Improving environmental awareness is a key aspect of environmental management. In India, creating an environmentally aware society may lead to patterns of conservation usually only found in countries with higher income levels. This will involve collecting a range of environmental information and making it more widely available. Non-governmental organisations are playing an important role in this process.

Increasing environmental awareness can lead to changes in individual behaviour, such as choosing to eat less resource-depleting food, and societal changes, such as pressuring governments to improve environmental policies. Changing people’s environmental values requires education about environmental issues. Research by the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore examines the role of education and information technology in promoting individual and social change to benefit the environment.

To be effective, education programmes require up-to-date information on the impact of human activities on the environment. Governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community organisations all collect important environmental information. New information technology provides a powerful tool to disseminate this information more widely and more quickly. This means that information can play a more effective role in changing environmental attitudes and practices in India

The government of India has been active in collecting environmental information for policy-makers, scientists, researchers and the public. While the quality of environmental data contains several gaps, the process of data networking within the country is aided by information technology. Increased participation in international environmental agreements has caused a re-evaluation of national environmental resources and traditional knowledge. In response, there is now a greater emphasis on recording and formalising the environmental resources of India, in terms of local environmental knowledge and management practices.

NGOs play a key role in the process of information dissemination. For example, NGOs make information from environmental cases in Indian courts more widely available. Informal monitoring of industrial polluters by NGOs has helped to book violators and improve enforcement of environmental regulations. NGOs have contributed to environmental management in India in several ways by:

• influencing government policy through lobbying
• monitoring industry compliance with environmental standards
• conducting environmental education among small businesses
• assessing environmental standards among various sectors of the economy and encouraging improvements
• forming partnerships with communities to establish participatory management of resources
• formalising and recording traditional knowledge and resources
• disseminating environmental information more widely, especially in rural areas and to uneducated people.

By highlighting the social aspects of environmental management, NGOs influence environmental management effectively. Considering the importance of environmental information, more must be done to encourage these practices. This should include:

• Increasing the collection and dissemination of all environmental information, to include information such as legal challenges to government policy and formal pollution monitoring.
• Using new information technology (such as the internet) to make environmental information more widely available and accessible.
• Supporting and encouraging the activities of NGOs in all aspects of environmental management.

Source(s):
‘Environmental Information in the Information Age’, in The New Face of Environmental Management in India, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, by Aparna Sawhney, 2004

id21 Research Highlight: 2 February 2005

Further Information:
Aparna Sawhney
Indian Institute of Management
Bannerghatta Road,
Bangalore,
India
560 076

Tel: + 93 26993139 or + 93 26993119
Contact the contributor: aparnas@iimb.ernet.in

Indian Institute of Management

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