The GreenFacts Foundation has released the details of its 2003 Annual Conference: Conveying Science into Policy. This one-day event will be held at the Atomium in Brussels on October 16, 2003. The day will bring together environment and health stakeholders, journalists, policymakers and science communicators to discuss the nature of environmental governance and the role of scientific information in the decision-making process.

"It is not easy for policymakers to fully apprehend the scientific information on environment and health issues," says Jacques de Selliers, GreenFacts Foundation General Manager, "A vast body of scientific information is available, but often in a language too complex to properly influence policy decisions. One of the purposes of the conference is to examine the relationship between the way scientific information is communicated and the environmental decision-making process."

October 16 will host several complementary events. The morning session will feature three simultaneous stakeholder workshops on issues of science communication and environmental decision-making. The results will be presented in the afternoon to a public conference with speakers from UNEP, the EU, Industry and Environmental NGOs. The conference will be followed by a reception to officially launch the GreenFacts website at www.greenfacts.org.

The GreenFacts Foundation is a non-profit, multi-stakeholder organization based in Brussels. It communicates previously published scientific information on environment and health issues in a manner more accessible to non-specialists.