The concern for the impact of air and water pollution dates to Vedic as well as Roman times. Soil conservation was practiced in India and China, even in other parts of world, some two thousand years ago. Air and water pollution was associated with the spread of epidemic diseases as far back in fourteenth century in Europe. However, it was in the sixties to mid-seventies, the environment concern began to upsurge. The focus was largely on rising pollution, the exploding population, and the reckless use of technology.
The development was exceeding environmental limits. It was suggested that there would be disaster if adequate corrective actions were not taken in time. Most of the environmentalist activity concerned around warnings, efforts to hasty debates. United Nations Conference on Human Development took initiative to convene international meeting to address environment and development concerns. The United Nations Environment Programme came into being as the first international United Nations environmental agency. Even at that time, it to be seen as deterring development. It was presented as a conspiracy by some, advocating as to holding back the development of the under developed countries. There was widespread suspicion on environmental concern.
Environmental concern was taken as an extravagance for the developed nations which developing countries were unable to afford. Only a few countries had environmental ministries to look after the environmental matters. Media coverage was limited to highlight public interest in developed as well as in developing countries. Then, the countries started formulating environmental ministries and environmental departments. International agencies and non-governmental organizations jumped to turn into more persuasive. The public was becoming more familiar with environmental issues in the comparatively developed countries. The arguments were advocated between environmentalism and development. It was then, the concept of sustainable development came to forefront.
Interest arose by the eighties in the developing countries for involvement in environmental agencies to apply environmental assessment. Within a few years international agencies and major NGOs started establishing environmental facilities. By the efforts so far, there was a remarkable change towards environment. Now, there is a trend towards addressing environmental issues, though much attention evolves around the threat of global warming. Presently, attention has been focused much more on environmental management during this period. The Concept of Environmental Management The concept of environmental management is a bit difficult to define.
Environmental management is a scientific discipline created in the field of ecology at the end of the last century with the task of reducing the impact of technical and technological development on the biosphere and the survival of living beings, to a satisfactory minimum level. It is relatively young and is rapidly evolving, so judging how successful it has been and in what ways it should be tuned to better serve the quest for development, is a challenge. It is related to goals or visions, attempts to direct a process, the application of a series of tools, even the philosophical practices that aims to establish new perspectives on the environment and human society. The managers of environmental protection can be counted among different groups of people, that include scientists, policy makers, NGO workers, employees in companies, public officials and a wide range of people or groups of people who make decisions that affect the way we use natural resources. Environmental Management and Human Society Environmental arnagement extends to all human beings to some extent, since ultimately all human activities have some environmental impact.
However, some people are more directly involved in the use of resources, while certain interest groups are particularly concerned about resource development and pollution. Therefore, environmental management requires a multidisciplinary perspective. To enable a shift towards the desired environmental situation in the future, planning methods and models must be used to help accurately guide sustainable development policy. All individuals are to some extent involved in environment management because of their activities have an impact. Some individuals are more actively involved in resource use and interact more with nature.
Environment managers generally seek to understand the structure and function of environment, the way humans relate to their physical surroundings and to one another. There is a diversity of environmental managers, but most share some or all of the following characteristics. They make deliberate efforts to steer the development process to take advantage of opportunities. Environmental Management Theory herefore, it is necessary to develop methods of environmental management at the level of theory, as well as at the level of well-considered regulations, practical standards and fairly communicated guidelines. An effective environmental management requires a firm control over the execution of policies to achieve effective governance.
This requires responsible elected representatives at all levels, effective commitments for adoption of sustainable environmental policy, periodical reviews of proposed laws and regulations, regular monitoring of the effectiveness of the implementation of implemented laws, to conduct investigative hearings etc. It covers a wide variety of goals, including the firm will to control the direction and pace of development, optimize resources use, minimize environmental degradation, and avoid environmental disasters. All concerned, may it be individuals or groups that have opinions, can carry out environmental management. However, in general, environmental management is concerned with understanding the structure and functions of the global system, as well as how humans relate to their environment.
Sustainable Environmental Management
Consequently, environmental management is concerned with identifying, observing, and tracking environmental change, predicting potential changes, and making economics of sustainable management. It is an attempt to optimize human benefits and diminish environmental destruction, caused by the behavior and activities of our actions in general. Environmental management is also about decision making, especially concerned with the decision-making process regarding the use of natural resources. It involves planning,
organizing, personnel policy, leadership, and process control. In fact, environment management must do all this in real situation where greed, foolishness and corruption conspire to hinder, poverty and growing populations limit the available options to deal, knowledge and necessary skills are still too limited, demand for more material benefits and time available to make real development.
Environmental and Developmental Issues Environmental and developmental issues are more trans-boundary and often must deal with on a global scale. Prevalent laws, contemporary governance, the accessible sciences, and existing managements are still gasping to address this. In the past, scientists have been able to research the problems and then suggest solutions, but sufficient advice must be offered before adequate data and knowledge is available. Any delay risks the challenge developing into an uncontrollable problem. Environmental management faces unexpected and rapid changes and sinister problems that develop so clandestinely that they get overlooked. Environmental managers do not just cope with challenges. They have to model and monitor to gain sufficient knowledge and try to get early warning to have sufficient chances of success. Recognizing the problem and identify the cause are two different things.
Problems may have complex causes, so several unrelated factors suddenly come up to make trouble. Environmental Management and Socio-economic Conditions Environmental management also have to cope with periodical changes of social economic conditions such as fashion, new technological capabilities, changes of attitudes of society, changed capital conditions, social skills, confidence etc. Hence, responses have to be multi-disciplinary for managers to determine how people will be ultimately get effected and react to weigh for the best way to manage. Political and economic pressures often initiate environmental management issues. Environmental management can be highly political, but caution is needed to prevent environmental managers becoming bureaucrats who are out of touch with best practice, popular feeling, and global needs. At the same time, it is appreciated to regard the concerns of local society and to make good use of their expertise. Developing countries have different type of governments, historical fortunes, degree or poverty and natural resources. Of late, this directed many environmental managers to blame for the reason of under development of such regions. However, it is well accepted that environmental conditions do not govern developmental success, it is the management of available resources and commitments of governing bodies and societies that matter.
Status of Environmental Concerns
There is little in the world today that is completely natural, in the sense which is not altered by human activity. We the humans are not the only organisms to alter the environment, every organism on, in and around the earth is contributing to alter it. Biotic and the abiotic environment are in all probability unconsciously working together maintaining balances. However, humans uniquely have the potential to consciously interact with the environment and to proactively manage it. Whether humans realize their potential or continue to neglect, mismanage, and destroy the global balance remains to be seen. Environmental management seeks to achieve that potential to maintain a global balance, and if possible, improve people’s wellbeing. It is being observed that there is limited time available with us to get environmental management right before the situation shifts to a state disastrously unfavorable to humans.
Environment and Human Involvement The experts cite several causes of human involvement, including population growth. The human greed, consumerism, faulty development, ethics of the rich along with ignorance and thoughtless use of available technology. Both are to blame, developed as well as developing countries. It depends on who is making the judgement. There are various reactions to environmental degradation. Some advocate to ignore the ensuing threat. Others are in favor of abandoning of technology and a return to simple old ways of living. However, majority of the open-minded citizens are advocating to use all tools available, say technology, education, and establishment of new ethics, to achieve sustainable development. Think for a while: is it possible that hundreds of crores population can return to medieval era and will survive. Just foolish. The idea of ignoring the following threat and to abandon the contemporary technology will result in disaster. It is not even difficult but right away impossible to survive. Cautious use of technology is the way forward. We the humans have caused much damage to the environment so far.
My Personal Viewpoint
In my personal view, there is no choice other than to use all tools available, technology, education, and establishment of new ethics, to achieve sustainable development. The idea that the world faces an environmental crisis will initiate valuable changes, and encourage emotive debates, suggest solutions that will divert attention from other important tasks. Environmental management must watch for threats to accurately assess what is genuine to decide for priorities, and strive to get appropriate action to avert or better survive problems. Pollution, soil erosion, loss of forests and hunting, on surface or in water, are the problems, presently apparent. watching back times, environmental historians expose plenty of past environmental disasters. More recently, attention has been focused on how humans affect the environment, especially global warming. Surprisingly less is talked, how it affects humans.
This is unwise and here lies our fault. Awareness of the past helps environmental managers assess future scenarios. This information can boost public interest in environmental forecasting and resultantly originate pro-active management.
Environmental Viewpoint
From the late century to sixties, the prevailing viewpoint in the ‘Developed West’ was that Nature was to be studied, catalogued, tamed, and exploited. That the Earth was limitless and resilient. There were only a few signs of environmental stress, other than slight pollution and some loss of biodiversity. The outlook was that Nature was relatively easy to understand. There was little awareness of the complexity, vulnerability, and limitations of the Earth’s ecosystems. It was only in the nineteen sixties that attitudes began to change. During the last five decades, there has been a marked development of interest in environmental concerns. This has been due to certain causes like, increasingly apparent pollution, depleting biodiversity, soil degradation and its fertility erosion, mindless deforestation, a believing that our environment is gradually damaging. There are concerns over human population growth. We see worry about the threat of nuclear warfare as well as inadvertent technological disaster. Environmental Movement Since Sixties, interest in environmental issues increased. We may refer to this as an environmental movement.
The environmentalists very diverse groups who advocate wide variety of values, but all regard ecological concern as crucial. The word ‘Environmentalism’ mainly developed in western world. From the late eighties, there has been worldwide expansion of literature and media coverage of environment and development issues. During the last four decades there has been a marked development of interest in environmental issues by those outside of the ‘academic’ community. This has been prompted by a complex of causes which include: increasingly apparent pollution; loss of biodiversity; declining fish stocks; soil degradation; deforestation; a realisation that the world is finite and easily damaged; concern at the rate of human population growth; and worries about the threat of nuclear warfare and inadvertent technological disaster.
Environmental Management is a good as well as interesting subject.