Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Recommended reading
Journals which publish articles on participation in environmental management
Alternatives: Perspectives on Society, Technology and Environment
Community Development Journal
Development & Change
Ecofeminism
Environmental Ethics
Feminist Studies
Journal of Peasant Studies
Society & Natural Resources
Technology and Environment

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249
C h a p t e r 1 3
Environmental
management approaches
♦ Adaptive environmental management
253
♦ GIS and environmental management
253
♦ Expert systems and environmental
management
253
♦ Decision support for environmental
management
254
♦ Systems or network approaches
254
♦ Local, community, regional and sectoral
environmental management
254
♦ The state and environmental management
255
♦ Transboundary and global environmental
management
255
♦ Integrated environmental management
256
♦ Strategic environmental management
257
♦ Stance and environmental management
258
♦ Political ecology approach to environmental
management
259
♦ Political economy approach to environmental
management
259
♦ Human ecology approach to environmental
management
260
♦ The best approach?
260
♦ Recommended reading
260

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250
Environmental management involves the application of a mixture of objective
scientific and more subjective, often qualitative approaches. It is a blend of policy
making and planning, with greater implementation, control and management; but it
still does not have a well-defined, widely adopted framework to shape its application,
although there are guides to policy and procedures, and standards and systems—like
ISO 14001 (Croner Publications Ltd, 1997). Each situation faced by an environmental
manager is to some extent unique. The approach adopted reflects the attitudes of
those involved, the particular situation, time and funding available, and many other
factors. Even synthesizing information is often hindered by the sheer volume of
material.
Although ‘environmental management’ is sometimes little more than a catch-
phrase, when seriously undertaken it is a process of decision-making about the
allocation of natural and artificial resources that will make optimum use of the
environment to satisfy at least basic human needs for an indefinite period of time
and, where possible, to improve environmental quality. Newson (1992:259) noted
that a large part of environmental management was ‘decision-making under
uncertainty’. There is often more than one route to a goal: perhaps one is the best all-
round solution, one the best practical, one is that favoured by the government, another
is favoured by a company—the environmental manager generally tries to pursue the
best all-round solution. Another core role of environmental management is
environmental arbitration. This can be attempted by an individual acting as a ‘czar’,
by a democratic body, or through ‘green anarchy’.
Much of what has just been said is difficult to separate from environmental
planning. In the past planners often neglected environmental issues, were insufficiently
aware of the dynamic nature of Earth processes, and failed to identify natural limits,
hazards and potential. Today it is hard to comprehend that before the 1970s bodies
like the World Bank or the United Nations had few, if any, established environmental
advisors, and that often environmental quality was seen as an optional extra by teams
of decision makers dominated by economists and lawyers. Planners nowadays are
much more aware of environmental issues, and differ from environmental managers
mainly in that they are more concerned with forward decision making.
Environmental planning might be defined as efforts to strike a balance between
resource use and the environment, the primary objective of planning being to make
decisions about the use of resources. Landscape planning has a long tradition and
runs parallel with environmental management, focusing on aesthetic issues (Ashworth
and Kivell, 1989; Foder and Walker, 1994; Kivell et al., 1988). An important aspect
of environmental planning which overlaps with environmental management is