A recent report from the Information Society Forum shows that there is a lot of activity taking place to show that sustainable development and the Information Society are closely related.
Sustainability is a term that has been in common usage for the last twenty years or so.
At the Rio summit in 1992, it was recognised that Sustainability should embrace both the use of natural resources and socio-economic development. It recognised that, although people have the right to improve their standard of living, western-style living standards cannot be scaled up to a global population that will soon reach 10 Billion. In the long term, economic production patterns must suit both social requirements and ecological needs. Working Group 4 of the Information Society Forum is addressing this challenge, and aims to stimulate debate for a Model Europe for a sustainable future. In this context, to dematerialize is to produce goods and services more efficiently, using fewer resources than at present and with less impact on the environment.