Summary
There were two purposes for this research: to identify new trends in environmental management in Western European countries, and to explore new concepts and tools of this environmental management. The Western European countries included in the research were: The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Eire, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Germany and France. Both questionnaires and field interviews were used to gather relevant data from these eight countries.
Three new trends of environmental management in these countries were identified: the integration of environmental policy, the integration of environmental information and the reorganisation of environmental agencies. New concepts in the formulation of environmental policy included: the ecosystem, life-cycle production, stewardship, global views, the scientific base, precautionary action, and public participation. New tools for environmental policy implementation identified were: integrated pollution control, best available techniques not entailing excessive cost, best practicable environmental options, environmental accounting, and environmental indicators. New techniques for environmental information management were: meta-data or referral systems, public registers and infrastructural integration.
The implications of these research findings were drawn from the following questions:
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How to bring new environmental concepts to the public?
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How to integrate environmental policy?
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How to balance information integration and political decentralisation?
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How to create an open system of environmental communication?
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Dr Ching-shyang Hwang is currently Associate Professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. He undertook this research when occupying the position of Research Fellow at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.
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Hwang, CS. New trends in environmental management in Western European countries. Environmentalist 13, 97–104 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01905665
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01905665