Division of Environmental Information, Assessment and Early Warning
 

UNEP - INFOTERRA

Briefing Note: 27 August 1999

INFOTERRA is the global environmental information exchange network of the United Nations Environment Programme.  The network operates through a system of government-designated national focal points which at present number 178.  The INFOTERRA national focal points act as coordinators for national environmental consortiums and serve the needs of their national environmental information centres.  The primary function of each centre is to provide access to national environmental information collections and distribution services.

INFOTERRA received its mandate at the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment which recommended the establishment of a mechanism for the exchange of environmental information and experiences among countries.  In response to this recommendation, UNEP established the INFOTERRA network and governments were requested to designate a national focal point to coordinate INFOTERRA activities at the country level. The 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) reiterated the importance of information for decision-making and requested the strengthening of the  INFOTERRA network to improve information availability (Agenda 21, Chapter 40).   The recent UNEP restructuring has also led to the reform of the INFOTERRA network. Within the context of network reform UNEP has enhanced efforts to promote access to information and public participation.

At the national level, INFOTERRA focal points provide a wide range of environmental information products and services including environmental bibliographies; directories of information sources; query-response services; environmentally relevant literature; and access to Internet services.

The INFOTERRA Secretariat at UNEP headquarters, Nairobi, supports the national focal points by providing policy guidelines, technical services and publishing reference tools such as the EnVoc Multilingual Thesaurus of Environmental Terms; training manuals; source books; and promotional materials.  A capacity building programme provides assistance to focal points in developing countries. 

Anyone looking for information on the environment is welcome to contact the INFOTERRA network through any of the following channels:

  a)   UNEP World Wide Web site
        (http://www.unep.org/infoterra)

  b)   UNEP-INFOTERRA Electronic Discussion Forum
       To subscribe to the email discussion list:
       1. Send an email to majordomo@cedar.univie.ac.at
       2. Leave the subject line blank
       3. Type the following command on the first line 
           of your mail:
        subscribe infoterra  <your email address>

  c)   Local INFOTERRA national focal point (a list of addresses for all 178 national focal points is available from the INFOTERRA  Secretariat or may be downloaded from our Web site) and;

  d)   INFOTERRA Secretariat (address given below).

  For further information on INFOTERRA products and services please contact: