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Environmental resource management is the
management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...
of the interaction and impact of human societies on the
environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...
. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environmental resources management aims to ensure that
ecosystem services Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. ...
are protected and maintained for future human generations, and also maintain
ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syst ...
integrity through considering ethical,
economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...
, and scientific ( ecological) variables. Environmental resource management tries to identify factors affected by conflicts that rise between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to
environmental protection Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair dam ...
,
sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
, integrated landscape management, natural resource management,
fisheries management The goal of fisheries management is to produce sustainable biological, environmental and socioeconomic benefits from renewable aquatic resources. Wild fisheries are classified as renewable when the organisms of interest (e.g., fish, shellfish, ...
, forest management, and wildlife management, and others.


Significance

Environmental resource management is an issue of increasing concern, as reflected in its prevalence in several texts influencing global
sociopolitical Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how ...
frameworks such as the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future, which highlighted the integrated nature of environment and international development and the
Worldwatch Institute The Worldwatch Institute was a globally focused environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C., founded by Lester R. Brown. Worldwatch was named as one of the top ten sustainable development research organizations by Globescan Su ...
's annual State of the World reports. The environment determines the nature of people,
animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...
s,
plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...
s, and places around the
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...
, affecting behaviour,
religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
,
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
and economic practices.


Scope

Environmental resource management can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. It involves the management of all components of the biophysical environment, both living ( biotic) and non-living ( abiotic), and the relationships among all living
species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...
and their
habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
s. The environment also involves the relationships of the human environment, such as the social, cultural and economic environment, with the biophysical environment. The essential aspects of environmental resource management are ethical, economical, social, and technological. These underlie principles and help make decisions. The concept of environmental determinism,
probabilism In theology and philosophy, probabilism (from Latin ''probare'', to test, approve) is an ancient Greek doctrine of Academic skepticism. It holds that in the absence of certainty, plausibility or truth-likeness is the best criterion. The term can a ...
and possibilism are significant in the concept of environmental resource management. Environmental resource management covers many areas in
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
, including
geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...
,
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...
,
social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
, political sciences,
public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public ...
,
ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
,
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
,
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
,
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
,
psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
, and
physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemic ...
. Environmental resource management as a practice and discourse (across these areas) is also the object of study in the social sciences.


Aspects


Ethical

Environmental resource management strategies are intrinsically driven by conceptions of human-nature relationships. Ethical aspects involve the cultural and social issues relating to the environment, and dealing with changes to it. "All human activities take place in the context of certain types of relationships between society and the bio-physical world (the rest of nature)," and so, there is a great significance in understanding the ethical values of different groups around the world. Broadly speaking, two schools of thought exist in environmental ethics:
Anthropocentrism Anthropocentrism (; ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity in the universe. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. ...
and
Ecocentrism Ecocentrism (; from Greek: οἶκος ''oikos'', "house" and κέντρον ''kentron'', "center") is a term used by environmental philosophers and ecologists to denote a nature-centered, as opposed to human-centered (i.e. anthropocentric), syste ...
, each influencing a broad spectrum of environmental resource management styles along a continuum. These styles perceive "...different evidence, imperatives, and problems, and prescribe different solutions, strategies, technologies, roles for economic sectors, culture, governments, and ethics, etc."


Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism, "an inclination to evaluate reality exclusively in terms of human values," is an ethic reflected in the major interpretations of Western religions and the dominant economic paradigms of the industrialised world. Anthropocentrism looks at nature as existing solely for the benefit of humans, and as a commodity to use for the good of humanity and to improve human quality of life. Anthropocentric environmental resource management is therefore not the conservation of the environment solely for the environment's sake, but rather the conservation of the environment, and ecosystem structure, for humans' sake.


Ecocentrism

Ecocentrists believe in the intrinsic value of nature while maintaining that human beings must use and even exploit nature to survive and live. It is this fine ethical line that ecocentrists navigate between fair use and abuse. At an extreme of the ethical scale, ecocentrism includes philosophies such as ecofeminism and deep ecology, which evolved as a reaction to dominant anthropocentric paradigms. "In its current form, it is an attempt to synthesize many old and some new philosophical attitudes about the relationship between nature and human activity, with particular emphasis on ethical, social, and spiritual aspects that have been downplayed in the dominant economic worldview."


Economics

Main article: ''
Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...
'' The economy functions within, and is dependent upon goods and services provided by natural ecosystems. The role of the environment is recognized in both classical economics and
neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...
theories, yet the environment was a lower priority in economic policies from 1950 to 1980 due to emphasis from policy makers on economic growth. With the prevalence of environmental problems, many economists embraced the notion that, "If environmental sustainability must coexist for economic sustainability, then the overall system must ermitidentification of an equilibrium between the environment and the economy." As such, economic policy makers began to incorporate the functions of the natural environment – or natural capital – particularly as a sink for wastes and for the provision of raw materials and amenities. Debate continues among economists as to how to account for natural capital, specifically whether resources can be replaced through knowledge and technology, or whether the environment is a closed system that cannot be replenished and is finite. Economic models influence environmental resource management, in that management policies reflect beliefs about natural capital scarcity. For someone who believes natural capital is infinite and easily substituted, environmental management is irrelevant to the economy. For example, economic paradigms based on neoclassical models of closed economic systems are primarily concerned with resource scarcity, and thus prescribe legalizing the environment as an economic externality for an environmental resource management strategy. This approach has often been termed 'Command-and-control'. Colby has identified trends in the development of economic paradigms, among them, a shift towards more ecological economics since the 1990s.


Ecology

There are many definitions of the field of science commonly called
ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
. A typical one is "the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms." "The pairing of significant uncertainty about the behaviour and response of ecological systems with urgent calls for near-term action constitutes a difficult reality, and a common lament" for many environmental resource managers. Scientific analysis of the environment deals with several dimensions of ecological uncertainty. These include: ''structural uncertainty'' resulting from the misidentification, or lack of information pertaining to the relationships between ecological variables; ''parameter uncertainty'' referring to "uncertainty associated with parameter values that are not known precisely but can be assessed and reported in terms of the likelihood…of experiencing a defined range of outcomes"; and ''stochastic uncertainty'' stemming from chance or unrelated factors. Adaptive management is considered a useful framework for dealing with situations of high levels of uncertainty though it is not without its detractors. A common scientific concept and impetus behind environmental resource management is carrying capacity. Simply put, carrying capacity refers to the maximum number of organisms a particular resource can sustain. The concept of carrying capacity, whilst understood by many cultures over history, has its roots in Malthusian theory. An example is visible in the EU Water Framework Directive. However, "it is argued that Western scientific knowledge ... is often insufficient to deal with the full complexity of the interplay of variables in environmental resource management. These concerns have been recently addressed by a shift in environmental resource management approaches to incorporate different knowledge systems including
traditional knowledge Traditional knowledge (TK), indigenous knowledge (IK) and local knowledge generally refer to knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities. According to the World Intellectual Property Or ...
, reflected in approaches such as adaptive co-management community-based natural resource management and transitions management among others.


Sustainability

Sustainability in environmental resource management involves managing economic, social, and ecological systems both within and outside an organizational entity so it can sustain itself and the system it exists in. In context, sustainability implies that rather than competing for endless growth on a finite planet, development improves quality of life without necessarily consuming more resources. Sustainably managing environmental resources requires organizational change that instills sustainability values that portrays these values outwardly from all levels and reinforces them to surrounding stakeholders. The result should be a symbiotic relationship between the sustaining organization, community, and environment. Many drivers compel environmental resource management to take sustainability issues into account. Today's economic paradigms do not protect the natural environment, yet they deepen human dependency on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecologically, massive environmental degradation and
climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...
threaten the stability of ecological systems that humanity depends on.UNEP United Nations Environmental Program, 2002, "Integrating Environment and Development: 1972 – 2002", United Nations. Socially, an increasing gap between rich and poor and the global North–South divide denies many access to basic human needs, rights, and education, leading to further environmental destruction. The planet's unstable condition is caused by many anthropogenic sources. As an exceptionally powerful contributing factor to social and environmental change, the modern organisation has the potential to apply environmental resource management with sustainability principals to achieve highly effective outcomes. To achieve
sustainable development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The ...
with environmental resource management an organisation should work within sustainability principles, including social and environmental accountability, long-term planning; a strong, shared vision; a holistic focus; devolved and consensus decision making; broad stakeholder engagement and justice; transparency measures; trust; and flexibility. UN Global Compact 2010, 'Blueprint for Corporate Sustainability Leadership', "UN Global Compact", UN Global Compact Office, Pp 2 – 12.


Current paradigm shifts

To adjust to today's environment of quick social and ecological changes, some organizations have begun to experiment with new tools and concepts. Those that are more traditional and stick to hierarchical decision making have difficulty dealing with the demand for lateral decision making that supports effective participation. Whether it be a matter of ethics or just strategic advantage organizations are internalizing sustainability principles. Some of the world's largest and most profitable corporations are shifting to sustainable environmental resource management: Ford, Toyota, BMW, Honda, Shell, Du Port, Sta toil, Swiss Re, Hewlett-Packard, and Unilever, among others. An extensive study by the
Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (BCG) is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the Big Three (or MBB, the world’s three largest management consulting firms by re ...
reaching 1,560 business leaders from diverse regions, job positions, expertise in sustainability, industries, and sizes of organizations, revealed the many benefits of sustainable practice as well as its viability. It is important to note that though sustainability of environmental resource management has improved, corporate sustainability, for one, has yet to reach the majority of global companies operating in the markets. The three major barriers to preventing organizations to shift towards sustainable practice with environmental resource management are not understanding what sustainability is; having difficulty modeling an economically viable case for the switch; and having a flawed execution plan, or a lack thereof. Therefore, the most important part of shifting an organization to adopt sustainability in environmental resource management would be to create a shared vision and understanding of what sustainability is for that particular organization, and to clarify the business case.


Stakeholders


Public sector

The public sector comprises the general government sector plus all public corporations including the
central bank A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a centra ...
. In environmental resource management the public sector is responsible for administering natural resource management and implementing
environmental protection Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair dam ...
legislation.The State of Queensland: Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM), 2011, What we do. Retrieved 23 September 2011. The traditional role of the public sector in environmental resource management is to provide professional judgement through skilled technicians on behalf of the public. With the increase of intractable environmental problems, the public sector has been led to examine alternative paradigms for managing environmental resources. This has resulted in the public sector working collaboratively with other sectors (including other governments, private and civil) to encourage sustainable natural resource management behaviours.


Private sector

The private sector comprises private corporations and non-profit institutions serving households. The private sector's traditional role in environmental resource management is that of the recovery of
natural resources Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. ...
. Such private sector recovery groups include mining (minerals and petroleum), forestry and fishery organisations. Environmental resource management undertaken by the private sectors varies dependent upon the resource type, that being renewable or non-renewable and private and common resources (also see Tragedy of the Commons). Environmental managers from the private sector also need skills to manage collaboration within a dynamic social and political environment.


Civil society

Civil society comprises associations in which societies voluntarily organise themselves into and which represent a wide range of interests and ties.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2007, Glossary of Statistical Terms: Civil Society Organisations. Retrieved 23 September 2011. These can include community-based organisations, indigenous peoples' organisations and
non-government organisations A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from g ...
(NGOs). Functioning through strong public pressure, civil society can exercise their legal rights against the implementation of resource management plans, particularly land management plans. The aim of civil society in environmental resource management is to be included in the decision-making process by means of public participation. Public participation can be an effective strategy to invoke a sense of social responsibility of natural resources.


Tools

As with all management functions, effective management tools, standards and systems are required. An environmental management standard or system or
protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...
attempts to reduce environmental impact as measured by some objective criteria. The ISO 14001 standard is the most widely used standard for environmental risk management and is closely aligned to the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). As a common auditing standard, the
ISO 19011 ISO 19011 is an international standard that sets forth guidelines for management systems auditing. The current version is ISO 19011:2018. It is developed by the International Organization for Standardization. Originally it was published in 1990 ...
standard explains how to combine this with
quality management Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not on ...
. Other environmental management systems (EMS) tend to be based on the ISO 14001 standard and many extend it in various ways: * The Green Dragon Environmental Management Standard is a five-level EMS designed for smaller organisations for whom ISO 14001 may be too onerous and for larger organisations who wish to implement ISO 14001 in a more manageable step-by-step approach, * BS 8555 is a phased standard that can help smaller companies move to ISO 14001 in six manageable steps, *
The Natural Step The Natural Step is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in Sweden in 1989 by scientist Karl-Henrik Robèrt. The Natural Step is also used when referring to the partially open source framework it developed. Following publication of t ...
focuses on basic
sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
criteria and helps focus
engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
on reducing use of materials or energy use that is unsustainable in the long term, * ''
Natural Capitalism ''Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution'' is a 1999 book on environmental economics co-authored by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was the subject of a Harvard ...
'' advises using accounting reform and a general biomimicry and industrial ecology approach to do the same thing, * US Environmental Protection Agency has many further terms and standards that it defines as appropriate to large-scale EMS, * The UN and
World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
has encouraged adopting a " natural capital" measurement and management framework. Other strategies exist that rely on making simple distinctions rather than building top-down management "systems" using
performance audit Performance audit refers to an independent examination of a program, function, operation or the management systems and procedures of a governmental or non-profit entity to assess whether the entity is achieving economy, efficiency and effectivene ...
s and
full cost accounting Environmental full-cost accounting (EFCA) is a method of cost accounting that traces direct costs and allocates indirect costs by collecting and presenting information about the possible environmental, social and economical costs and benefits or a ...
. For instance, Ecological Intelligent Design divides products into
consumable Consumables (also known as consumable goods, non-durable goods, or soft goods) are goods that are intended to be consumed. People have, for example, always consumed food and water. Consumables are in contrast to durable goods. Disposable products ...
s, service products or durables and unsaleables – toxic products that no one should buy, or in many cases, do not realize they are buying. By eliminating the unsaleables from the comprehensive outcome of any purchase, better environmental resource management is achieved without ''systems''. Another example that diverges from top-down management is the implementation of community based co-management systems of governance. An example of this is community based subsistence fishing areas, such as is implemented in Ha'ena, Hawaii. Community based systems of governance allow for the communities who most directly interact with the resource and who are most deeply impacted by the overexploitation of said resource to make the decisions regarding its management, thus empowering local communities and more effectively managing resources. Recent successful cases have put forward the notion of ''integrated management''. It shares a wider approach and stresses out the importance of interdisciplinary assessment. It is an interesting notion that might not be adaptable to all cases.


See also

* Citizen science, cleanup projects that people can take part in. *
Cleaner production Cleaner production is a preventive, company-specific environmental protection initiative. It is intended to minimize waste and emissions and maximize product output. By analysing the flow of materials and energy in a company, one tries to id ...
* Environmental impact assessment * Environmental management scheme * Environmental manager * Integrated landscape management * ISO 14000 * Natural resource management *
Planetary management Planetary management is intentional global-scale management of Earth's biological, chemical and physical processes and cycles (water, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and others). Planetary management also includes managing humanity’s influe ...
* Political ecology *
Resource justice Resource justice (also referred to as "resource equity" or "resource governance") is a term in environmentalism and in environmental ethics. It combines elements of distributive justice and environmental justice and is based on the observation that ...
* Stakeholder analysis * Sustainable management


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Economic Costs & Benefits of Environmental Management
NOAA Economics
business.gov
– provides businesses with environmental management tips, as well as tips for green business owners (United States)
Nonprofit research on managing the environment
{{Authority control Resource economics Natural resource management Systems ecology Human-Environment interaction