The role of archives in sustainable development will be discussed at a meeting of the World Bank’s Working Group on Archives and Sustainable Development that will be held this week in Florence, Italy. The Working Group is part of the today opened Conference "Culture Counts: Financing Resources and the Economics of Culture in Sustainable Development", organised by the Italian Government and the World Bank with the co-operation of UNESCO. The Conference on the relation between culture and development will bring together some 600 participants who will discuss new approaches to funding and how to improve partnerships. Themes which will be brought to the fore in the plenary sessions include: Culture and Sustainable Development: Threats and Tensions; The Role of Culture in Sustainable Development; Multilateral Development Banks: Development Impact of Cultural Programmes and Projects; Strategies to Support Culture in Sustainable Development. Roundtables and seminars will give participants an opportunity to deepen their grasp of the relationship between culture and sustainable development, notably in mutlicultural societies, developing countries and economies in transition. UNESCO considers its active participation in the Florence Conference as the continuation of work undertaken at the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development (Stockholm, 1998). UNESCO is particularly involved in the organisation of two seminars (Measuring Culture and Development: Prospects and Limits in Constructing Cultural Indicators; Investing in Tangibles and Intangibles in Intercultural Dialogue) and a working group on cultural policies at the municipal and regional levels. These sessions will highlight the fact that the contribution of culture to sustainable development far exceeds concerns for immediate returns. In a plenary session, UNESCO and the Italian government will present a text they prepared jointly, "Towards New Strategies for Culture in Sustainable Development", which notably states: "We must […] envision development in terms that encompass cultural growth and community well-being. Thus purely economic opportunities must be reconciled with meanings and values - including non-use values. Once this is recognised, then poverty of spirit, of belief and of expression are bound to be perceived to be as debilitating as poverty of goods. By the same token, the safeguard of cultural diversity is as important as the achievement of economic self-sufficiency." The Conference will be opened by Lamberto Dini, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank. UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor and Hillary Rodham Clinton, first lady of the United States of America, will be among speakers at the closing ceremony of the event.        Contact: Axel Plathe, UNESCO, Information and Informatics Division