• develop new tools and content about sustainable development
• build capacity for using electronic communications more effectively
• promote member information
• share experiences about managing sustainable development communications

Core Members (responsible for developing the module)

Development Alternatives (DA - Lead Role)
The Development Alternatives family of organizations brings together traditional knowledge and modern science. It designs appropriate technologies and institutions to create sustainable livelihoods. Its activities focus on basic human needs: water, shelter, energy, sanitation, environmental resources and employment.
  
In the field of water
   
Development Alternatives has worked extensively over the past fifteen years to develop sustainable water management initiatives in both rural and urban India. These have been from helping poor communities build check-dams in the Bundelkhand, to teaching school children how to analyse water quality through the CLEAN Program, striving to improve the livelihood of Indians by promoting access to safe and abundant water sources.
Development Alternatives has worked extensively over the past twenty years to develop sustainable water management initiatives in both rural and urban India. From helping poor communities build checkdams in the Bundelkhand to teaching schoolchildren how to analyze water quality through the CLEAN - India Program, we strive to improve the livelihood of Indians by promoting access to safe and abundant water resources.

Environmental Development Action in the Third World (ENDA)
ENDA is a non-profit international organization, based in Dakar, Senegal, with branches around the world which seek to promote sustainable development in the developing world. Through its projects against poverty, and its research, training and exchange programs, it strives to integrate environmental, economic and cultural relationships in activities to meet the needs and objectives of grassroots groups.
  
Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC)
REC is a non-partisan, non-advocacy, not-for-profit organization. REC helps solve environmental problems in Central and Eastern Europe. It encourages co-operation among non-governmental organizations, governments, businesses and other environmental stakeholders by supporting the free exchange of information and by promoting public participation in decision-making.
   
The REC was established in 1990 by the United States, the European Commission and Hungary. Today, the REC is legally based on a Charter signed by the governments of 25 countries and the European Commission, and on an International Agreement with the Government of Hungary. The REC has its headquarters in Szentendre, Hungary and Local Offices in each of its 15 beneficiary CEE countries, which are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia.
  
It’s activities related to water management
   
The REC carries out its activities in a variety of different environmental fields, based on its stakeholders’ needs. (NGOs, governments, businesses, donor organizations etc.) While the REC’s activities change with time, the main focus remains supporting cooperation in the environmental field, primarily on an international level and among different stakeholders. In light of this, the REC supports water management in Central and Eastern Europe by providing support and help to constituents who actually implement the activities. (In other words, the REC does not do environmental fieldwork, instead it enables other stakeholders to increase their capacities.)
   
For example, the REC’s Information Program will answer information requests related to water management. Besides this e-mail/telephone "hot-line", the REC has a public library and a Web Site with all its publications on-line as well as searchable databases. (Examples include directories of environmental experts, governmental and non-governmental organisations, media contacts, funding sources for NGOs, environmental business contacts etc.)
   
For other examples of related REC projects, please click here (link to REC projects in the water module). For more information on the REC please visit www.rec.org
   
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

SEI is an independent, international policy research institute specialising in sustainable development and environmental issues. SEI conducts a comprehensive research, consulting and training program that focuses on the links between ecological, social and economic systems at global, regional, national and local levels. It works out of four centres and has a network of associates in some 25 countries.
   
Recognising the universal significance of water for environment and development, water has always been a priority program at SEI since its founding in 1989, a time when the importance of the issue was not adequately appreciated. SEI has brought a systems approach to understanding the many interacting dimensions of the problem of the sustainable use of freshwater, helping to move the issue to the centre of the international discussion of sustainable development.
  
In the conventional paradigm, water development was a problem of engineering, hydrology and large project construction. SEI advances new approaches for integrated assessment of water resources that stresses water demands as well as supply, water allocation among competing users, and environmental requirements. Water sustainability assessment also requires a scenario approach for taking a long view that considers futures with fundamentally different development and environmental assumptions and policies. Using integrated scenarios, diverse stakeholders can engage in informed dialogues around balancing trade-offs and devising appropriate actions. The Institute's WEAP System provides a flexible and user-friendly computerized framework for this process. WEAP is used to represent current water conditions in a given area and to explore a wide range of demand- and supply-side options for balancing environmental and development requirements and for allocating scarce water resources