Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Estuaries and enclosed or coastal seas
World-wide, marine environments with restricted circulation have suffered from
pollution and overfishing. The Baltic, Caspian, North Sea, Aegean and Japanese
Inland Sea have suffered. Effective commercial management demands control over
the catchment areas that contribute pollution and in many cases international co-
operation (see chapter 3).
Rivers
Failure to take proper care of the environmental management of river systems can
have severe consequences for the riverine ecosystem, adjoining floodlands, estuaries
and nearby seas. Enclosed seas and lakes are especially vulnerable to poor river
management. The Aral Sea is a clear example of the environmental degradation and
socioeconomic misery which result from failure to co-ordinate and control
developments within a river drainage basin (Kotlyakov, 1991).

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The main issues of concern to the environmental manager are pollution within
the drainage basin which contaminates the river, and regulation of flow by dams or
barrages. Dams pose a greater threat than barrages because they alter downstream
flow and water quality far more and pose a greater barrier to migration of fish and
other organisms. Dams are also more likely to impound an extensive reservoir, which
has significant environmental impacts on an area and may force the relocation and
disruption of livelihood for large numbers of people (Barrow, 1995a:221–241).
Lessons the environmental manager can learn from study of
sensitive environments
A number of common points can be recognized in the environments just discussed:
♦
Damage often progresses covertly to become serious before the problem is
accepted and action is taken (sometimes too late—as for the rainforests of
West Africa).
♦
Adopting a careless approach to researching problems, often exacerbated by
inadequate data and time, can lead to misassessment. Consequently, symptoms
rather than causes of problems are focused upon and treated. It is sometimes
convenient for those in power to make such mistakes: better for them to blame
nature or the peasantry than admit misguided, perhaps personally profitable,
policy decisions.
♦
Local resource users tend to be overlooked in favour of national interests, large
companies and their investors. Worse, local people may be marginalized—rural
folk are less likely to riot or vote out a government than their urban cousins.
♦
Long-term effects are overlooked as a consequence of pressure to maximize
shorter-term gains.
♦
Each situation is special. It is dangerous and often difficult to generalize.
♦
A problem may be realized, but a ministry or other responsible body may lack
power, funds or trained personnel to make a satisfactory attack on it.
♦
Crucial issues, like soil degradation, may fail to attract enough support.
♦
A number of the problems just listed, plus many others, are, at least in part,
due to lack of adequate co-ordination and overview.
♦
Problems are increasingly transboundary, making it difficult for environmental
managers to have jurisdiction or powers to enforce solutions (or even to assess
the threat).
There are clearly things which could be done to reduce, avoid or mitigate
damage to vulnerable environments:
1
As far as possible leave them alone and find less damaging ways of getting the
same resources (or, at the very least, ensure that some examples of the ecosystem
are conserved). Environmental managers might do more to prompt those
considering development to look at technology, or better use of areas already
developed, or rehabilitation of degraded resources.

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2
The environmental manager should pay attention to the local conditions, not
generalize. (A point stressed by Johnson and Lewis (1995:303) is that it is
important to build on local knowledge and local traditions and be aware of
local constraints and opportunities.) However, co-ordination is needed to ensure
that each local activity does not cause wider difficulties.
3
Planning tools like strategic environmental assessment could help to highlight
risks where there are complex environmental and socioeconomic linkages.
4
Impact assessment can encourage policy makers and planners to check what
they propose more carefully, and should identify most risks, so that they can
be avoided or the development be modified or abandoned.
5
Risk and hazard assessment can encourage the timely development of
contingency plans.
6
Better monitoring of environments and of socioeconomic conditions is
important.
7
A problem is to achieve more willingness to consider long-term impacts, and
to take preventive or remedial action. That is as much a problem for
governments, NGOs, international agencies, the media and the public as for
environmental managers, although the latter should be catalysts.
8
One of the key inputs from the environmental manager is to co-ordinate and to
encourage and facilitate a thorough (holistic) overview of proposed
developments and monitoring of the state of various ecosystems, even if they
are not obviously being altered.
Vulnerable environments (assuming they are recognized) deserve particular
attention from monitoring bodies, more care from planners and greater vigilance
from NGOs, media and international bodies. There are agencies or NGOs which
focus on particular problem environments, or threatened organisms. Unfortunately,
many lack sufficient funds and other resources to intervene effectively, and may find
it difficult to tackle transboundary problems.
Biodiversity conservation has generated a lot of debate, but not everybody
supports it: marginalized people may clear forest to survive; businessmen may develop
areas of scientific interest for profit (and generate employment in doing so); a
government may be forced to weigh aid for the poor against protecting the
environment; deer may fare better when hunted with hounds but public opinion finds
the practice abhorrent; the ethics of conservation can be far from straightforward
(for a discussion of the ethics of biodiversity conservation see Blench, 1998).
Preservation of the environment is often not practicable, given commercial forces
and a growing human population. Johnson and Lewis (1995:228) make the important
point that human use of the Earth has two faces: ‘creative destruction, the process by which
the natural world is modified and sustainable land-use systems are developed’. The second
is ‘destructive creation’ characterized by ‘a failure to achieve long-term sustainability and
by the initiation of progressively more serious patterns of land degradation’. An
environmental manager has to accept that there will usually be environmental changes
(good husbandry involves making changes). The crucial thing is to decide when ‘destructive
creation’ has begun, or is likely, and to act to stop it or prevent it.

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