People in developing countries often lack information that is critical for their well-being. For example, in India, the poor often do not know what they are entitled to and what services are available to them. I recently attended an international conference on the Right to Public Information at the Carter Center and learned that there are approximately 70 RTI (Right to Information) laws in the world. However surprisingly, little has been done to evaluate whether these laws are accomplishing their stated and unstated objectives.
Access to meaningful information is critical to Google.org's Inform and Empower initiative in India. To help us better understand how to make the Right to Information (RTI) more effective in India, we are delighted that Shekhar Singh who is an active member of the people's movement for the right to information has agreed to conduct a study of the use and implementation of the Act across various stakeholders in India (including public authorities, information commissions, media, judiciary, NGOs and corporate sector). The objective of this study is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the Act, the constraints preventing effective implementation and the ways in which access to information affects people's lives.
By supporting this study, we hope to generate awareness about the Act, explore the possibility of creating tools for Information Commissioners and other government officials to better use the information, and systematize the way RTI requests could made publicly available online or through other channels. We want to help RTI achieve its full potential and hope that this study will be a first step in that direction.
An editorial in yesterday's The Indian Express highlighted the importance the RTI, and the effectiveness of its implementation.
Evaluating the Right to Information
Thursday 4/24/2008 12:26:00 PM
A green collar economy
Monday 4/21/2008 11:34:00 PM
Posted by Shannon Oliver, Associate, Google.org
In the spirit of Earth Day, I took a look at how the environmental movement can foster job growth. Here's what I found:
First, what exactly are green jobs and what can they do to spur the U.S. economy and stop climate change? Simply put, green jobs are jobs that are good for the environment, good for our planet, and pay a living wage. In a recent New York Times article entitled, Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope stated, “A green job has to do something useful for people, and it has to be helpful to, or at least not damaging to, the environment.”
Can the fight against global warming really create millions of these green jobs across America? With worry about the economy on the rise, it is certainly a hopeful scenario. A recent article in the Oakland Tribune suggests that experts envision just such a future: “If global warming is to be slowed, it will take wholesale change in how electricity is generated, how people travel and how they heat and cool their houses. That means installing hundreds of millions of solar panels, building thousands of wind farms and geothermal plants, engineering new ways to derive energy from renewable sources and weatherizing millions of homes. Green companies are rapidly hiring new workers and indications are they will continue.”
For those who want to dig a little deeper into the data, please check out my longer post on the potential number of jobs created by a cleaner, greener economy. And have a happy Earth Day!
New uses for Google Earth
Friday 4/18/2008 01:32:00 PM
Christiaan Adams, Google Earth & Maps Specialist, Google.org
Google Earth is a great tool for exploring the world in ways never before possible. Many of the non-profits and other public-benefit organizations that we work with find it especially useful for showing people the remote places where they work and telling their stories in a very compelling way.
Have you ever looked at the amazing high-resolution images in Google Earth and wondered when the photo was taken? Well now you can stop wondering! Google Earth 4.3 was launched this week, and one of the many new features is the "imagery acquisition date."
Simply zoom in on and move your mouse cursor over the high-resolution imagery; the status bar will display the date when the imagery was acquired. This will be especially useful for organizations concerned about changes in the environment.
For anyone interested in learning more about Google Earth, its features, and how to make it useful, Nigel Woof of Map Action has written a great paper (1MB PDF) that you should check out. It looks at Google Earth's differences from and relationship with traditional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, and how it can be used in humanitarian relief and other public benefit work.
Information and the developing world
4/11/2008 01:16:00 PM
Aleem Walji, Head of Global Development Initiatives, Google.org
Two members of our team recently attended an international conference at the Carter Center on the right to information (RTI). I must admit that I didn't have much knowledge in this area and didn't even realize that the US passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOAI) more than 40 years ago. Today, roughly 70 countries have adopted legislation that theoretically gives their citizens the right to ask for and receive from their governments information on any number of issues, including property records, tax files, and identity files.
This may sound rather vague and unimportant. But in some developing countries access to birth certificates can be critical in getting access to basic public services like immunizations, basic education, and land records (important as collateral when seeking loans). For the poor, this access is particularly important, but finding even simple records of identity can be much harder than you might imagine. The ability of bureaucrats to control access to what is "public" puts them in position to make all kinds of demands. For example, getting access to a birth certificate (technically a public record) can take months, involve dozens of steps, and include bribes at every stage. Without basic identify documents, the poor are often left without access to essential public services reserved for "official citizens".
Governments increasingly are putting public information online, even in the developing world. However, "online" doesn't always mean searchable or crawlable. In other words, you have to know where it is to find it. How would you even know where to look? Participants at the conference were captivated by the idea of making high value, high impact public records like land registries and identify documents available online in a format that is easy to search and find. Google's experience in digitizing books and making them available online was cited as the kind of effort that could be useful in helping give people in developing countries access to the public information they need. There is some work already happening at Google on making government records crawlable.
The possibility is exciting. Could poor rural people get access to birth certificates, death certificates or land titles one day through their mobile phones? It's worth thinking about. Even if they have to pay to access them, the cost of getting access to critical data at important times would more than pay for itself. As the penetration of mobile phones in rural areas has shown, people are willing to pay for access to tools and information that give them what they want when they need it most.
World Health Organization highlights climate change - health linkage
Monday 4/07/2008 08:41:00 AM
Amy Luers, Program Manager, Google.org
The World Health Organization (WHO) has dedicated today, World Health Day 2008, to raising awareness of the health risks of global climate change. Health belongs in the climate change discussion, and we're glad WHO and its member countries are using today to bring the linkage to the forefront.
Climate’s effects on health are wide reaching. Climate affects the quality of air we breathe and the quantity and quality of water resources. It affects the productivity of agriculture, distribution of pests and disease, and the severity and frequency of heatwaves, droughts, floods, and wildfires. As a result, climate change is not just an environmental issue but fundamentally a human health and livelihoods issue.
We are already experiencing the impacts of climate change across the globe. In fact, a WHO report concluded the climate changes since the mid-1970s may have caused about 150,000 deaths in 2000. The impacts of climate change are disproportionately felt in the poorest regions of the world.
Change in WHO estimated mortality per year (per million people) attributable to climate change by the year 2000. This map is based on WHO data for climate-sensitive health outcomes including: cardiovascular diseases, diarrhea, malaria, inland and coastal flooding, and malnutrition. Learn more about the link of climate and health.
If global emissions of heat-trapping gases continue, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that global temperatures could rise as much as 4°C more by the end of the century with an associated rise in risks to human health.
The global community is just beginning to understand the impact that continued climate change is likely to have on the distribution of infectious diseases. Check out the post by our mapping specialists where they describe the Google Earth layers they developed with scientists researching the affects climate may have on dengue and malaria transmission. You can also download these Google Earth layers here.
While some climate change impacts on public health and the environment are now unavoidable due to our past emissions of greenhouse gases, the severity of the impacts will depend on actions we take today to both reduce future emissions and prepare for the changes ahead. At Google.org we are working to reduce greenhouse gas emission by developing utility-scale renewable energy cheaper than coal and accelerating the commercialization of plug-in vehicles through the RechargeIT initiative, while the Predict and Prevent initiative team is working to help prepare the world's poor to manage the rising number emerging infectious diseases in our rapidly changing world.
Global warming heats up infectious diseases
4/07/2008 08:32:00 AM
Christiaan Adams, Google Earth & Maps Specialist, Google.org, and France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org
With the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Health Day 2008 drawing attention to climate change and health today, we wanted to show you some cool animated Google Earth layers that illustrate how infectious diseases may spread as the earth warms. Warmer climates make good habitats for mosquitoes. Many diseases, such as dengue fever and malaria, are spread by mosquitoes. As the planet continues to get warmer due to greenhouse gas emissions, these diseases are projected to spread and add to the other burdens of climate change, especially in the developing world.
The Google Earth (KML) file linked below will show you projections for the changes in transmission of dengue fever around the globe and of malaria in Africa and specifically Zimbabwe. These layers were created in collaboration with a number of scientists whose studies provided the data, including Simon Hales, Frank Tanser and Kris Ebi. There's also a layer that shows the estimated deaths related to climate change in the year 2000.
To view the layers, download this KML file and open it in Google Earth on your computer. If you do not have the latest version of Google Earth (4.2) installed, you can download it here.
To see the animations, turn on one layer at a time in the Places panel on the left, by clicking the round button next to the layer name. Once the layer is on, you can play the animation by clicking the play arrow on the right side of the time slider (at the top of the screen).
Clicking the "start here" links or layer names will get you to more information and instructions. Be sure to look at all the layers to see how our warming climate will affect health in ways you might not have expected.
Public Heath Heroes
Thursday 4/03/2008 05:12:00 PM
Last night the University of California, Berkeley hosted the 12th Annual Public Health Heroes Awards Ceremony in San Francisco. The goal of the Public Health Heroes honor is to broaden awareness and understanding of the public health field by recognizing individuals and organizations for their contributions to promoting and protecting the health of the human population. Past recipients include our own Dr. Larry Brilliant. Dr. Mark Smolinski, Predict and Prevent Initiative Director, started off the night by handing the first award to Nancy Aossey, who accepted the award on behalf of the International Medical Corps.
International Medical Corps (IMC) is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and relief and development programs. Mark expressed gratitude to IMC for sharing their wisdom and advice while we were creating InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters) in the early days of Google.org. The other heroes recognized were Donald P. Francis, for his leadership in the eradication of smallpox, the discovery of HIV, and the control of Ebola hemorrhagic fever; David A. Kessler, for his leadership and courage in challenging the U.S. tobacco industry; and Barbara Staggers for her leadership in promoting adolescent health, particularly among high-risk, urban, and minority youth.
Happy Birthday Google Grants!
Wednesday 4/02/2008 10:31:00 AM
This week, Google Grants marks its fifth year. The program currently supports more than 4,000 grantees and to date has provided approximately $273.3 million in free AdWords advertising. You can learn more about the history of the program on the recently launched Google Grants Blog.
Aspen Institute Award honors CalCars, Google.org grantee
Friday 3/28/2008 11:19:00 AM
CalCars just received the Aspen Institute's First Annual Energy and Environment Award for its prominent role in promoting PHEVs and the electrification of transportation. The inaugural award is meant to celebrate success and provoke conversations about ways to emulate and expand upon the success stories honored. We are thrilled about this honor for CalCars and not the least bit surprised that their contribution to the field of plug-ins has been recognized by such a prestigious organization. CalCars founder Felix Kramer has been instrumental in evangelizing about the benefits of plug-ins and strategically influencing key decision makers about their potential to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. There is no doubt that CalCars has already made history with their role in promoting this technology and we are proud to be a supporter of the organization.
Congratulations to Felix and the CalCars team!
The Race is on to Develop Ultra Fuel-Efficient Cars
Wednesday 3/26/2008 10:12:00 PM
With the price of gas topping $3.75 this week here in California, drivers will be pleased to learn about the official launch of the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE. This is an international competition (with a $10 million purse) designed to inspire a new generation of viable, super fuel-efficient vehicles. Teams are already busy designing, building and working to bring to market 100 MPGe vehicles that people want to buy, and that meet market needs for price, size, capability, safety and performance – and, most importantly, are clean. NBC showcased some concept carsin their Today Show coverage of the competition and the announcement even garnered a shout-out from car enthusiast Jay Leno.
