About Us

Our Goal

To improve the welfare and knowledge of rural communities through the promotion of sustainable natural resource management practices.

Background

In most developing countries, rural communities are the backbone of the economy. Most of the people living in these areas depend on agriculture but this enterprise is under increasing pressure from growing populations, more affluence, a dwindling natural resource base, and globalisation. Rural communities need to improve their economic performance and increase profits and production. Of utmost importance in this process is ensuring that the fragile natural resource base upon which their livelihoods depend is protected. Sustainable natural resource management has to be a major component of any response strategy.

The Asia Pacific Regional Technology Centre (APRTC) was born as a result of a realization that the key to meeting challenges in rural areas was through improving access to information and knowledge. Its founders were convinced that an educational program utilizing new information and communication technologies could be more powerful than traditional approaches in achieving this goal. There is almost universal recognition that new advances in information and communication technologies have a tremendous potential to address some of the fundamental challenges in knowledge dissemination. These new tools offer the ability to respond to today's realities and tomorrow's challenges. They are ideally suited to the rapid dissemination of knowledge from any place in the world to almost any place else and allow collaboration and discussion over vast spatial and temporal distances.

Approach

In an ideal world, rural communities would be able to directly access the information and knowledge they require and this is becoming a reality in many developed countries. In most developing countries, however, this is not yet feasible. The numbers involved are too great and the prerequisite ICT infrastructure and knowledge in how to take advantage of this resource is not yet widespread. Given this situation, APRTC chose to focus its initial eLearning activities on meeting the continuing educational needs of agricultural educators and professionals. They are the individuals who can help farmers access the information and knowledge they need for better crop and farm management. And they are at least as much in need of better access to knowledge as the farmers themselves. The majority of developing country Extension and development agents lack the modern knowledge and skills required, existing academic programs in agriculture are generally not relevant to the production needs and employment demands of the agricultural sector, private sector sales and technical personnel have limited knowledge of the potential impact of their products and need a much greater understanding of how to integrate these products into sustainable agricultural systems.

APRTC, WSSD, Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Almost all of APRTC's efforts are directly in support of Agenda 21 and toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MGD's). Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which humans impact on the environment. The Millennium Development Goals commit the international community to an expanded vision of development that vigorously promotes human development as the key to sustaining social and economic progress in all countries, and recognizes the importance of creating a global partnership for development. APRTC's agLe@rn programme directly addresses 4 of the 8 MGD's:

• Goal 1 - Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Goal 3 - Promote gender equality and empower women
• Goal 7 - Ensure environmental sustainability
• Goal 8 - Develop a global partnership for development

For a brief overview of what APRTC is doing to make its contributions known, particularly its involvement in the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), please click the link below.

• agLe@rn - A partnership Initiative for WSSD
  

Press

From time to time APRTC is fortunate and someone publishes an article about agLe@rn courses or the Centre. Here are links to some of these.