Environmental Affairs

Lesson 8: Environmental Information and Understanding as the basis for change

Environmental management as communication

At the end of this course you will have a clear grasp of the inter-connectedness of environmental issues with many other sectors, topics and processes. Even if you are organizationally involved in some sort of environmental management activities, you need to rely on your personal, individual skills and experiences in order to make an effective contribution. Indeed, anyone who is working on problems of the environment and who is learning things through observations or experiments will need to communicate his or her knowledge to others. If information is not shared, then the members of the community cannot work together to manage their resources and environment.

It may be necessary to explain an observation to other resource users, to make suggestions to a meeting of the colleagues or community, to present some results to the supervisors or peers, to explain a situation to a technical expert, or to make a report to a government department or interested scientist.

Part of becoming a specialist on environmental management is thus learning how to communicate what you know. The three most important ways of communicating at the local level are:

o verbally, through talking to people or speaking to groups

o in writing, through written reports, letters and notes

o by example, through demonstrating something in practice so that others can see for themselves what happens or how a new technique or practice works.

In many if not most environmental management act ivies, involving and consulting local communities, those who are ultimately affected by policy decisions, is of central importance. A successful environmental manager need to be aware of local impacts of environmental interventions and must be committed to engaging in participatory approaches to finding solutions to problems, especially environmental conflicts. The study of participatory management approaches and methods is an important part of further studies in environmental management.

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