| Environmental
information plays a vital role not only in formulating
environmental management policies but also in the
decision making process aiming at environmental protection
and improvement of environment for sustaining good
quality of life for the living beings. Hence, management
of environment is key component and thus plays an
important role in effecting a balance between the
demands and resources available for keeping the environmental
quality at a satisfactory level. Realizing such need
Ministry set up an Environmental Information System
(ENVIS) in 1983 as a plan programme as a comprehensive
network in environmental information collection, collation,
storage, retrieval and dissemination to varying users,
which include decision-makers, researchers, academicians,
policy planners and research scientists, etc. ENVIS
was conceived as a distributed information network
with the subject-specific centers to carry out the
mandates and to provide the relevant and timely information
to all concerned. Further, association of the various
State Governments/UTs was also felt necessary in promoting
the ENVIS network to cover a wide range of subjects.
The subject area for States/UTs ENVIS Centers was
the status of environment and related issues. Thus,
the network was expanded gradually with the involvement
of thematic subject-areas and State Government/UT
departments to make it a more comprehensive environmental
information network. ENVIS network at present consists
of a chain of 69 network partners out of which 40
are on subject-specific and 29 on State/UT related
issues. These network partners are called ENVIS Centers
and are located in the notable organizations/institutions/State/UT
Government Departments/Universities throughout the
country. The focal point of ENVIS is located in the
Ministry and assists the Environment Information (EI)
Division in coordinating the activities of all the
ENVIS network partners by making ENVIS a web-enabled
comprehensive information system.
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In 2000, Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate
Change (MoEF&CC) designated CMS an ENVIS Centre to
facilitate information dissemination and further the
cause of environment awareness and sensitization through
media. The CMS Environment team set up a separate
space in their campus to house documentary films,
spots/ public service messages, info-mercials, quiz
programmes, jingles etc. on environmental and wildlife
issues. www.cmsenvis.nic.in
The centre monitors, updates and compiles electronic
media reports on environment and wildlife programmes.
The centre's daily e-newsletter Green Media has a
circulation of over 8,000. It also takes out a quarterly
newsletter, 'Green Voice' which reaches out to more
than 3000 individuals and 500 organizations.
In 2007, the Audio Visual Resource Centre (AVRC) a
state-of-the-art archive of documentaries, films and
audio spots on environment and development issues
was setup. It also archives the master copies of the
audio visual resources produced by the Ministry of
Environment and Forests (MoEF), Govt. of India. The
centre collects, collates and archives these valuable
resources held by dispersed organizations and individuals
with an objective to disseminate the materials to
connoisseur, TV Channels, concerned organizations,
educators, schools, laypersons etc. all over the country.
The CMS AVRC computerized catalogue is available online
at www.cmsindia.org/cmsavrc. About Parent Organisation
CMS
Established in 1991, CMS is an independent, not-for-profit
organisation dedicated to multi-disciplinary research-driven
initiatives that enable policy makers to take informed
decisions on development and social change to improve
quality of life. It has been engaged in Research,
Advocacy and Capacity building in Social Development,
Environment, Communication, Transparency and Governance
issues at local and national policy levels for more
than two decades. (www.cmsindia.org) |
