The Role of Government in Environmental Management

Institutional and organizational arrangements for the environment

The fundamental challenge to environmental management for sustainable development stems from its systemic character. Although governments have long been accustomed to the administration of certain aspects of the environment (elg. public works), a comprehensive approach to environmental management has not been a traditional public function. Yet, environment and development can no longer be conceived of as separate issues. Traditionally independent sectors, such as industry and agriculture, have become inextricably linked. This situation raises the question of the adequacy of existing organizational and institutional arrangements for coping with the complex and interrelated tasks associated with sustainable development. The interdependent and integrated nature of environmental concerns contrasts sharply with the nature of most of the institutions that presently exist to deal with them. These institutions for the most part are independent, fragmented and have relatively narrow mandates with closed decision processes. Institutions responsible for managing natural resources and protecting the environment are institutionally separated from those responsible for managing the economy. In some cases, new environmental protection and resource management agencies, staffed primarily with scientific personnel, have been added onto existing institutional structures. In order to make significant strides towards sustainable development, a major reorientation is needed not only in the way governments formulate policies, but also in the institutional and organizational arrangements designed to implement them. Further examination is needed of the linkages and overlaps that exist between different government sectors and modalities for better coordination of work, perhaps through regrouping functional units for problemsolving tasks. There is a gradually increasing recognition that successful environmental management requires the strengthening of organizational, administrative, legislative and planning infrastructure to enable countries to address their environmental problems holistically. Another important issue regarding institutional relationships concerns the need to accommodate a wider range of interaction Downloaded by [University of Leeds] at 11:46 07 August 2016 120 - Korean Review ofPublic Administration between government and various citizen groups. Public awareness and community involvement at the grass-roots level in addressing environmental problems is a growing phenomenon and full advantage must be taken of the positive results that may be obtained from cooperation with various community groups and non-governmental organizations. Strategies are also needed that will assist in assuring the full participation of women in environmental planning and management. Women are often the first to suffer the negative impacts of a degraded environment, and many women's groups are presently involved in contributing to the design and implementation of environmental protection programs. Apart form their contributions to various development schemes at the local level, they must be given opportunities at the managerial level to function as agents of change towards environmentally sound and sustainable development. C. Environmental management training New orientations in policy design and implementation and in institutional and organizational structures by themselves are not enough to ensure significant progress towards sustainable development. Environmental management training for public officials is also required. Due to the complex nature of environmental problems, it is necessary to provide environmental education and training for all categories of citizens to assist them in understanding the ways in which they may influence environmental outcomes. One especially important target group to whom environmental training activities are often directed is scientific and technical personnel and environmental specialists. These individuals are generally provided with training in a variety of technical disciplines and technologies, for example, to forestry, chemistry, engineering, or toxicology. Such training, in some instances ought to be supplemented with a broad appreciation of management functions and public policy-making processes. Another equally important, yet frequently neglected, category of personnel are general managers and decision makers in government, whose activities have a strong, albeit at times indirect, influence, on the environment. In order for developing countries to successfully pursue environmentally sound development, it is essential that they develop and maintain a cadre of well-trained general managers, sensitive to the multidisciplinary nature of environmental management. Public managers frequently are criticized as being legalistic, procedure-oriented and insufficiently attuned to costs and results. In the quest for sustainable development, it is very important to focus attention on the role of senior managers, and to provide them with the means to effectively discharge their role. Senior managers must be given opportunities to enhance their understanding of the ways in which the environment functions and to strengthen their capacity to identify the linkages that proposed activities in their traditional domain would have with other economic and social activities and programs. They must be strengthened in their capacity to adapt to the rapidity of change in human affairs, and to the new fast-paced developments in knowledge and technology. They must be given the skills and tools to enable them to make the transition to the new styles of management, to become more effective in mobilizing human, financial and other resources to achieve desired ends in and ecologically desirable way. This calls for well thought and systematic approaches to the development of training programs for senior managers in government who are responsible in some way for environmental matters. Such training must draw upon knowledge from a variety of scientific, technological, economic and social science disciplines, with the overall aim of orienting public decision makers in the principles of sound environmental management, and sustainable development. If this is done effectively, the result will be a cadre of managers able to compare and contrast competing demands on the natural resource base and to arrive at workable conclusions which go well beyond the traditional, legalistic and procedurally oriented approaches. Status of environmental education and training programs At the present time, a variety of environment-related education and training programs and courses are being offered in different parts of the world, with varying degrees of comprehensiveness. Many such Programs and courses are sectoral in nature, and are directed at highly specialized categories of training, such as environmental monitoring, risk assessment, remote sensing, cost-benefit analysis, and information systems. Others, more interdisciplinary in character, tend to focus on concerns such as environmental and rural development planning. In some developed countries like U.S. specialized environmental management training programs have evolved over the last couple of decades in response, inter alia, to the growth of environmental protection legislation and the creation of new categories of environmental protection personnel. While environmental education and training has been a growing field over the past two decades, much of what exists remains geared particularly to developed countries. Greater efforts are required to develop training programs specifically adopted to the needs of developing countries. The training that has been directed to developing country participants appears to have been largely focused on general education and on training for scientific and technical subjects. More attention should be devoted to the training of the senior managers in government whose input is required to transform technically sound solutions into implementable policies and programs. Identification of training needs While bearing in mind the fact environmental management training programs need to be adjusted to fit the particular context of each nation, experience suggests that the availability of training packages addressed to selective training objectives would facilitate the rapid transfer of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by senior managers charged with responsibility for environmental programs. Another important area relates to deepening the understanding of the role of citizen participation in accomplishing the environment/development agenda and the modalities for involving the rural poor, women, and various non-government organizations. In sum, the following seven major problems in relation to the role of government in environmental management are identified as training needs.

(a) Government policy;

(b) Institutional and intersectoral cooperation;

(c) Enforcement mechanism;

(d) Information for decision-making;

(e) Environmental education and awareness;

(f) Human and financial resources;

(g) Environment/economic "trade-offs". One task of such training will be to assist in reorienting the perception of individuals towards a keener appreciation of forward planning and anticipatory thinking. This would involve understanding and defining alternative policy options. It would also include methodologies for incorporating environmental considerations into planning processes and tools for information gathering, such as environmental impact assessment and risk analysis. These suggestions are hardly exhaustive. Environmental management training would obviously need to address itself to many other important variables, not the least of which are questions of resource allocation for environmental management, and the impact of technology Sustainable Development and Environmental Administration Although it did not coin the term, the World Commission on Environment and Development has provided the most influential contemporary discussion of sustainable development. The Commission described the concept as follows: "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.,, But that is an extremely broad comment, almost a moral truism. Yet the concept was intended to be a meaningful guide to policy and not a cliche. With that problem in mind, Lynton Caldwell observed: The intent behind the phrase is rational and necessary to guide the realization of human potential without detriment to the biosphere...But the expression is very general and is susceptible to a range of interpretations, some of which would allow for a stable but ecologically impoverished world. Not only is the phrase ambiguous, as Caldwell suggests, it can be used in ways that are self-contradictory. In order to run a sustainable development policy, then, it is essential to understand what the concept is generally understood to mean, the difficulties in using it, the social as compared to the scientific dimensions of the concept, the criteria for determining success or failure, the political economy of the idea, and the focus of action in sustainable development.In one of the most interesting investigations of the concept, Michael Redclift noted: Sustainable development seems assured of a place in the litany of development truisms, but to what extent does it express convergent rather than divergent, intellectual traditions? The constant reference to 'sustainability' as a desirable objective has served to obscure the contradictions that 'development' implies for the environment.5) Redclift is one of a number of scholars and administrators who have explored the apparent contradictions in the concept. If development is based upon the use of natural resources, can it truly be sustainable? Industrialization with its large-scale use of raw materials and energy as well as the pollution it often generates is generally more concerned with development than sustainability. Even some kinds of agriculture that presumably involve reusable resources can be difficult foundations for sustainable development because of the tendency to use large quantities of energy and chemicals to harvest what appears to be an environmentally sustainable product. Where development is taken to mean significant growth in the production of industrial or agricultural goods, the traditional approach to development employed by large developed nations may be anything but environmentally sustainable. For some who conclude that the Western economic growth approach is not appropriate, the term is given a qualitative rather than a largely quantitative meaning. "It may convey the idea that the world, society or the biosphere is becoming 'better' in some sense, perhaps producing more, or meeting more of the basic needs of the poor.,, The description of the term by the World Commission report is an effort to combine economic growth with qualitative enhancement of lifestyles, which in some cases means providing for basic human needs in the area of health and nutrition. In any case, the decision to enhance the quality of life, or even to provide the rudiments of what would be regarded in developed countries as the basics of life, may mean a decision to incur substantial costs or limits to economic growth. Some see a compromise approach to sustainable development in which they speak of the "maximum sustainable yield (MSY) of a natural resource," "the carrying capacity of a region." or "assimilative capacity of a region." The first is an effort to draw resources only up to the level at which resource can be regenerated. The second seeks to maintain life below the upper limit of the number of persons or animals that a given area can support. The third is policy aimed at introducing no more pollution into an area than it can absorb and remain ecologically healthy. In any case, sustainable development is a statement that is, in part at least, defined by the culture and the political values of the country involved. Since, in almost any form, sustainable development means there are limits to growth, the political and cultural norms that govern the country dictate where the lines shall be drawn. Similarly, most of those who have tried to use the concept have agreed that it is a social as well as scientific term. The World Commission took its cue from the Stockholm Conference of 1972 in noting that underdevelopment exacerbates environmental degradation on the one hand and is patently inequitable on the other. In any event, one cannot speak of sustainable development apart from its social dimensions. Development is, in important respects, a statement of "human actions, ambitions, and needs." At the same time, it is a recognition of the fact that developed nations cannot continue to enjoy their high standard of living earned at the cost of environmental damage and now insist that developing countries do without in order to protect the environment. The Commission recognized as well that sustainable development will require that some developing countries attend to existing inequalities within their own societies like the need for land refonn and the recognition of property and other rights for women. The complexities inherent in the concept of sustainable development suggest that it is not always easy to measure success. In the first place, one must agree on the goals to be sought. But it is easier to define the kinds of environmental damage we want to stop than it is to state the positive results we wish to achieve. II) Traditionally, the Western economic growth model of development has been employed to judge the progress of third world countries, and the measure generally used in that model is Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product. However, GNP "is a particularly inadequate guide to development since it treats sustainable and unsustainable production alike and compounds the error by including the costs of unsustainable economic activity on the credit side, while largely ignoring processes of recycling and energy conversion which do not lead to the production of goods or marketable services.' In other words, what counts as development progress in GNP measures may be anything but environmentally sustainable. Another major problem is that growth measures often do not take account of changing demand. Where, for example, a country experiences rapid population growth or dramatic urbanization, GNP increases may mask major development problems. The same difficulty arises where world demand for the raw resources from a country or a region rises to meet increasing global needs. Measures of economic growth from exports may rise but those results can hardly be called sustainable development. In sum, "until we are prepared to define sustainability in ways that take stock of both the external threat from food policies in the North and the internal threat from demographic pressure in the South, it will remain something of a chimera." Finally , it can be difficult to know whether some sustainable development efforts succeed because they may mean that harmful things simply do not happen. That is, we can assess quantities of toxic waste, amounts of air pollution, and loss of productive agricultural land. On the other hand, when the World Commission posits that: "Sustainable development requires that the adverse impacts on the quality of air, water, and other natural elements are minimized so as to sustain the ecosystem's overall integrity,,, it is no easy task to judge success. It can be difficult to promote a programme where the bottom line is that "there was little harm done this year." Recognizing these difficulties, the World Commission noted that measures of success in sustainable development must take account of context and of the need to meet social challenges. The sustainability aspect requires at least that environmental administrators aim (1) to maintain ecosystems and related ecological processes essential for the function of the biosphere; (2) to maintain biological diversity by ensuring the survival and promoting the conservation in their natural habitats of all species of flora and fauna; (3) to observe the principle of optimum sustainable yield in the exploitation of living natural resources and ecosystems; (4) to prevent or abate significant environmental pollution of harm; (5) to establish adequate environmental protection standards; (6) to undertake or require prior assessments to ensure that major new policies, projects, and technologies contribute to sustainable development; and (7) to make all relevant information public without delay in all cases of harmful or potentially harmful releases of pollutants, especially radioactive releases. IS) In addition to a clear understanding of sustainable development, effective administration requires some clarification as to the meaning of environmental administration. The literature on this subject tends to use three therms interchangeably. They are environmental resources management, environmental management, and environmental administration. While they are related, there are differences in how the concepts are used in the field. As Henning and Mangun point out, "natural resource managers generally have land management responsibilities. Environmental managers are more likely to be involved with the control of pollution." Both of these types of managers are environmental administrators. Often, however, when the terms environmental management or environmental resource management are used, the discussion focuses on how to design appropriate environmental policies. It is time to be self-conscious about the use of the term environmental administration and to think of it in terms of the implementation and day-to-day operation of environmental policy. In that respect it is useful to recognize that: "Contrary to the popular view that environmental administrators manage the environment, it should be recognized that environmental administrators manage the relationships between people and organizations on the one hand, and the environment on the other." That is not to suggest that there is a firm separation between politics and administration but it is a recognition that expertise on environmental science or general knowledge of the standard catalogue of environmental policies is not enough to ensure that those policies are translated into action for sustainable development. Environmental ministries do shape environmental policy but they must do much more. Natural resources are not managed directly but through the techniques of public administration with its traditional concerns about finance, law, human resources, analysis, and organization management. Conclusion While concern for the environment in the decade of the 1970s tented to emphasize the assessment of the physical environment and control of pollution and other environmental problems, the emphasis over the next decade gradually had begun shifting towards greater recognition of the overall importance of environment as a factor in economic and social development. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness on the part of both national governments and multinational institutions that it is impossible to separate economic and social development issues form environmental concerns. Trends towards global warming, threats to the Earth's ozone layer, and deserts consuming agricultural land are among the many problems facing this and future generations. Many of today's environmental challenges arise from the unintended consequences of some forms of economic growth that consume large amounts of raw materials, energy, chemicals and synthetics. Still others emanate from the very lack of development in which widespread deforestation and over cultivation have been identified among the factors leading to rising incidence of disasters such as droughts and floods, and the extinction of plant and animal species. In many cases, rapid urbanization and the associated effects of population growth and uncontrolled industrial development have tended to undermine the natural resource base required for long-term sustainable development. Inefficient waste collection, improper disposal of toxic wastes, inappropriate land use, and water, land and air pollution are among the many resultant problems. Despite the view held by some that environmental problems are primarily of concern to industrialized nations, experience has shown the universal character of environmental issue. When environmental concerns are described in terms of the specific problems such as overcrowded and unsanitary housing, contaminated water supply, polluted air, soil erosion and depletion of other resources, it may be seen that decision makers in developing countries equally need to be aware of the need to organize and administer national development programs in such a way as to ensure that environmental factors receive adequate attention. In fact, the need for governments to deliberately select proactive environment policy options becomes quite evident. Moreover, the impact of human intervention in nature is growing more widespread, and the physical effects of actions in one country often cause results beyond its own frontiers, reflecting the complexity of environmental decision-making and management. The ever-deepening interconnection between environment and development both within and across borders leads to the conclusion that governments must begin to adopt a more integrated and coordinated approach to development and ensure that development, in fact, is compatible with the need to protect and improve the environment. National governments bear a large share of the responsibility for appropriate large-scale environmental policy and action within theirjurisdictions. Since a growing number of environmental problems are regional and/or global in nature, cooperation is also necessary among nations, and supportive action at the international level is required. The present paper has sought to identify some of the main issues and concerns related to environmental management, which has evolved as a field of major concern to developed and developing countries alike. In the present context, environmental management is understood to be a part of the broader concept of management of sustainable development. In drawing attention to the need for new forward looking approaches to managing environmental resources, particular emphasis has been placed on the importance of reorienting policy arrangements to ensure that environmental decisions are integrated into decision-making at all levels. Despite growing recognition of the importance of sound environmental management, measures for environmental protection must still compete with more traditional objectives of government. Policy makers and managers alike are called upon to think methodically about issues that previously may have been perceived as lying outside their immediate purviews. Although, to date, governmental legislation and regulatory requirements largely have provided the context for environmental management, there are a number of other policy tools that may prove useful. These include, for example, participatory and authoritative approaches as well as a wide variety of economic regulatory mechanisms. In the final analysis, environmental management and/or management of sustainable development must be viewed as an integral part of the mandate of central government agencies and other sectoral units that play a key role in national decision-making, with a view to ensuring that their development policies, programs and budgets anticipate their effects on environmental quality. The paper has also highlighted some of the organizational and institutional constraints to sound environmental management, such as relatively narrow mandates of many government institutions and of the linkages and overlaps that often exist between different government sectors. Finally, the paper points to the need for appropriate training for managers and decision makers in government. The role of senior managers in the overall development process is crucial to ensuring successful management of sustainable development programs and, thus, it is important to assure the availability of environmental management training. The years ahead in the 21st century must see a movement from broad debates over environmental policy to the administration of environmental policy. As this paper has argued, it is indeed getting much harder to run environmental policy than to write it. While the refinement of policy and development of truly global agreements and institutions are essential, they will not be sufficient to assure sustainable development. Environmental policy is not self-operating. It requires exploration, development, and education in those management techniques likely to enhance the implementation and day-to-day operation of environmental protection and restoration. That enterprise requires movement away from the comfortable general level of discussion about the need for environmental action to the more complex and difficult set of analyses of administrative techniques in the special circumstances faced by environmental administrators operating in the developing countries. Those explorations should begin from the perspective that sustainable development requires inside-out management, the internationalization of environmental administration.