions are also improving. There is now a very high speed network in Brasilia (6 Mbs- fiber optics), with a high speed connection between Brasilia / Belo Horizonte / Rio de Janeiro / São Paulo (2 Mbs). When access is made through old telephone exchanges (normally the case in small cities), the difficult issue of a low speed network still remains.

The existing network spans all regions and connects all of the main cities in Brazil. This advantage can be used in the climate change site as a way to facilitate the process, involving as many institutions and individuals as possible -- including those who would have had no other chance to participate. One concrete example is the request we received from a secondary school student who was reading our home page from São Leopoldo, a small city in the Rio Grande do Sul State (in the southern region of Brazil). There are no traditional mechanisms to involve people apart from those in the main institutions and cities in the process. The Internet can provide this access, though in a limited way.

Internet will also allow for permanent contact among experts. In this sense, it can facilitate the development of the job as a collective one, lowering distances, costs, and the need for meetings and travels.

The disclosure of all draft material through the Internet can increase the quality and reliability of the work. It assures transparency: all information will be made available to all interested people. It represents a way to get comments from experts not directly involved in the process but wishing to participate, as draft versions will be available from the very beginning of the job. This can include experts in every sector, from energy to waste management, and is a way to have a in-depth review of the work in a decentralized and comprehensive way. The drawback for this ideal situation is the wide awareness of experts of the existence of the site to have it reviewed periodically. One way to overcome this difficulty is to try to regularly publish news in national-scope newspaper and scientific magazines.

Other interesting features are the possibilities to 'treat' information (in an effort to guarantee minimum quality and uniform standard) and to have discussions on conflicting views on some more political issues.

Awareness Raising

The main and most urgent need that was felt during the initial phase of our work was the lack of available information on climate change (and related) issues in Portuguese. One way to handle this problem is trying to publish material in Portuguese. This is expensive, even considering very limited editions (like 3,000 to 5,000 copies). We need some very basic materials in Portuguese, such as the text of the Convention (which we have gotten the help of the United Nations Environment program [UNEP] to publish). Although important, this effort will still not be sufficient to disseminate all of the materials that are deemed necessary to support the work.

Making texts in Portuguese available on the Internet requires intensive human resources and will take time. It is feasible, however, given the conditions in developing countries conditions. In the initial steps of the project, the first text that was made available through the Internet in Portuguese was the Convention (done as a hypertext document). This experience demonstrated the real opportunity presented by Internet to make important texts available all over Brazil (although we are bound again by Internet accessibility).

Along the same lines of reasoning, the preparation of the National Communication in Portuguese will allow for much wider participation of experts and for the possibility of incorporating additional suggestions, seeing as we get rid of language limitations.

Other important points to disclose in order to raise awareness are the Brazilian commitments under the Convention. The idea is to build the National Communication through Internet. Regarding this concept, the idea was evolving from the very rough initial thinking of having only the summary of the National Communication to the complete building of all chapters on-line in a continuous manner. This would be done in a tree-structured way, where each chapter consists of as many levels as needed and each "leaf" (Web page) represents a very detailed, disaggregated piece of the work (and includes all of the information available about the coordination of that activity, such as the name of the person in charge of the activity, institution, direction, etc.). The coordination assignment for each activity will be made as soon as a first draft of Brazil´s initial National Communication is made available.

An example: all items of the inventory methodology in the IPCC format will be accordingly translated to web "leaves". The idea being recurrent permits us to be as flexible as possible, so that even the work structure itself is opened for insertions and modifications, in accordance with suggestions and recommendations that we will be received during the initial phase of the National Communication preparation.

But not only the so-called National Communication is a candidate to be part of the site. Another very important feature of the Internet is that all related information is just a hotlink away of the user. The use of pre-established links was envisaged as another possibility to improve flow and disclosure of related information.

It is possible to make all climate change related information existing on the Internet available in the site, with levels of expertise ranging from beginner´s information on climate change to very detailed scientific information (such as IPCC reports). It is also possible -- and very easy -- to have hotlinks to information on related environmental issues (for instance, Agenda 21, the Montreal Protocol and the Biological Diversity Convention). Legal texts other than Conventions are also candidates to be outreached through Internet. For example, the Decree that sets up the Brazilian Interministerial Committee on Sustainable Development (CIDES) was made available through the climate change web site.

Other kinds of information that will allow people to better understand the role and capacity of participating institutions can also be made part of the site. This includes hotlinks to the home pages of national and international institutions. Moreover, very specific information contained within these sites can be made easily accessible through hotlinks direct to those specific pages . This saves people from having to go through the complex navigational process from institutional home pages. In the Brazilian case there are links straight to maps of savannah burning (within the EMBRAPA site) and to satellite images of the Amazon forest (withinin the INPE site). In this way all the relevant information is available through hotlinks spread along the site´s pages and the user does not need to search for this information, the work is already done for him/her.

Increased Efficiency

The idea of having a climate change site actually means setting up a climate change Intranet among all participating institutions, with the site itself functioning as an automatic focal point. It will centralize all of the information, provide contact names and directions for each subject, and contain all of the basic information that would be requested about climate change. In this sense it will bear part of the burden of the coordinator unit -- without using human resources.

Efficiency can also be increased because of timeliness of information. It is not an expensive manner in which to improve information dissemination within both the national constituency and the international community. It should be noted that Internet is a very quick way to spread news. Concerning to the Brazilian commitment it gives an interesting by-product - the possibility of having the National Communications as hypertext in a CD-ROM, as a direct result of site development.

Another feature closely related with efficiency is modernization. The participating experts from different institutions will have to deal with Internet, e-mail, sending attached files, etc. This management activity under expert responsibility will force the use of most up-to-date technology, causing an improvement of work conditions in involved institutions.

It is a tool to establish permanent contacts (via e-mail among experts). It improves communication and availability of information among participants (top-down, bottom-up and horizontally) as well as instantaneous exchange of information/recommendations/comments (sent also through e-mail) throughout the nation and across borders. In regard to this last point, the existence of the site will also facilitate interaction between experts from different sectors, allowing them to share experiences on different sectoral approaches.

Better Outreach

The existence of a climate change site facilitates bilateral and multilateral cooperation (transparency, information, results, etc.), helps inform the public at large, and as already mentioned, enables experts not directly involved to participate in the process (nationally and abroad).