The Concept of Development
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.
Development can be a goal or a vision, the application of a set of tools, or an attempt to steer a process. Developers are as equally varied a set of groups or individuals as environmental managers.
In both cases, the outlook of the individual very much influences goals and approaches. Both environmental management and development are fields which demand a multidisciplinary view. They make it possible for different disciplines, religious groups, classes and communities, ethnic groups, political outlooks and even genders to come together and seek mutually beneficial approaches to important issues.
Environmental management and development often move from advocacy to trying to achieve goals. Both reviews current and possible future scenarios to try and identify routes toward better conditions. In the last almost fifty years or so, both environmental management and development have had to address local and global issues, resultantly, sustainable development has become a goal for both. They seek popular participation or even empowerment. The need of the hour is to conquer both the environment and people.
The world today has a rich and a poor, with the pockets of poverty. Most of the world’s population aspires to the material lifestyles and consumption patterns apparent in richer nations. Others may be less secular and look forward to non-material development, sometimes, in the shape of growth in contentment, religious or cultural enrichment, or whatever it envisages. Even some have or have been entangled in military conflicts and wars and causing destruction to themselves, destroying their natural as well as developed resources further causing misery and poverty.
However, the material outlook is dominant and with growing populations, whether will the Earth’s environment support these hopes? The environmental manager is concerned with exploring what can be done to improve people’s lifestyles, given the structure and function of the environment, and then implementing it. Some countries have achieved what they and others see as development in the field of agriculture, science, industrial expansion, natural resource exploitation, colonial expansion, trade and intellectual skills. Development is thus widely seen as a goal and an ongoing process, but there is less certainty over its exact meaning or how it functions, or the strategy that is best adopted to pursue it.
Providing a universally acceptable definition of development is impossible, although most would accept that it is a process of change which can accelerate, slow, stagnate or run backwards. Planners, managers, intellectuals and inspired individuals can try to drive development forward in a wide range of ways.
Some see development as more a learning or evolutionary process. Others have tried to understand and model landscape development. Some see to explore ecosystem development and the others focus on personality development and learning.
Development is the economic component of a wider process. Modernization today is generally accepted to be a change toward economic, social and political systems. A group of people could develop in a range of ways. Efforts to improve human material wellbeing and security have often been poorly managed and civilizations have seldom lasted for more than a few hundred years before human or environmental problems or both have baffled them. Generally, the group in power has decided fashions and desirable goals but they are often out of touch with nature and the rest of society. The idea that humans could and should shape their world to improve wellbeing before death was little voiced before the sixteenth century. This was probably because lives were comparatively short and the ability to challenge the environment was limited. So most accepted hardship and disasters as the will of the gods. Religious authorities and states typically frowned on challenges to the status quo.
Various religions until recently, though applauded the nature but ultimately saw the world as created for humans to use and benefit from. This tended to prompt exploitation. Greed and a desire for economic growth have driven development. One could build on this and regard colonial expansion as the worldwide abnormal transformation, a catastrophic spread to form secondary cancers.
It was in the late seventeenth century that the belief took hold in Europe that material work could improve humanity rather than only through religious works. Then, from the mid eighteenth, scientific enquiry started. The results were impressive and today, environmental concern since the nineteen sixties, runs throughout much of the world’s development activity.
There is a sufficient hope that humans can control their development to optimise resource use and avoid environmental disaster. The view which has increasingly attracted attention is that humankind has a limited time to set in motion development that will sustain the world’s people indefinitely with a satisfactory quality of life to achieve the goal, it will be necessary to support too large a population and to cope with associated environmental damage, certainly for a sufficient long future, even several decades. Otherwise, human demands could outstrip global limits with catastrophic consequences unless there is effective environmental and development management. It is viewed that appropriate environmental and developmental management could avert disaster and allow livelihood improvements.
From here, the concept of sustainable development appeared and gained support. This is a way of somehow allowing development without exceeding the limits as an alternative to disaster.
The Concept of Sustainable Development
Sustainable development had become a prominent part of environment. Since the beginning of twenty first century, various authorities have noted that this perception can help integrate environmental management and developmental management. Sustainability and sustainable development are not the same, but are often used as if they were. Sustainability is the ongoing function of an ecosystem or say, use of a resource, and implies steady demands. Sustainable development is improvement of well-being and lifestyles of communities. It implies growing demands in the predictable future.
Sustainable development is a goal. It requires commitment. Generally, majority of people are reluctant in changing environmentally damaging lifestyles if it means paying more for necessities or even luxury items. And many are unable to do so due to poverty. There are governments and businesses, particularly corporates, that have genuinely embraced environmental care. It is the different chapter that some are ineffective and achieves little due to lack of commitment or economic reasons. Among others, there are businesses that hijacked it for their own ends. Certainly, authorities have ignored it either for economic reasons or calculated ones. Social changes are very much needed. Economics, governance and law, collectively, have to evolve to support environmental management. Humans always progressed toward less damaging ways. I personally feel, there is no choice other than use all tools available, such as, technology, education and establishment of new ethics, to achieve sustainable development. The task of environmental managers is to pilot this.
While the concept of sustainable development dates to around the decade of seventies, wider interest in sustainable development was prompted in the later years. Sustainable development offered a way to notify boundaries and develop. It did much to establish the concept and offered a useful definition to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future. However, that definition is not precise and is but one of a huge number.
Some see sustainable development as a goal, others as a standard shift, or as a guide-support for development. Supporters of sustainable development noted that the premise of sustainable development was that conservation and development are compatible because healthy communities depend on healthy environments that had three goals, viz economic growth, environmental protection, and the health and happiness of people. They in fact, do not try to find environmental quality in isolation from addressing social disintegration and poverty. The latter cause much more environmental problems so must be addressed. Tough environmental standards are not acceptable if they cause poverty. Hence, need arises to think, to what extent these ambitious goals be achieved on a wide enough scale, in real world situations, and within environmental limits.
The optimistic see sustainable development as a valuable theory or model like other fundamental rights say justice, speech or liberty. At the same time fear, there are too many problems for it to be widely put into practice. The majority, however, are seeking to put sustainable development into practice. The quest of sustainable development is helping to integrate socio-economic and environmental management. Now the prime objective of environmental management is a challenge to find effective and workable sustainable development strategies and governance. Such strategies will frequently overlap and interact, so it is necessary to ensure that they do not interfere with each other. It requires both a local knowledge and strategic coordination, ultimately at global scale.
There must be supportive human institutions. That must be robust as well as adaptable to meet unpredicted challenges. As well there must be suitable environmental, social, technical and cultural information about the past, the present and the future. The willingness to make sustainable development work is also necessary. Efforts will be required to spread ethics which value sustainable development, foster productive social interaction and make better use of knowledge. It is highly unlikely that all constraints and challenges will ever be fully assessed in advance, so resilience and adaptability are crucial to any strategy.
International agencies and businesses are eagerly promoting sustainable development. The range of tools and approaches for the management and promotion of sustainable development are growing. Approaches like strategic sustainable development, integrated appraisal, environmental management systems, a range of indicators for measuring progress toward sustainable development and economically sustainable economic development are being studied.
The Concept of Development Management
Development management has evolved independently of environmental management. However, it often overlaps. Development management is essentially the manipulation of interventions aimed at promoting development. Development managers focus on inter organizational relationships. They are skilled in dealing with political agendas and in co-ordination. Environmental managers are often failed to associate ecological and development management skills sufficiently. So, they need to work closely with development managers.
Current ideas about development and environmental management are much influenced by liberal democracies of the developed world. In some developing countries, the established legal system, civil engineering regulations and methods of governance are heavily derived from the developed countries. Hence, most of their environmental problems are a consequence of this. Environmental managers must remodel approaches, ethics, laws and so on, to better suit developing countries. This may take time because experts are still often trained in developed countries.
Recent developments have taken place during relatively stable environmental conditions. There is a rapidly increasing human population which stresses the environment. There are developmental stresses on the environment. Structural adjustment programs of the nations, rising oil prices and debt situations have reduced the funds available to many countries to deal with pollution, conservation and other challenges. Changes like loss of social capital, globalization, capital penetration and technological innovation have also been causing environmental and human welfare problems. The challenges faced by development management and environmental management are growing at pace.
The Concept of Environmentally Sensitive Development
Environmentally sensitive development is the use of what Nature provides to the optimum and maintenance of that use indefinitely, thus avoiding ecological or social breakdown to maximize human well-being, security and adaptability. This demands first-class management of the environment and human institutions. It requires ability to recognise and mitigate socio-economic and physical challenges as well as unfavorable changes. Environmental management goes beyond seeking sustainable development. It also promotes improvement of human adaptability, the recognition and reduction of threats to people as well as rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems.
We, at present assume that current living standards, patterns of governance and technological progress will continue and hopefully improve under prevailing conditions. There has been no major global natural catastrophe during recorded history. But now, humans are more numerous than ever before and they are upsetting their environment more rapidly, adding severe global changes to natural threats.
Though it appears that there has been huge progress, yet there is only a thin layer of technology and governance protecting humans from disaster. People vain fully expect scientific and economic progress will continue without too much investment on their part and that there is no risk of breakdown. The crucial qualities, which in the past ensured human survival, are intelligence and adaptability, but many people today have lost those skills. If technology and governance failed to compensate right now, modern humankind will be far less able to withstand change than their predecessors.
The Possible Strategies for Sustainable Management
Those pursuing sustainable development must be aware of gender issues as in many societies, women are active in agriculture, fuel-wood collection and gathering forest products because in such societies, women control families. There are societies where women have less share in active working. Hence, environmental management can support sustainable development by identifying key issues, threats, opportunities, and limits for establishing feasible boundaries and strategies to coordinate the diverse physical, biological and socio-economic concerns.
The earlier approach to environmental management was mostly relying on fines, regulations, licensing, inspections, bans, to quote. Such enforcement is giving way to voluntary and reward-based approach. Although there must be rigid rules and strict controls. The voluntary approach includes the adoption of environmental management systems, environmental accounting and its auditing and negotiated agreements. It pursues to encourage corporates and other business houses to take responsibility for environmental management. It is worried how much environmental management systems would eliminate the need for permits and other unvoluntary enforcement measures. These will be needed for liability reasons and to ensure minimum standards.
These are especially important for dangerous or nuisance activities. The world now uses a complex mix of self-regulation and enforcement, which may give adequate control over a compliant body’s activities. In addition, comprehensive and strategic overview and other controls are also needed. environmental management systems are becoming useful organizational and administrative tools to help establish common benchmarks. However, these are far from a complete solution of environmental management.
