At the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) that was held in Sandton, ESRI, with the assistance of GIMS, showcased GIS projects on sustainable development as well as GIS technology at the Ubuntu Village Exhibit, the plenary session at Sandton Convention Centre and at several side events.

During the last year, ESRI and GIMS have partnered with many institutions on two major initiatives related to GIS - My Community, Our Earth (MyCOE) and Geographic Information for Sustainable Development (GISD). The exhibit at WSSD for these projects focused on the importance of geographic information and related technologies to the successful implementation of sustainable development projects.

The vision of the organisers of My Community, Our Earth (MyCOE) is to build a geographically literate generation of people able to use this knowledge in their everyday lives to bring about true sustainable development. The MyCOE programme invites students worldwide to look geographically at issues of sustainability in their community, such as water quality, water pollution, population demographics and deforestation, and to suggest solutions for the future. Students use digital technologies, such as GIS software, or more traditional manual methods, such as hand-drawn maps and charts, images, and graphs, to convey their solutions for issues of sustainability in their own communities. The MyCOE exhibit showcased the best student projects of 2002.

On August 30th, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored a side event for MyCOE, where students, government officials, educators and GIS professionals discussed the importance of the projects and how these are essential to community level sustainable development. High school and university programmes are urged to become involved in the 2003 MyCOE project. Details may be found at www.geography.org/sustainable.

The GISD exhibit highlighted the use of geographic information for decision making related to such issues as natural resource management, public health, and poverty reduction by African institutions in a public-private partnership with the US government, universities, nongovernmental organisations, and private companies.

The GISD initiative is an international alliance to apply a new generation of earth observation data, geographic information technologies, and other elements of what specialists call 'spatial data infrastructure' (SDI) to help decision-makers address sustainable development problems in Africa. All GISD-sponsored projects involve testing new approaches to field-level management of such problems as food security, sustainable agriculture, natural resource management, disaster mitigation, and poverty alleviation.

GISD has focused on support to existing activities in Africa, many funded by USAID, to strengthen initiatives and programs that are directly involved in linking environmental and natural resources management to sustainable development. The lessons learned are shared online and through publications, and through exhibits such as the 2002 ESRI International User Conference and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

For more information contact GIMS, 011 695 0400.