On the Road to Rio, the UN goes PaperSmart

Delegates attending the second intersessional meeting of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and the 2012 Regular Session of the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations might have noticed that the meetings used the UN's new PaperSmart model.

The PaperSmart model is an initiative of the Integrated Sustainable PaperSmart Services (ISPS) Secretariat, Meetings and Publishing Division, Department for General Assembly and Conference Management. 

The PaperSmart model provides meeting information in four different ways, three of which are new and PaperSmart.  These are: the ISPS Portal (developed by OICT and launched today); ISPS Media (receiving information on CD-ROMs), ISPS e-Publish (which caters to delegations using laptops or mobile devices) and a conventional hard copy, in the language of the delegate’s choice. 

The main benefits of PaperSmart include improved sustainability, efficiency, accessibility and knowledge management.

Extensive preparations are under way for servicing the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the PaperSmart format.

Partnering with DGACM in this initiative are DESA, DM, DPI, OICT, UNON, UNEP - members of the Rio+20 Coordination Group.

A not-to-miss feature of the Portal is the 'Road to Rio'. This interactive feature, built by OICT and based on substantive research by the ISPS Secretariat, allows delegates to search and browse resolutions and texts, from 1968 to today, related to sustainable development.

Find out more about PaperSmart via the PaperSmart website, iseek (UN staff only) or by visiting the Facebook page.