Key Concepts
The development of strategies to allocate and conserve resources, with the ultimate goal of regulating the impact of human activities on the surrounding environment. Environmental management is a mixture of science, policy, and socioeconomic applications. It focuses on the solution to the practical problems that humans encounter in cohabitation with nature, exploitation of resources, and production of waste (Fig. 1). In a purely anthropocentric sense, the central problem is how to permit technology to evolve continuously while limiting the degree to which this process alters natural ecosystems. Environmental management is thus intimately intertwined with questions regarding limiting economic growth, ensuring an equitable distribution of consumable goods, and conserving resources for future generations. Environmental management is a response to the increasing seriousness of the human impact on natural ecosystems. With a smaller global population base and a less pervasive use of technology, the environment might be able to recuperate on its own from human misuse; however, in many cases, it is now widely recognized that positive intervention is necessary if the environment is to recover. See also: Adaptive management; Conservation of resources; Ecology; Ecosystem; Environment; Environmental engineering; Industrial ecology; Water conservation
There is considerable disagreement about the course that the aforementioned intervention should take, which has created a plurality of approaches to managing the environment. (Note that the word environment usually means the natural surroundings, both living and inanimate, of human lives and activities; it also can mean the artificial landscape of cities, or occasionally even the conceptual field of the noosphere, the realm of communicating human minds.) Environmental managers therefore fall within a broad spectrum that extends from conservationists to technocrats, including those who would limit human interference in nature and those who would increase it in order to guide natural processes along benign paths. Hence, both conservationists and developers are represented. It is hoped that they will come together over the need to make economic development sustainable, without it being undermined by long-term damage to resources and habitats (Fig. 2). See also: Applied ecology; Land-use planning; Landscape ecology
Participants
Participants in the process of environmental management fall into seven main groups:
- Governmental organizations at the local, regional, national, and international levels, including world bodies such as the United Nations Environment Programme
- Research institutions, including universities, academies, and national laboratories
- Bodies charged with the enforcement of regulations, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Businesses of all sizes and multinational corporations
- International financial institutions, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
- Environmental nongovernmental organizations, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (World Wildlife Fund)
- Representatives of the users of the environment, including tribes, fishermen, and hunters
The agents of environmental management include foresters, soil conservationists, policy-makers, engineers, and resource planners. The main link between these diverse groups of people is the need for accountability in the use of nature's riches. However, although there is much collaboration, relationships are often adversarial as objectives differ among the groups. See also: Forestry; Soil conservation
Some common themes of environmental management are as follows:
- Bilateral and multilateral environmental treaties (transboundary ecological management)
- Design and use of decision-support systems (practical utilization of environmental data and expert systems for environmental management)
- Environmental policy formulation, enactment, and policing of compliance (participatory planning and public consultation regarding environmental programs)
- Estimation, analysis, and management of environmental risk (risk perception and communication studies)
- Management of recreation and tourism (design and implementation of environmentally friendly ecotourism programs)
- Natural resource evaluation and conservation (designation and management of parks, preserves, and other protected areas, and designation and protection of wilderness areas)
- Positive environmental economics (economic justifications for investment in environmental protection)
- Promotion of positive environmental values by education, debate, and information dissemination
- Reduction of adverse environmental impacts
- Strategies for the rehabilitation of damaged environments (postpollution clean-up processes)
Management techniques
The need to improve management of the environment has given rise to several techniques. There is environmental impact analysis, which was first formulated in California and is codified in the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Through the environmental impact statement, it prescribes the investigatory and remedial measures that must be taken in order to mitigate the adverse effects of new development. In this sense, it is intended to act in favor of both prudent conservation and participatory democracy.
Another technique is environmental auditing, which uses the model of the financial audit to examine the processes and outcomes of environmental impacts. It requires value judgments, which are usually set by public preference, ideology, and policy, to define what are regarded as acceptable outcomes. Audits use techniques such as life-cycle analysis and environmental burden analysis to assess the impact of, for example, manufacturing processes that consume resources and create waste.
Environmental challenges
All of the main environmental problems of today's world fall under the environmental management field. Most problems are controversial. Tropical deforestation, ozone depletion, and global warming have fueled debate over strategies for the management of the global environment. Transboundary pollution and the international exploitation of resources (for example, the appropriation of raw materials in one country and the patenting of their genetic derivatives in another) have underlined the need for bilateral, and often multilateral, agreements about sharing responsibilities. Radiation emissions, toxic waste issues, hazardous material spills, and other catastrophic pollution episodes have emphasized the need for secure and standardized methods of treating pollutants. See also: Climate modification; Deforestation; Global climate change; Stratospheric ozone
Environmental management has risen to meet many of these challenges. The field has expanded from a purely governmental preserve to one that encompasses the private sector as well. Indeed, the manufacture of pollution control equipment and the institutional management of environmental hazards have turned into growth areas. Yet the successes must be seen against a backdrop of deepening environmental crisis. Relentless population pressure, the unfettered nature of international capital, and the numerous cases of significant environmental mismanagement are examples of remaining problems. See also: Air pollution; Environmental toxicology; Water pollution