Principles of Environmental Management

Principles of Environmental Management

The principles of environmental management encompass strategies and practices designed to protect and sustain the environment, for ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources. These principles aim to promote environmental stewardship and ensure that human inferences do not degrade the natural world.

The polluter pays principle

Over the last half a century or so, till recent now, there has been a shift from develop now and clean up later to distract attention and to avoid causing problems. During this period there has also been a change from the burden of problems being borne by those affected to it being shouldered by the public in general but wherever possible making the ‘polluter pay’. The question arises, why a passerby, a consumer, or a worker, who is not the part of pollution generator, to pay for others’ mistakes. The impression behind this is very clear. If the potential polluter forced to bear the costs for problems, it will be less likely to cause them.

In general, penalties for pollution are still tough to enforce and relatively light, especially in developing countries. Consequently, organizations motivated by profit may be tempted to try to get away with sometimes getting caught and paying limited damages. However, in recent times, the enforcement of laws and regulations for such violators are followed convincingly. Penalties for violations thus have a weakness. In an ideal world, environmental managers would educate and motivate people and organizations to genuinely seek to avoid polluting. In developed countries that has since been started to happen.

In most of the cases, environmental damage has become evident only years after it has been done. In the meantime, the body responsible has closed down or it is too late to enforce law to claim damages. The polluter pays approach seeks to make it difficult for responsible parties to escape damages and ensure that the penalty is enough to deter. If control is through licensing, the applicant must convince the authorities that difficulties will not arise. And for this, risk assessment and impact assessment are useful.

The polluter pays principle shall make the actors to internalize costs of their activities, which tends to increase business efficiency. Drive to adopt the polluter pays principle has been given by disasters like that of Bhopal in 1984. Further, the development of eco-efficiency has further prompted adoption of the polluter pays principle, because it can enable wastes to become useful by-products thus improving profits.

The precautionary principle

The precautionary principle has no definite definition, we can only elaborate it. It can be described as and general advisory to institutionalized caution. It is constructed around the goal of preventing environmental harm rather than reacting to it. The precautionary principle evolves around the components of taking preventative action in the face of uncertainty and shifting the burden of proof to the proponent of a development. It comprises of exploring a wide range of alternatives and efforts to avoid unwanted impacts, thus increasing possible public participation in decision making.

Acceptance of the precautionary principle in environment and other policy implementation means that regulatory action is likely to precede full scientific certainty about an issue. Lack of evidence and knowledge has no reason for inaction. So, it risks costs and sometimes delaying development.

The precautionary principle is widely accepted in western countries and international regulations. Time and again, United Nations has urged widespread use of the precautionary principle, but, surprisingly, failed to persuade United States to accept as there is no universal agreement on the definition of its approach there, as a firm and precise principle of law.

However, there have been a lot of appraisals of the use of the precautionary principle. Some advocates it to be discarded, once for all and go for general policies. But most accept it as a valuable tool when serious and possibly irreversible impacts are possible.

A precautionary principle approach is useful for social development as well as environmental matters. In developing countries, poor and less fortunate people have little in the way of security, if things like land reforms or agricultural innovations, among others, fail. Development efforts and preparations must be ready to give aid if there are problems. There is also the question of how much a society can afford to pay to support a precautionary principle approach.

Although, some countries lagged behind in accepting the precautionary principle, being United States in forefront, precautionary principle approach certainly has played an important role in developing some key tools which support it. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) and social impact assessment (SIA) are among others. Such impact assessment effectively navies developers to guise before to go for dive.

If problems are anticipated, think twice and delay acting until there can be effective either avoidance or mitigation of it. It is like a speed bump on the road to warn of problems ahead. It requires prompt slowing down to deal with them.

The United states has also started to take steps in  promoting legislations towards the precautionary principles in the shape of ensuring margins of safety while designing technology, certifying drugs or pesticides including setting standards for pollution measurement. In accepting precautionary principles, its regulation and enforcing can be problematic.

In nut shell, precautionary principle demands ambitious thinking looking for causes of problems rather than fixing to symptoms. Some environmentalists are of the opinion that the precautionary principle might be undesirable if it encouraged pessimism. This causes planners to abandon proposals rather than going ahead and building with a margin of safety.

Hence efforts be made to find ways which pay off beneficially even if predictions prove to be wrong. Sometimes the payoff is direct and sometimes a useful opportunity is created. Organizations must act sufficiently in a precautionary way that there are effective technical solutions for risk decisions.

Another problem with the precautionary principle is that it can be anti-democratic in a way it demands expenditure before a law or regulation has been broken or damage done, without the state or anyone else necessarily proving there is a problem.

Last but not the least is that adoption of precautionary principle approach is spasmodic. The governments may prepare against perceived threats known to be likely to occur, as floods and earthquakes, these tend to be dealt with after they have happened.