Environmental Management Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Environmental management is at once broader than resource management, yet emerged in part from it, as well as from new and emerging approaches in the 1960s and 1970s that drew on systems, ecosystems, and public interest and participation ideas. These ideas were themselves catalyzed by the social and environmental movements of the times. Key concerns of these movements included women’s and civil rights issues on the social side, and endangered species and protected areas, pesticides, toxic wastes, and Great Lakes water quality issues on the environmental side. Numerous scientists, including Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Ray Dasmann, Rene Dubos, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Aldo Leopold, Fairfield Osborn, E.F. Schumacher, Paul Sears, and Barbara Ward wrote at the time, or even earlier, about the need for more integrated, careful, and protective approaches to the state of the environment we live in. Such an approach would go beyond the older resource and development-focused emphases of the earlier postwar period. The goals of environmental management are typically broader than those of resource management. They were initially defined in terms of air and water quality, reduced negative effects of development projects, improved human quality of life, and protecting endangered species. Environmental management goals now also include newer ideas such as biodiversity conservation, maintaining ecosystem services, enhancing human well-being and sustainable livelihoods, ecosystem health and integrity, or overall sustainability.

Growing awareness of the interconnectedness of human systems and ecological systems, and the potential human health and economic effects of pollution, deforestation, wetland loss, or flooding provided a strong push for more comprehensive and systematic planning and regulatory approaches to reducing environmental effects of human activities. This knowledge had numerous roots but certainly included the spread of systems and ecosystem ideas that could be traced back to the 1930s and 1940s; more recent studies of eutrophication in the North American Great Lakes and elsewhere; the wide ranging results of the 1960s International Biological Program (IBP) and the 1970s Man and the Biosphere program (MAB) of UNESCO, as well as the extensive research and management experience in integrated watershed management and multiple use forestry in Canada and the United States in the preceding decades.

Rapid growth in urban and industrial development, intensification of agriculture, and recreation and travel in the postwar period led to particularly intense pressures on parks and other protected areas, forests, water resources, coasts, and agricultural land. Environmental management is a new, more integrated, comprehensive, and participatory approach to the complexity of managing and planning such deeply interconnected humanenvironment systems. In this context environmental management tries to apply multiple disciplines to environmental challenges, through inter and trans-disciplinary approaches.

Environmental management has always had a strong base in natural and ecological sciences, as well as ever growing links to social science: initially in terms of participation, and social and economic effects of human activity, in recent years more and more in terms of considering issues of equity, power, and communication as considered in political ecology and ecological modernization theory. In this context, environmental philosophy, through movements such as deep ecology, ecofeminism and environmental justice, pushes environmental management to consider deeper issues of inter and intra-generational equity, and the long-term merit, or sustainability, of anthropocentric versus ecocentric approaches. There is also a long-running discussion over whether we can, let alone should, manage ecosystems or environmental systems, or only human activities and interactions with them.

The first formal manifestations of modern environmental management are usually seen to be the establishment of national environmental protection legislation, environment agencies, environmental impact assessment requirements, and water management agreements and agencies. The United States established the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970, followed by Clean Air and Coastal Zone Management Acts in 1972. These strengthened numerous requirements, improved coordination, monitoring, and integration, and introduced Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) requirements. There had been air and water pollution regulation and agencies for a couple of decades before that, and the Clean Air Act (1963) and Endangered Species Act (1966) also came earlier.

Many other countries followed suit with similar agencies, policies, and requirements in the ensuing decade. Canada, for example, created the federal Department of the Environment in 1971 and the Federal Environmental Assessment and Review Process in 1973. Subnational, provincial, and state governments also started taking similar steps during the 1970s. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States was signed in 1972, then substantially revised in 1978, and did much to promote integrated ecosystem approaches to environmental quality, and large-scale planning, monitoring, and restoration as components of environmental management.

All of these approaches have been further developed since the 1970s. Ecosystem approaches have helped foster ecosystem-based management, emphasizing integrated, transdisciplinary collaborative approaches to planning and management of multiply-defined spatial units such as watersheds, bioregions, or greater ecosystems. EIA has been very strongly developed, first to better include social and ecological, as well as environmental and economic, effects; then to be more participatory and equitable; and more recently to address cumulative effects and strategic assessments.

EIA is also increasingly developing links to land use planning and sustainability initiatives and will only become more important in environmental management in future. Environmental monitoring has been a component of environmental management, and especially EIA, since the start, although it is often more talked about than done. Its profile is rising, although government funding cuts in the 1990s certainly reduced activity. Monitoring is currently supported by strong national, multistakeholder networks in both Canada and the United States, and growing legislative requirements in a range of sectors.

Environmental Planning

Environmental management has been extended to, or has influenced several related areas. Environmental planning focuses on environmental management and protection through land use planning at scales from the local or municipal to regional and larger. It builds on Ian McHarg’s work in the 1960s to use mapping approaches and ecological, social, and economic information to identify the best configuration of natural and human land uses in a region to minimize negative environmental and human effects. Today environmental planning applies from urban core densification through urban fringe subdivisions to very large, resource-based wilderness regions.

Adaptive Management

Adaptive environmental assessment and management (AEAM) was developed in the 1970s from the conjunction of ecosystem science, systems and complexity ideas, and simulation modeling as a way to address uncertainty and complexity in the management of large, complex environmental problems. Now known as adaptive management, it emphasizes viewing management as an experiment to foster ongoing learning about ecosystems and management, drawing on multidisciplinary, scientific knowledge. The goal is to recognize uncertainty in decision making and management, but to ensure uncertainty does not prevent necessary action and additional learning.

Sustainable Development

Although sustainable development ideas go back to at least the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, they did not become widely influential until the 1987 release of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, “Our Common Future.” Since then sustainable development has become a key goal for a very wide range of environmental and economic management and planning activities. While there are challenges in defining just what the concept means in a very wide range of contexts, and without watering it down until it is meaningless; the notion has nonetheless been highly influential and likely successful at underscoring the multiple dimensions of sustainability and the change needed to achieve it. Arguably parts (but only parts), of the private sector have most thoroughly adopted and implemented the idea, through Environmental Management Systems (e.g., ISO 14001) and product certifications (e.g., from the Forest Stewardship Council) and broader movements such as the Natural Step, triple bottom line, and corporate responsibility.

Recent Challenges

While early approaches to environmental management were often strongly regulatory, and led by national or provincial/state government, the 1990s saw major shifts away from this. These have been a reflection of reduced government budgets, reduced priority on the environment, and, arguably, public pressure to reduce taxes and government spending. This trend has been widespread globally, and of course tied to neoconservative political and economic perspectives. In practice it has resulted in federal passing of responsibilities to provinces/states and passing of responsibilities from provinces/states to municipalities. It has also led to greatly reduced staff levels in many government environmental agencies and reduced enforcement and monitoring activities.

It has often been argued that lower tier governments have little of the expertise, personnel, or funds to properly fulfill their new responsibilities. Environmental and human health disasters in a number of places have lead to inquiries, such as Justice O’Connor’s investigation into the Walkerton tragedy in Ontario, Canada, which have catalyzed some retreat from these policies. In addition, public opinion seems to have been increasingly returning to environmental issues in the early 21st century and there are signs of a reversal of declining government interest.

Allied issues resulted from efforts to weaken long-standing environmental regulations and poli-

cies, e.g., in the United States, in some cases through free trade agreements and in other cases through changes to air, water, protected areas, and endangered species protection. Simultaneously there has been growing interest in market and incentivebased mechanisms for environmental protection. Such approaches include industry self-regulation, emissions trading, and carbon taxes. While some have certainly been successfully implemented, others remain controversial. A decreased federal presence and devolution of responsibilities can also lead to less standardization of environmental requirements. Different countries, or jurisdictions within a country, may compete to attract industry via lower environmental standards. This frequently has negative environmental and social consequences at both local and global scales.

More positively, since the 1970s a wide range of international environmental agreements have been negotiated (and there are a few, such as the Canada/ U.S. Migratory Bird treaty of 1916 that are much older). Some agreements are binational, but many are multinational. These commit national governments that have signed and ratified the conventions to implement particular policies and actions via domestic legislation and action. A few of the more significant are the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), the 1972 World Heritage Convention, the 1985 Vienna Ozone Convention and 1988 Montreal Protocol, and the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Environmental management is still developing, through EIA and land use planning in practice, through sustainability, well-being, and related concepts to guide it, and through numerous other initiatives. Interest in environmental stresses and ecosystem responses in the 1970s led to state of the environment reporting and ecosystem health approaches. Environmental and ecological economists have built on these ideas to propose national environmental accounting systems and new measures of progress that go beyond the old throughput or consumption-oriented measures like Gross National Product (GNP). Such initiatives, together with environmental monitoring, are critical for better tracking and evaluating environmental management progress and failures.

Further supporting monitoring, assessment, and evaluation are the benefits of information and observation technologies. Technology has long assisted in resource management and surveying, but now its reach is being extended. Remote sensing and geographical information systems are a great boon to data collection and organization. Communication technologies can facilitate multidisciplinary teams in environmental management and organizing around environmental (and other) issues. Still, technology is no substitute for first-hand field observation or consultation. Combining new technologies with new collaborative and community approaches to resource and environmental management may be key to truly achieving long-term sustainability.

Social Dimensions

As with resources management, there has been increasing interest in social dimensions of environmental management since the 1980s, and before. This includes the role of participation and communities, and different, often disadvantaged, groups within society.

This implies attention to equity, and gender and discrimination, and the broader issues of power relationships within environmental management. It is also extending, as Western societies become ever more culturally diverse through immigration, to seeking to understand different cultural perspectives on environment. There are political and practical implications to different cultures’ perspectives on, for example, environmental health, wildlife conservation, and protected areas. Such perspectives are often different from historical Canadian, American or European perspectives.

There are numerous other challenges for environmental management. One is developing conflict resolution approaches to foster better, more efficient, and more effective solutions to environmental assessment and land use planning conflicts than are often produced by legal or quasi-legal hearings or proceedings in these areas. Facility siting, and “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) responses remain a challenge. Better collaboration, communication, and conflict resolution may be part of the answer, along with efforts to reduce the need for new, undesirable facilities.

Great challenges revolve around continuing processes of environmental and landscape change due to land use and resource development and consumption. These may require deeper lifestyle changes than traditional environmental management is usually seen as encompassing. The particular challenges of climate change and water resources management, for example, underscore the need for international cooperation on many issues, and arguably for new mechanisms and institutions of global environmental governance.

Bibliography:

J. Barrow, Environmental Management: Principles and Practice (Routledge, 1999);
K. Caldwell, ed., Perspectives on Ecosystem Management for the Great Lakes: A Reader (State University of New York Press, 1988);
W. Ewert, D.C. Baker, and G.C. Bissix, Integrated Resource and Environmental Management: The Human Dimension (CABI Publishing, 2004);
B. Gibson et al., Sustainability Assessment: Criteria and Processes (Earthscan, 2005);
Alan Gilpin, Environmental Impact Assessment: Cutting Edge for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006);
Kevin Hanna and Scott Slocombe, , Integrated Resource and Environmental Management: Concepts and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2007);
Tomas M. Koontz et , Collaborative Environmental Management: What Roles for Government? (Resources for the Future, 2004);
Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature (Doubleday/Natural History Press, 1969);
Bruce Mitchell, Resource and Environmental Management, 2nd ed. (Addison Wesley Longman, 2002);
Forster Ndubisi, Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002);
John Randolph, Environmental Land Use Planning and Management (Island Press, 2004).