Computers and the environment. ESD is a late 20th century attempt to take better care of the environment while ensuring economic growth, both now and in the future. We are trying to build a conceptual framework for integrating these seemingly disparate objectives, so that products, production processes and services can be developed that are both internationally competitive and more environmentally compatible.
Conceptual frameworks are fine things, but they don t butter any bread.
A major outcome of the conference, and perhaps its major discovery, was the role of information in the ESD process. We seem to have discovered that information is the glue which permits us to join environment to development. And because we are talking about information in very large dollops and in very strange mixtures, we are necessarily talking about computers because only they can handle information in such amounts and types. ESD is about the harmonisation of the biophysical systems of the natural world with the socioeconomic structures of man. The processes driving both the biophysical and socioeconomic systems operate simultaneously over large areas and on very fine scales.