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The need for informed approaches to addressing the threats to the global environment has never been greater. At present, more than half of the global life-support systems have already vanished or are in jeopardy of collapsing and environmental degradation will only become more severe by mid-century when an additional 2.6 billion people are added to the world's population (Glenn & Gordon, 2006). Moreover, the overwhelming majority of the population growth that will occur by mid-century (90%) is projected to take place in the world's poorest nations (Yeager & Barker, 2000).According to Glenn and Gordon, "Current absorption capacity of carbon by oceans and forests is about 3 to 3.5 billion tons per year. Yet, 7 billion tons are added to the atmosphere annually, which could increase to 14 billion tons per year if current trends continue -- eventually leading to greenhouse effects beyond the ability of humans to control" (Glenn & Gordon, 2006, p. 20).

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, economic development has taken place in many regions of the world with little or no regard for its impact on the environment. This has been particularly evident in the developing nations of the world where the need for economic development outweighs the importance of environmental sustainability. In an increasingly globalized marketplace, though, the opportunity to reverse these ugly trends exists, but only if thoughtful approaches to the use of information technology are identified and deployed. In this regard, Zhao, Liu and Dong (2008) emphasize that, "Globalisation should provide an opportunity to think more in terms of using technology to create win-win alternatives to the traditional trade-offs between growth and environmental sustainability" (p. 320).

Despite the introduction of increasingly sophisticated and powerful information technology tools in recent years, there remains a paucity of timely and relevant studies concerning how these tools can best be applied to environmentally sustainable initiatives and what types of improvements in these technologies will be required to achieve optimal results. For instance, Glenn and Gordon report that, "The moment-by-moment connectivity among ideas, people, resources, and challenges in order to create optimal solutions, however, is yet to be developed. A worldwide race to connect everything