The Story of Terra
The TERRA project is concerned with the creation of scenarios
and models of present and future developments in order to support policy
debate and decision aimed ultimately at optimising the contribution of
Information Society Technologies to Sustainable Development. Such a wide
and complex subject area merits rigorous and systematic development. For
the purposes of TERRA it is taken as read that attaining Sustainable Development
(as defined by e.g. the Brundtland Commission) is both desirable and something
to which the Information Society and its associated technologies can contribute.
The IS is inevitable, and attaining sustainability necessitates an understanding
of the implications of the IS and the tools and tendencies it contains.
The starting point for the whole TERRA topic is thus the ‘IST proposition:’
The new technologies of the Information Society (ISTs) seem likely to offer scope to enable economic growth, and to allow a more equitable distribution of wealth, without necessarily increasing consumption, pollution and energy use.
Terra 2000 a short overview download pdf file 20kb
Summary of the work of Terra 2000 download pdf file 393kb
The full story of Terra 2000 download pdf file 1809kb
Terra Scenarios
This is a living document that has provided an internal point for reflection on ongoing development - in this case, the scenario development framework and the formulation and structure of theme-specific scenarios. A second purpose is to provide feedstock for TERRA outputs and results.
Tools and Models
The world is uncertain and information is diffuse. To inform policy and discussions, various sorts of thinking/discussion aids, consistency checks and validation are necessary. In particular, understanding evolution of a complex system requires a combination of data, models and scenarios. The development and use of these models in TERRA follows the TERRA backbone from hindsight to foresight via insight on several levels. Hindsight is based on databases and statistical analyses, insight uses models and scenarios to describe underlying mechanisms and their linkages and foresight is based on projections (not forecasts) of future evolution and the impact of policy levers under different circumstances