Global Environment Outlook 3 (GEO 3)

3 7

SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND

Number of Internet users (millions)

Fixed and mobile telephone subscribers (millions)

Figures on the left demonstrate the explosive growth of the use of the Internet and mobile telephones — but even in 2000 only one-quarter of Internet users

350

10 000

fixed mobile

developing countries developed countries

250 300

1 000

200

100

150 100 50

10

were from developing countries

0

0

Source: ITU 2001

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

the uneven diffusion of ICT means that access to related technological developments may be an advantage for the minority only. Today, Internet users are predominantly urban and 79 per cent of users live in OECD countries, which contain only 14 per cent of the world’s population. Nevertheless, even in developing countries the increase in Internet use has been dramatic — for example, from 3.9 million to 33 million people in China between 1998 and 2002 (UNDP 2001, CNNIC 2002). Mobile telephones have overcome the infrastructure constraints of fixed lines and the number of subscribers has increased from slightly more than 10 million around the world at the start of the 1990s to more than 725 million at the beginning of 2001, or one mobile phone for every eight inhabitants (ITU 2001). Additionally, new technologies are helping people to better understand the environment. In July 1972,

the US government launched the first LANDSAT satellite. By 2002, the LANDSAT programme has acquired 30 years of records which constitute the longest continuous record of data on the Earth's continental surfaces (USGS 2001). This has added a new dimension to environmental monitoring and assessment, enabling changes to be tracked, trends monitored and early warning improved (see image below). Images from this facility are included in the pages at the end of sections in Chapter 2. However, for some developing countries, technology can be a source of exclusion instead of a tool for progress. ‘Technology is created in response to market pressures, not the needs of poor people who have little purchasing power. As a result research neglects opportunities to develop technology for poor people’ (UNDP 2001). For example, of the 1 223 new drugs marketed worldwide between 1975 and 1996, only 13 were developed to treat tropical diseases

Image below is the most detailed true-colour image of the entire Earth available in March 2002. Many months of satellite-based observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds were pieced together into a seamless, mosaic of every square kilometre the Earth (Antarctica not shown) Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image