Environmental knowledge management at societal level: A new proposal

• Author: Fabio Daneri
• Position: University of New York Tirana
• Pages: 92-95

IIPCCL Publishing, Tirana-Albania

Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences Vol. 1 No. 3

November 2015

ISSN 2410-3918

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

92

Environmental knowledge management at societal level: A new proposal

Fabio Daneri

University of New York Tirana

Abstract

Information and data concerning the status of the environment are generally missing or made

available in a sporadic way, in almost all countries in the world. This condition applies to air

quality, but also to sea and earth environmental conditions, creating a situation where the

decisions concerning the environment that people take are not informed at all. As a

consequence, the paper advocates for a new system of environmental knowledge management,

where information concerning air quality, sea and earth conditions, is widely made available

to people, in order to give the possibility to people to decide with an higher degree of

responsibility. New technologies can be used in order to make the information and data as

widely available as possible. The way that people will react to the information made available

will be explored. The paper also explores the first experiments made in this direction, especially

in China and Great Britain.

Keywords: Environment, knowledge management, technology, society, climate change.

Introduction

According to scientists, our era can be named Anthropocene1, due to the high impact

that the human being is having on the earth. The recent developments concerning

climate change, the modification of chemical composition of water in oceans, the

pollution of earth, with their impact also in terms of environmental and health

emergencies are requiring a new approach in terms of environmental knowledge

management at a society level.

We can actually talk about the creation of a new discipline, since it is arguable that, at

present, there is no society environmental knowledge management. For example,

information concerning the quality of the air is not made available at all in many

countries or it is made available through a top-down approach, for example when

the circulation of the cars is stopped because the level of pollution is deemed to be too

high. The same is true for information concerning other environmental aspects, such

as for example the contamination of the sea, that is sometimes made available by

some environmental associations.

Still, this information is not made available in a systematic and constant way, but on

a sporadic way, either when there is a situation of emergency or some deadline. This

is an approach that does not allow any possibilities of prevention, but it is based

either on a negative level that has been reached or on temporary basis (the pollution

in the sea in particular geographic area is sometimes released before summertime).

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1 In particular, see “The age of sustainable development” by Jeffrey Sachs.