The phrase Environmental Challenge is a misnomer. Environmental challenges (or issues) that humanity faces today, are not
environmental Per-se. They are social.
Unless we are ready to accept
the social dimension, our efforts at finding solution(s) to “environmental challenges” are sheer waste
of resources and energy. It could precisely be perhaps why we find ourselves at
square one, despite years of colossal investments to overcome environmental challenges. What we achieved
can be categorized; externally supported case studies.
The school of Ecological
Informatics at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management –
Kerala has been consistently promoting the social dimension since 2007. However
today we are sub critical. This need not be the case for ever.
We zeroed in on the issue of
irrational human behavior in urban household waste disposal; that is rampant in
Trivandrum, India. After four months of observations we have strong reasons to
believe that the fundamental reason for the irrational behavior, stems from
individual’s thought/ perception.
Our hypothesis - lack of
alternative means for house hold waste disposal leads to careless disposal
attitude, was proved wrong; when substantial incidences of similar behavior
were observed in individuals with access to alternative means.
We are exploring ways in which
ICT can become persuasive agents to induce desirable changes in individual
human behavior. Strangely we are neither computer nor behavioral scientists,
but a motley group who claim to be environmental researchers.
Our interest (with
environmental objective of inducing desired behavior) has increased immensely
since we recently stumbled upon the term Captology and found an interesting
thread at http://captology.stanford.edu/about/what-is-capatology.html
In order to learn more and
consolidate our ideas, we look forward to organize a 2-3 days’ workshop (subject
to availability of funds) on the tentative theme Captology & Environmental
Security in late 2013 or early 2014.
Meanwhile, this page seeks to
bring together people who are interested in the theme.
