August 2004

Contents: 1. This month's highlight: Top picks from programmes 2. Focus on GDRC: Lessons learnt on learning 3. What's New a GDRC's Website 4. Monthly Statistics for GDRC's Website 5. About GDRC Mosaic 6. Contact address This Months Highlight: Life Cycle Assessment from the GDRC Programme on Urban Environmental Management "Products and services have different impacts at different stages of their life - how can a better understanding of this be built?" Simply put, life cycle assessment determines the environmental impacts of products, processes or services, through production, usage, and disposal. It is a systematic set of procedures for compiling and examining the inputs and outputs of materials and energy and the associated environmental impacts directly attributable to the functioning of a product or service system throughout its life cycle. Typically, the materials, and extraction, production, transport, distribution and packaging, use, end of life, design for disassembly and design for recycling are some of the issues covered in an LCA. These and related issues are covered as a special theme in GDRC' s programme on Urban Environmental Management. For further details, please see: http://www.gdrc.org/uem/lca/lca-for-cities.html As with all sections of GDRC, contributions, comments and suggestions are always welcome from users and subscribers! Please contact GDRC's Coordinator at - mosaic@gdrc.org FOCUS ON GDRC: Skip, Hop and Side-step ... This section focuses on information management lessons learnt in coordinating GDRC's activities. With the 2004 Athens Olympics just over, terminology related to the games is on everyone's lips, and GDRC is no exception! Hop, skip and side step is a term usually used to illustrate dodging – for example, of a company using a PR drive to obscure key issues and not take action on a critical environmental impact of its production process. For GDRC it has a completely opposite meaning! It is to provide critical information for decision-making that will enable entities at the local level, whether companies or communities, to hop, skip and side step over problems or obvious pitfalls, thereby avoiding or mitigating negative impacts of their activities. In a modern world where online information access and transfer is extremely fast, coming up with appropriate and consensus solutions is just a hop and skip away, and you can also manage to side-step the problems as well! WHAT'S NEW AT GDRC'S WEBSITE? - a selection Urban Environmental Management: EMS and Cities - Info Sheet: "7+1 Models of Urban EMSs" Urban Environmental Management: Resources on Disaster Management were updated Microfinance: Case Studies - Bolivia, Asociacion de Entidades Financieras Especializadas en Micro Finanzas MONTHLY STATISTICS FOR GDRC'S WEBSITE Total hits encountered - 616,993 Total files downloaded - 485,051 Total pages viewed - 220,161 Total web visitors - 63,995 Total KBytes - 4,671,839 Pages per day - Avg. 7101; Max.10,435 Visits per day - Avg. 2,064; Max. 2,624 ABOUT GDRC MOSAIC The "GDRC Mosaic" is a monthly email newsletter that provides information bites, and summarizes programme activities of GDRC, including new items added to the website. To subscribe: http://www.gdrc.org/about/newsletter.html To unsubscribe: unsubscribe-mosaic@gdrc.org Comments, suggestions and contributions: info-mosaic@gdrc.org CONTACT ADDRESS: Global Development Research Center 5-13-3-1601, Nakano-cho, Miyakojima-ku, Osaka 534-0027, Japan Tel / Fax: +(81-6) 6925-8005 Emial: info-mosaic@gdrc.org URL: http://www.gdrc.org/ © 2003-2005, GDRC. All rights reserved.