Back to contents

ENERGIA News Issue 2.2, May 1998

Bulletin Board

Seminar Announcement

Donor agencies, NGOs and other development organisations are increasingly concentrating on ‘the big five’ issues in their attempt to eradicate world poverty:

• Housing
• Food / Subsistence
• Employment
• Education
• Health

The role of transport is receiving decreasing levels of interest and support from these organisations as it is currently viewed as being less important than the issues above.
The issues of transport are NOT restricted to roads and their use by motor vehicles, but covers a much wider range of issues. For example; local footpaths improving access to water sources, intermediate means of transportation (IMT) which improve the poors’ access to transport networks or employment within small enterprises of all types (manufacture and repair) acting in support of transport services.
The UK national forum group (UK NFG) of the International Forum for Rural Transport and Development (IFRTD) feel that the importance of transport is being overlooked in the ‘development race’ and are therefore seeking to highlight the importance of transport. The UK NFG are planning to hold a one day seminar in November which will highlight how transport and its issues are inextricably linked to other development issues. The NFG is currently looking for people who may be interested in presenting a short paper at the seminar. The NFG envisage that these presenters will not be working in the transport field but will have begun to realise the role that transport issues play in the provision of services in their field.
Are you, your colleagues, or do you know anybody who may be interested in presenting a short paper or participating in the seminar? The seminar will be held immediately after the IFRTD's advisory panel meeting so it is hoped that a number of representative of donor agencies will be present.
If you can offer any potential speakers please contact one of the forum group members below:

• Water: P. Crossley (c.p.crossley@cranfield.ac.uk)
• Education / Health: K Hamilton (k.hamilton@uel.ac.uk)
• Housing / Urbanisation: P. Larcher (p.a.larcher@lboro.ac.uk)
• Employment / Food Production: S. Ellis (simone@o.trl.co.uk)

For more information, please contact:
Paul Larcher, Research Associate, Institute of Development Engineering, Dept. Civil Engineering, Loughborough University, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK; Tel. +44.1509.222612 or +44.1509.222885, Fax +44.1509.211079, Email p.a.larcher@lboro.ac.uk

1998 World Renewable Energy Congress, 20-25 September 1998, Florence, Italy
The World Renewable Energy Congress V (WREC-V) will be held 20-25 September 1998 in Florence, Italy. About 550 papers are expected, including about 200 poster presentations. For the first time, there will be two technical sessions on Women and Energy Sustainability within the Congress proper. These will take place on Tuesday morning, 22 September. Several plenary speakers on women and energy are also planned. The aim is to have substantive discussions leading to a submission to the final plenary.
For more information contact:
Judy Johnson, Commonwealth Science Council, Marlborough House, Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5 HX, UK; Tel. +41.171.7476217, Fax +41.171.8396174, Email johnsonj@commonwealth.int or
Barbara Farhar, NREL, 1617 Cole Boulevard, Golden CO 80401-3393, USA; Tel. +1.303.3847376, Fax +1.303.3847540, Email mailto:barbara_farhar@nrel.gov/farharb@nrel.gov">barbara_farhar@nrel.gov/farharb@nrel.gov

Publications

FAO has published a new bulletin Forestry Energy Forum, which will be issued twice a year, June and December, under supervision of Miguel Trossero,Senior Forestry Officer (Wood Energy) of the Wood and Non-Wood Products Utilisation Branch (FOPW), Forest products Division of FAO's Forestry Department.
For more information, please contact: Forest Energy Forum-FOPW, FAO, Viale delle terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy; Email Forest-Energy-Forum@fao.org

Internet Resources

ENERGIA itself, the network for Women and Sustainable Energy, is now also online. Although the site is still under construction, ENERGIA News can be visited and downloaded. We thank WIRE and ISES (see below), who host the ENERGIA web page, for their work and support. In future we hope to add a who's who directory of our members, events calendar, forum discussion and links to other resources. Check it out and log on at:
http://www.energia.org

WIRE (World-wide Information System for Renewable Energy) is an initiative supported by ISES. WIRE aims at providing a rich suite of information resources and tools for the Renewable Energy community. It contains a broad spectrum of information on various aspects of renewable energy, and includes conferences and internet resources, proceedings, discussion groups, publications and more:
http://www.ises.org:8888/wire/wire.nsf

The International Forum for Rural Transport and development (IFRTD) is a network interested in promoting a broader approach to meeting the transport needs of rural people (see Networking in this issue). Their site provides information on publications, an annotated bibliography, transport events, interesting links, and the possibility to download pictures about transport:
http://www.gn.apc.org/ifrtd