Environmental studies are a new area that is of prime concern to us. You will be supervised to know that even at the International level attention to environment was not being given ill the sixties. Very few people attached any importance to the Stockholm Conference, which was held in 1972 however, some activities started in the field of environmental sciences. Conference brought the problems of deteriorating to the notice of the world leaders. Earlier to this, the environmental problems were generally considered to be local problems.
The developed and industrial countries have been facing tremendous environmental problems on account of their unplanned industrialization and growth in developmental activities.
Consequently, they started turning their attention to environmental management much earlier. They also had enough resources to support these activities. The developing countries, which on the other hand, has just started industrialization and development activities, did not face such problems so acutely.
The environmental problems of the developing countries were generally related to underdevelopment, poverty and lack of resources. For them, demands such as drinking water, food, shelter, clothing and health were much more important, and for this reason, they could not pay proper attention towards environmental management.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Also, the subject of environment being new, very little was known about its relationship to other sciences such as climatology, sociology, geography, economic, health and hygiene. Only recently, people have started realizing that management of the environment is not possible unless we have information on other areas related to environment.
Database is the collection of interrelated data. Whenever required the data or a part of it can be retrieved. Database is generally, based on computerized information.
However, information or data stored in any other from also forms database for example, the cards used in a library to locate a book. The cards contain requisite information about all the books, journals, magazines, etc., available in the library.
Similarly, compiling information about the individuals in a city, state or a country is also generating a database; it is difficult to use the information available in the form of cards, reports, books files, etc., if the information is large. The same information, if fed into a computer in a proper way may become easily manageable and we can retrieve the desired information very fast. This is why the term database is generally used in relation to computerize information.