Essay on Some Effective Antecedent Strategies for Encouraging Environmentally Responsible Behavior

From environmental position, the strategy is a norm of optimum behavior in the environment, whether it is the individual or the groups of the individuals. The present environmental situation demands the change of the strategy that should find its reflection first of all in the environmental education. The environmental education should promote the development of such forms of the social activity which would reduce ecological risk to a minimum. It should play the main role in the change of cultural wealth, structures of the consumption, the attitude of the person to the nature, life, behavior of the person in the ecosystem.

The ultimate goal of environmental education is to raise environmentally responsible behavior. It means that person sees his/her own actions as meaningful and feels that these actions could positively influence on the environment.

The raise of the environmentally responsible behavior includes some stages: formation of the knowledge, values, which must guide the individual’s planning of the actions that focus on improvement of the environment situation. In other words, during ecological education the person develops his/her environmentally responsible behavior. It is the complex personal formation including the responsibility for the condition of the environment, the presence of the environmental views and believes, the experience of the activity on studying and protection of the natural environment, the system of the scientific concepts on the problems of the ecology.

Another strategy of encouraging environmentally responsible behavior is to communicate and develop environmental management through business organizations. Environmental management is a framework for working towards environmental responsibility. It contains six steps:

• The organization has to analyze the concerns and information needs of all stakeholders
• The organization has to set environmental policies, objectives and plans
• The organization has to design and execute an implementation plan
• The organization has to develop supportive corporate culture
• The organization has to develop standards and measures of performance. It is another way to encourage environmentally responsible behavior among employees
• The organization has to develop the reporting systems for environ¬mental matters.

Some other strategies that also could be applied for encouraging environmentally responsible behavior are to introduce and implement environmental laws and regulations, to develop environmental tax reform and to set ecologically responsible pricing.

Bibliography:

• Kollmuss A. & Agyeman J. (2002) Mind the Gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research
• Mathews R., et al. (2002) Attaining best practice in environmental management