Environmental Management: Principles and practice

The definition and scope of environmental management
There is no concise universal definition of environmental management. This is
understandable, given the very broad scope and the diversity of specialisms involved.

---

CHAPTER ONE
4
A glance at the first four dictionaries on environmental science I came across proved
fruitless, as did an examination of a number of M.Sc. environmental management course
brochures, and a recently published environmental studies book! I offer a selection of
definitions of environmental management culled from the literature in Box 1.1, which
indicates that environmental management displays the following characteristics:
♦
it is often used as a generic term;
♦
it supports sustainable development;
♦
it deals with a world affected by humans (there are few, if any, wholly natural
environments today);
♦
it demands a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach;
♦
it has to integrate different development viewpoints;
♦
it seeks to integrate science, social science, policy making and planning;
♦
it recognizes the desirability of meeting, and if possible exceeding basic human
needs;
♦
the timescale involved extends beyond the short term, and concern ranges from
local to global;
♦
it should show opportunities as well as address threats and problems;
♦
it stresses stewardship, rather than exploitation.
Most sources quoted in Box 1.1 assume there is an optimum balance of natural
resource uses, and that the environmental manager must decide where that lies, using
planning and administrative skills to reach it. This conceptualization usually adopted by
mainstream environmental management is clearly biased towards the anthropocentric,
i.e., the view that environmental issues are considered after development objectives have
been set (Redclift, 1985). There are many who would object to this and advocate other
approaches, for in environmental management there is a wide diversity of beliefs ranging
from anthropocentric to ecocentric. There are growing calls for a reshaping of
environmental management towards greater emphasis on social aspects, perhaps to move
the field closer to human geography to ensure that it is not divorced from key issues of
human-environment interaction (Bryant and Wilson, 1998).
At its simplest, environmental management must do three things: (1)
identify goals; (2) establish whether these can be met; (3) develop and
implement the means to do what it deems possible. (1) is seldom easy: a society
may have no clear idea of what it needs. Indeed, some people may want things
damaging to themselves, others, and the environment. Environmental managers
may have to identify goals, and then win over the public and special-interest
groups. (2) and (3) require the environmental manager to interface with ecology,
economics, law, politics, people, etc., to co-ordinate development. To co-
ordinate a diversity of things is difficult because development proceeds on a
piecemeal, short-term basis—the manner and scale at which most humans
operate. The fact that much of what is done at a given point in time and space
has wider and longer-term impacts, makes it desirable for development to be
managed and co-ordinated at all levels: regional, national and international—
the environmental manager

---

INTRODUCTION
5