민간환경감시활동을 통한 환경교육

Citizen Volunteer Monitoring as a Tool for Environmental Education

General citizens can be a valuable resource for various types of environmental monitoring when they are well-trained and managed. Successful use of volunteer monitors depends on understanding that citizens are partners sharing expanded roles as the guardians of their local environment. Citizen volunteer monitoring programs are developed for three reasons: 1) to supplement environmental data collected by professional staffs in governmental agencies and scientific institutions; 2) to educate the public about local environmental problems; 3) to build a constituency of citizen to practice sound environmental management at a local level and build public support for environmental protection. All three goals can be achieved with a well-organized program which provides useful and credible data. Initial step in planning a successful volunteer monitoring project is to clearly identify the use to be made of the data. Technical advice from the identified potential user groups should be convened early in the planning stage to refine the program objectives and determine if volunteers can provide the level of expertise required. Data users must have confidence in the representativeness, consistency, and accuracy of data collected by volunteers. Effective quality assurance and quality control(QA/QC) procedures are essential to ensure the utility of environmental monitoring data. Volunteers must be trained in advance to carry out specific environmental monitoring tasks. Another components of successful volunteer monitoring programs is to give the volunteers praise and feedback as well as to encourage experienced volunteers to impose increased responsibilities. The increase of volunteer monitoring programs in Korea will play a major role in developing a participatory system in which the people are "empowered" to make decisions and make a difference.