Environmental Management: Principles and practice

BOX 8.4 Broad groupings of greens (avoiding deep and shallow
categorization)
Conservationists/traditionalists heirs to the nineteenth-century romantic liberal
rejection of industry and materialism. Less interested in drastic change of attitudes
and lifestyle than some greens. Includes traditional conservationists like members
of the UK Royal Society for the Protection of Birds or the Council for the Protection
of Rural England and in the USA of the National Audubon Society or Sierra Club.
Reformists no particular tradition, midway between the previous and following
groupings. Tend to be single-issue groups with problem-orientated aims, for
example: a group opposed to construction of a new airport or road or rail route.
Formal political parties and political groupings e.g. Die Grunen, UK Green
Party, Greens in the European Parliament, SERA, etc. These produce regularly
revised manifestos of wide-ranging policies. Green thinking has also been
incorporated into the policies of a range of political institutions and has
prompted new perspectives.
Academic responses to green issues marxist/structuralist and market (mainstream)
economics tend to be hostile or dismissive of many green paradigms (including
New Economics and some aspects of sustainable development).
Radical environmentalists draw ideas from sources like Kropotkin, Henry
Thoreau, Theodor Roszak, Aldo Leopold, Godwin, etc. Recognize need for
considerable change of attitudes and lifestyles because environmental
problems arise. They seek to alter other people’s outlook, the economic
system, social inequalities, etc. Often holistic, multi- issue approach.
Considerable range, from moderates like Friends of the Earth to extremists
like Earth First! who espouse militant tactics like ‘ecotage’ (sabotage of things
and people they see as a threat to the environment), ‘ecovangelists’ (who
profess reverence for environment, not just stewardship) and even shamanists.
(A schism has opened between practical and spiritual factions of Earth First!)
Eco-feminists believe women need to organize to achieve sustainable development
and blame male-centred approaches to development rather than anthropocentric
approaches, so can be hostile to deep ecology (see chapter 12).

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Cornucopians place faith in technology and science as a solution for
environment and development problems (e.g. Fuller, 1969).
Rational seek to use science, social science and technology with care to achieve
sustainable development. For example, non-cornucopian techno-fixers (e.g. work
by the Rocky Mountain Institute— http://www.rmi.org/newsletter/97fwn/index.html).
Mystics a wide diversity, who turn to their inner voices for inspiration and
guidance. This grouping would include those who derive their inspiration from
Teilhard de Chardin, Buckminster Fuller, Taoism, Zen and paganism. The label
‘New Age’ was coined in the late 1960s by journalists to incorporate a hotchpotch
of greens who rely on astrology, the occult, Gaianism, non-mainstream religions,
etc., as a guide to their relationship with the environment—in effect those with a
postmodern spiritualist worldview. Many New Age supporters look towards the
change from the present solar age of Pisces to Aquarius early next century as a
moment of opportunity and possibly crisis (Henderson, 1981b). Certainly, there
are greens who might be dismissed as ‘cranky’.
Sources: Porritt (1984:4–5); Weston (1986:20); Taylor (1991)
management; pastoral development and range management; involvement of
indigenous peoples in conservation; fisheries management and conservation; human
resources management.
Sociologists have studied relationships between society and the environment
(Albrecht and Murdock, 1986; Yearley, 1991). Various social science disciplines
focus on behavioural fields (risk perception, hazard avoidance, consumerism, property
rights, etc.) (Shankar, 1986). Historians have explored past attitudes and approaches
to environment; political studies specialists and economists consider the politics and
economics of environmental usage; theologians and philosophers explore the
human—environment relationship. Anthropology and human resources management
is increasingly used to inform the environmental manager about human behaviour,
attitudes and beliefs, institutions and organizational capacity (Wehrmeyer, 1996).
Environmental management has also been aided by the development of participatory
research and management, monitoring and appraisal (Burton et al., 1986; Brokensha,
1987; Montgomery, 1990a) (see chapter 13). Anthropologists have been less aloof
from environmental studies than sociologists, possibly because of their involvement
with indigenous peoples and livelihood strategies and with archaeologists,
palaeoecologists and ecologists helping to reconstruct past scenarios. Anthropological
input has been especially strong in the fields of relocation and resettlement, pre-
development appraisal, SIA, conservation area management planning, and in studies
of resource use, hazard perception and survival strategies adopted by land users
(Jull, 1994; Blackburn and Anderson, 1995). Ethnobotany involves anthropologists
and ethnographers assessing indigenous peoples’ use of plant and animal resources
with the hope of identifying useful crops, pharmaceuticals, etc. Anthropologists have

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also played a role in helping governments and environmental managers understand
and reach working arrangements with indigenous peoples, and in assessing social
and cultural impacts of development on them (Snipp, 1986; Dale, 1992). Much has
been published on the potential contributions of social science to environmental
management, most from social scientists, rather than from environmental scientists
(Freudenburg, 1989; Herberlein, 1989). Some natural scientists are sceptical, even
hostile, to these contributions. However, at the very least they act as catalyst where
progress might otherwise have been slow.