4. 1. EM is a multilayered process in which
different types of environmental
managers interact with the
environment and with each other to
pursue a livelihood
•Critical thing: how environmental managers
seek predictability in their EM practices in a
context of social and environmental
uncertainty
5. 2. EM can be understood as a field of
study characterized by a set of
concepts and approaches that
interrelate in a distinctive way
•This emphasizes the need for
interdisciplinary understanding of
human-environment interaction
7. ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGERS
1. State
2. TNCs (Trans-national Companies)
3. International Financial Institutions
4. UN bodies
5. Environmental NGOs
6. Farmers
7. Pastoralists
8. Fishers
9. Hunters & Gatherers
8. STATE
Knowledge system
(KS)
Examples Level of environmental interaction
Modern science &
technology –
Specialization,
multidisciplinary
Department of
Environment,
Agriculture, Forest,
Wildlife, Aquatic
resources, Ministry of
Agriculture etc.
(various types of
managers)
1. Actively and self-consciously
manage the environment at the
local, national and global levels
2. Laws & policies formation for
national, regional and local levels
3. Law enforcement at all levels
4. REM at all levels
5. Participation in international EM
9. TRANS-NATIONAL COMPANIES
(TNCS)
Knowledge
system
Examples
Level of environmental
interaction
Modern science &
technology
British & American
Tobacco (BAT),
Nestle, various
TNCs dealing with
agribusiness,
forestry, livestock
1. Actively and self-consciously
manage the environment at
the local, national and global
levels
2. Direct management of large
enterprises (plantations,
factories, resorts etc.) &
contracting
10. INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL
INSTITUTIONS
Knowledge
system
Examples
Level of environmental
interaction
Modern science &
technology
World Bank,
International
Monetary Fund
(IMF),
Asian/African
Development
Banks
1. Active and self-conscious role
in influencing decisions about
EM at the local, national and
global levels
2. Policy (market friendly
environmental policies) global-
national state
3. Technical assistance for
projects
4. Loans
12. ENVIRONMENTAL NGOS
Types Examples Level of environmental interaction
International
National
Local
KS: Modern &
local/indigenous
systems
Green peace, WWF,
TMI, Friends of the
Earth, SDC
Every country has
-do-
1. Active and self-conscious role in
influencing decisions about EM at
the local, national and global levels
2. Awareness campaigns & protest
3. Campaigns, Projects
-do-
-do-
13. FARMERS
Types Examples Level of environmental interaction
Community
Family/Individual
KS: Modern &
Indigenous
Common-Pool RM
institutions (irrigation,
forest, local pasture):
e.g. CFUGs
Farmers
1. Actively and self-consciously
manage the environment at the
local and regional levels
2. REM at local and inter-local levels
Farm level NRM
14. PASTORALISTS
Types Examples Level of environmental interaction
Community
Family
KS: Indigenous and
little modern
Pastoralists (nomadic
& semi-nomadic)
CPRM institutions
(Rangeland & water
points)
1. Actively and self-consciously
manage the environment at the
local and regional levels
2. REM at local and inter-local levels
Herd management
16. HUNTERS AND GATHERERS
Knowledge
system
Examples
Level of environmental
interaction
Indigenous
Hunter
gatherer
communities
1. Actively and self-
consciously manage the
environment at the local
level
2. REM at the local level
17. • The benefit of the inclusive understanding of EM
relates to the question of indigenous versus
western positivist knowledge on EM
• The spread of western science around the world
has often been based on a rejection of indigenous
knowledge upon which local EM has long been
based
• The inclusive approach adopted will help to reverse
this complex trend by emphasizing the nature of
knowledge construction
• The different types of environmental managers
involved in a multi-layered EM are often different in
terms of their environmental impact, motivations
or interests
18. • They are considered as “environmental mangers”
as all their livelihoods are primarily dependent on
the application of skill in the active and self-
conscious manipulation of the environment.
• In terms of resource use there are considerable
differences among those managers:
• Farmers, hunter-gathers, TNCs, and state agencies
directly manipulate the environment (eg. Agriculture,
forestry, forest resource gathering, mining).
• Environmental NGOs and international financial
institutions derive their livelihood (part or total) from
indirect manipulation of the environment (eg.
Campaign, loan provision etc.).
19. UNCERTAINTY
• Social and environmental uncertainty has
always been part of human-environment
interaction
• Environmental management must deal with
a large range of uncertainties and
management must work to reduce
uncertainty
• Uncertainty differs from Risk as used in many
traditional EM
20. RISK AND UNCERTAINTY
• Risk is the likelihood of something occurring
• Risk assessment involves – using data, assumptions, and models
to estimate the probability of harm to the environment
• It emphasis on positivist science to quantify probabilities
of harm
• Traditional understanding of risk has been challenged in
recent years
• Risk is broadly a cultural, not simply a technical, phenomenon
• Risk is social and environmental conditions that influence EM
policies and practices
• Uncertainty will be used to denote the condition important to
decision making in EM
21. • Issues pertaining to deforestation, soil erosion, and
unequal power relations are at the heart of uncertainty at
the local level
• Global environmental problems (eg. Global warming or
Ozone depletion) and international conflict among certain
types of environmental managers reflect uncertainty at a
global level
• But, such uncertainty cannot be compartmentalized neatly
into local and global scales
• E.g. as issue of the link between tropical deforestation and global
warming illustrates, uncertainties at one scale may serve to
reinforce uncertainties at another scale
Scales and levels of uncertainty
22. Uncertainty can also be differentiated according to its
dimensions:
1. Environmental uncertainty,
2. Socio-cultural uncertainty,
3. Political uncertainty, and
4. Market related uncertainty.
23. 1. Environmental uncertainty
• These uncertainty derives from problems associated with both
environmental degradation and “Disordered” characteristics of
natural environmental processes
• Environmental degradation relates to the adverse consequences of human-
induced environmental change
• Multiple dimensions to environmental degradation includes:
• “taking” from
• “adding” to
• “replacing” and
• “modifying”
the environment
• The environmental degradation is not only a resource scarcity issue,
but also encompasses the full range and impact of human-
environment interaction
24. The multiple dimensions of
environmental degradation
Interact. Process Example Impact
Taking Taking resources Soil erosion Depletion
Adding Adding pollution Sewage Poisoning
Replacing
Replacing natural
with
Anthropogenic
environment
Plantation Simplification
Modifying
Genetic
manipulation
High-yielding
crop varieties
Uniformity
25. • Environmental uncertainty are indefinable and
indeterminate because they operate in mysterious
ways that can never be fully understood
• “Chaos theory” – contradict to conventional
wisdom, ecological processes do not tend towards
equilibrium & order and scientist are unable to
understand
• The emphasis of the traditional views of ecosystem
stability itself is positivist approaches in EM – by
suggesting that environmental degradation can be
measured, monitored and rectified through the
scientific knowledge
26. • Chaos theorists suggest such stability is an illusion,
then EM practices predicted on the idea of stability
are misguided
• These debate highlights some of the potential
dangers associated with adopting an approach that
does not acknowledge the complexity of both
ecological processes and the human ability to
understand these processes
• So, there are the possible limitations in “professional
science” as applied to EM
• Discussion resulted that ecological processes are not a
“given”, they may be inherently unpredictable,
environmental uncertainty in EM cannot be avoided
27. • For environmental managers, uncertainty is
associated as much with human behavior
and environmental processes
• Environmental degradation is one outcome of
human-environment interaction, and
uncertainty may be at the heart of ecological
processes, so the uncertainty is embedded in
human societies and associated with socio-
cultural, political and market activities.
28. 2. Socio-cultural uncertainty
•Emerges from complex individual and
group worldviews, attitudes, discourses
and behavior in society.
•Uncertainty often linked to environmental
issues
•What may be an environmental problem to
some, may not be a problem to others
•So, environmental attitudes themselves can
be a basis for uncertainty in EM
29. • Socio-cultural uncertainty is associated with
broader trends in society that may be changing
human-environment interactions irrevocably
• By product of industrialization has been the generation
of unwanted risks that have accumulated to such an
extent that they threatened the survival of humanity
• These risks are unevenly distributed in society, with the
poor typically more exposed to them than rich,
reflecting unequal power relation in society
• This qualitative series of socio-cultural changes – from
“industrial” to “risk societies” – compounds pre-existing
socio-cultural uncertainties rooted in worldviews,
attitudes and discourses.
30. 3. Political uncertainty
• EM are associated with political processes
• A central characteristic of multi-layered EM is that social and
environmental uncertainty is unequally distributed among
environmental managers
• Power may be the ability of one environmental manager to shift such
uncertainty to another environmental manager
• Poor environmental managers are often more susceptible to
environmental degradation and “hazards” because of their marginal
political and economic status in society.
• Status is the ability of wealthy and powerful environmental
managers to influence EM decision-making either through the state
or through interactions with other non-state environmental
managers, so as to minimize the social and environmental
uncertainty they face.
31. • More powerful environmental managers are better placed
than their weaker counterparts to use the state’s legal and
coercive abilities to facilitate their control of many
environmental resources and labor
• The poor and the week suffer disproportionately from
political uncertainty
• Yet, unequal power relations are ever in flux, and no
environmental managers is able to control political
processes permanently
• So, all environmental managers face political uncertainty to
a greater or lesser extent
• Such uncertainty is reflected in the policies of different
environmental managers.
32. 4. Market uncertainty
• The market services to link together consumers and
producers and is an important framework within which
environmental managers pursue their livelihoods
• Uncertainty for environmental managers derives from
fluctuations in the price, quantity, and quality of market
goods that often leave individual environmental managers
unsure of their livelihoods
• Market fluctuations may impact less severely on
economically powerful environmental managers (eg. TNCs)
than on their less powerful counterparts.
33. • The environmental, socio-cultural, political, and
market uncertainties may act in combination,
intensifying the overall uncertainty faced by some
environmental managers
• Each individual environmental managers will face a
different set of uncertainties – and, consequently,
will tend to respond through their EM practices in
different ways.
34. Examples
• A poor farmer may face environmental uncertainty linked to
ecological processes affecting the land
• That uncertainty can also reflect over-exploitation of that land
as the farmer attempts to maximize outputs
• The maximization of outputs may be linked to production for
the market and the need to increase production to
compensate for falling commodity prices
• Such market uncertainty is often made worse by political
uncertainty
• Poor farmers may be the victims of legal and coercive
processes that often leave them further marginalized in
society.
35. PREDICTABILITY
• The response of environmental managers is to attempt to
reduce uncertainty through the pursuit of predictability in
EM
• “Sustainability” is the adoption of EM practices that do not
lead to irreversible environmental degradation – simple
concept
• Sustainability focuses on environmental considerations, the
concept of predictability encompasses broader
considerations of human-environment interaction linked to
livelihood interests.
36. Example: plantation forestry
• When environmental managers create timber plantations,
they are pursuing predictability in EM – a process is initiated
where by income is derived from these plantations over a
period of year
• As debt over plantation forestry illustrates, it is yet unclear
whether these plantations are also environmentally
sustainable
• Evidences of soil erosion and nutrient depletion – raises
serious questions about the long-term ecological viability of
this form of EM
• This indicated the sustainability and predictability are not
necessarily the same thing.
37. • Predictability in general “is an attempt to
minimize social and environmental
uncertainty”
• Predictability is not a single undifferentiated
“good”
• It has several dimensions, and different
environmental managers attach different
significance to these dimensions
• There are four dimensions of predictability:
environmental, socio-cultural, political, and
financial
38. 1. Environmental predictability
•It is sought by environmental managers
to guarantee livelihood prospects based
on carefully calculated use of
environmental resources
•Three approaches are important for the
environmental resource use: precautionary
principle, sustained yield, and carrying
capacity approaches.
39. 1. Precautionary principle
• It is a response to uncertainty in the face of poorly
understood environmental thresholds
• Excluding these thresholds may lead not only to localized or
regional catastrophes, but also to the elimination of human
life on earth
• This principle is based on a paradox
• To enhance environmental predictability in EM, there is a
general need for “adequate” environmental data
• Yet, such data are often unavailable or exist only for selected
areas.
• Interpretation of environmental data can be a further problem.
40. 2. Sustained yield and carrying
capacity approach
• Seek to enhance predictability by setting
environmental use at a maximum level, yet still
hoping not to degrade the environment
• The sustainable yield principle applied by
environmental managers to specify the upper limits
of resource extraction
• It has been applied most effectively in the
promotion of environmental predictability by
environmental managers operating at a relatively
small scale.
41. e.g. commercial production level
in forest plantations
• It is straightforward to estimate the annual growth
of timber and the ecological requirements of the
plantation as a whole
• Calculations are possible that may enable a
maximum allowable cut of timber to be established
in a given area, consistent with long-term forest
maintenance
• The timber harvest is set at that threshold level
which, in theory, balances maximum exploitation
with long-term conservation of the resources.
42. ENVIRONMENTAL WORLDVIEWS
• Most useful approach an appreciation of the
impact of worldviews on EM practices was
distinguished between “ecocentric” and
“technocentric” worldviews
• This provides a useful means to situate at a
general level different types of environmental
managers according to their beliefs about
human-environment interaction.
43. •Ecocentrism - predictability is sought by
giving priority to environmental
conservation over exploitation
•Technocentrism - pursuit of predictability
through human ingenuity (i.e.
technological innovation) and intensive
use of the environment
44. 1. Eco-centric
• Advocate humans must live within well defined environmental
bounds
• Emphasize the need to manage the environment so that resources
are not depleted
• Criticize EM practices based on economic growth and global
capitalism, which are seen as the main contributors to
environmental degradation
• Earth has finite resources, and increasing production,
consumption and human population will inevitably destroy the
environment
• Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock, 1995) - human-induced environmental
degradation may ultimately eliminate human life on Earth.
45. 2. Techno-centric
• Emphasize technological and market-based EM solutions
• Both ecocentrics, technocentrics are confident that traditional
state environmental managers will resolve even the worst
environmental crises
• Extreme technocentrics or “Cornucopians" suggest that
there are no environmental crises at all
• Moderate technocentric views acknowledge the existence
of environmental problems but are confident that
technological solutions can be developed
• Technocentrics assert that human ingenuity through
innovative EM practices will avert any possible
environmental crisis
46. • Past resource shortages, such as fuel wood crises in
seventeenth-century England, have not only been
overcome by the use of coal, but have in the end
left humanity better off than before, thereby, they
argue, confirming that innovative EM practices can
overcome environmental uncertainty
• Differences between the ecocentric and
technocentric worldviews are perhaps most evident
over the question as to whether there is a
contemporary environmental crisis.
47. •Outside the western cultural context, it
has been argued that other cultures have
provided favorable conditions for the
development of an ecocentric worldview
•For example, the role of Buddhism in many
Asian societies has been associated with an
inclination towards a symbiosis of humans
with nature
•However, as recent research has shown,
Asian cultural contexts have not necessarily
resulted in sustainable EM practices
48. • Ecocentric and technocentric worldviews has shown
two contrasting ways of perceiving and
understanding human-environment interaction
• The importance of this discussion is threefold
1. How the policies and practices of environmental
managers may be influenced by broader cultural
constructs
2. An environmental worldview provides only a broad-
brush understanding of an environmental manager's
perception of human-environment interaction
3. Complex ways in which individual environmental
managers may absorb ideas from ecocentric and
technocentric worldviews into their own outlooks, it
may be possible to suggest a broad historical trend in
the development of societal environmental
worldviews.
49. ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES
• Environmental attitudes are complex, but they
can be classified into two:
1. Highly utilitarian, and
2. Staunchly conservationist
• These attitudes can be related to the
environmental worldviews:
1. Utilitarian attitudes - technocentric worldview
2. Conservationist attitudes - ecocentric
worldview
50. • Environmental managers with highly
utilitarian attitudes see the environment as a
source for economic wellbeing and profit (a
“utility”). e.g.
• Trees were regarded as “an excrescence of the
Earth, provided by God for the payment of debts”
• Utilitarian attitudes, therefore, may be associated
with unsustainable EM practices that contribute
to environmental uncertainty.
51. • Environmental managers who adhere to
strongly conservationist attitudes profess a
deep reverence for the environment
• They consider un-spoilt nature an essential
source of human survival
• In many cases, such attitudes represent a
reaction to the utilitarian attitudes
• Trees could not be reduced to their commercial
value alone, but were “the grandest and the
most beautiful of all the productions of the
Earth”
53. • Environmental attitudes of preindustrial
societies (e.g. hunter-gatherers) have been
based on a "deep respect" for the
environment
• If environmental attitudes prevalent in these
societies may have served to prevent
environmental degradation, sustainable EM
was not always the result
54. • Preindustrial societies have generally attached more
spiritual significance to their environments than
industrial societies
• As expressed through rituals, oral histories, or cultural
artefacts (e.g. masks, totem poles), preindustrial
environmental managers have articulated their often
complex relationships with wildlife, plants, landscape
features and other parts of the environment
• The fact that omnipotent (supreme) spirits were said to
inhabit certain parts of the environment - and that
these spirits would punish all those who degraded the
environment - is often taken as evidence that
preindustrial environmental managers tended to adopt
conservationist environmental attitudes
55. • In many cases preindustrial attitudes were
based less on a respect for the natural world
than on a fear of the potential perils of that
world (e.g. dangers associated with hunting).
• As such fears declined through familiarity, the
prohibition of over-exploitation of the local
environment may too have declined
• Further, colonial rule resulted in the
introduction of new practices that violated
previous spiritual sanctions on environmental
mismanagement but without spiritual
“punishment”
56. Example
• In mid-nineteenth century colonial Burma, shifting
cultivation, as practiced by the Karen indigenous
people, was embedded in a complex web of
permitted and prohibited environmental practices
associated with conservation-orientated spirit (nat)
worship.
• This EM practice was substantially altered with the
advent of new environmental policies based on
scientific forestry, which prompted a more
utilitarian relationship between shifting cultivators
and the forest
57. • In many cases, preindustrial societies showed
elements of both conservationist and
utilitarian attitudes to the environment.
• Although some preindustrial environmental
managers may have protected their
environment, such respect may have been
tempered by the necessity of sustaining a
livelihood.
58. • For example, between the tenth and nineteenth centuries,
the Maori of New Zealand developed a rich culture in which
many individual groups and tribes developed a range of
taboos and norms that effectively conditioned their EM
practices
• Some parts of their environment were imbued with mana (spiritual
energy flows), such that these areas were subject to specific taboos
often preventing over-exploitation
• The forests, in particular, were associated with strong mana and
taboos that resulted in the strict conservation of selected, and
especially spiritually significant, areas
• For example, Waipoua Forest in the extreme north of New Zealand was long
protected by local Maori groups because some of the large kauri trees in that
forest were sacred and could not be felled (e.g. Tane Mahuta the “God of the
Forest”)
• For these groups, over-use or depletion of resources may
have posed a severe threat to their survival in that there were
fewer alternative strategies available to them than to
industrial societies
59. • Whereas some Maori groups conserved certain spiritually
imbued parts of the environment, other groups also
ruthlessly exploited the environment as part of their EM
practices
• Not only did tribes during the early "moa-hunter" phase of Maori
culture (c. AD 750-1300) contribute to the extinction of 40 moa
bird species, they also cleared large areas of biologically diverse
forests for hunting
• Indeed, it is estimated that they destroyed at least 30000 km2
of
forest representing almost one-sixth of the original forest cover
• In this way, the moa-hunter tribes destroyed their livelihood basis
by increasing environmental uncertainty, resulting in their
eventual demise
• Such “utilitarian” EM practices clearly show the complexity of the
environmental attitudes of preindustrial environmental managers
60. • Notions of the “noble” savage living in total
harmony with their environment, therefore,
are a myth
• Although environmental attitudes of some
preindustrial environmental managers led to a
recognition of the need to conserve the
environment, others adopted a more
utilitarian approach grounded in the
immediate satisfaction of needs and, thus,
possibly undercutting their livelihood bases in
the long term
61. indigenous groups can ….. be somehow
"closer to nature" than we are …… even
when armed with all kinds of cultural
traditions and symbolic gestures that
indicate deep respect for the spirituality in
nature, they can engage in extensive
ecosystemic transformations that
undermine their ability to continue with a
given mode of production
- Harvey 1993
62. • In recent years scholars have nonetheless emphasized
the potential benefits of reviving preindustrial
environmental attitudes as the basis of sustainable
EM
• As a result of the growing environmental problems
associated with industrial development and the
spread of capitalism around the world, it is argued
that contemporary societies could have much to learn
from preindustrial societies about the appropriate
attitudes to take towards the environment
• The assumption here is that preindustrial societies are
closer to the natural environment and are more
sensitive to environmental perturbations than are
industrial societies.
63. Yet, “indigenous or pre-capitalist practices
are not …… necessarily superior or inferior
to our own just because such groups
support respect for nature rather than the
modern ……. attitudes of domination or
mastery”
- Harvey 1993
64. • Industrial development resulted in major changes
from preindustrial societies in how the environment
was used and managed.
• It has also been associated with new ways of
interpreting and appreciating the environment by
environmental managers, which were based
increasingly on utilitarian attitudes.
• The exact relationship between the advent of
industrial society and the growing prominence of
utilitarian attitudes is far from straightforward and
needs to be understood in relation to sweeping
changes that affected all types of environmental
managers operating within an increasingly multi-
layered EM.
65. •The mass movement of people from rural
areas to rapidly growing urban areas was
associated with the transformation of
many former environmental managers
into purely environmental users – that is,
migration in some cases involved a loss of
status as environmental managers
•Many farmers, for example, whose
livelihood had previously derived primarily
from "active and self-conscious
manipulation" of the land (farming) became
urban workers and consumers
66. • Industrialization and the associated mass movement
of people from country to city also had important
implications for environmental managers who
remained in their traditional occupations.
• Industrialization was associated with the
transformation of farming practices was linked to
altered environmental attitudes.
• Such factors as the consolidation of landholdings,
mechanization increasing reliance on chemical
inputs (e.g. pesticides), and greatly increased
production for the capitalist market - all had a
combined effect of encouraging a more
"businesslike" utilitarian attitude on the part of
farmers towards the environment
67. •Industrialization was associated with
further changes that altered structure of
multi-layered EM, with associated
implications for environmental attitudes
•Industrial development was linked to the
growing importance of nation states,
which gave the state a much larger role
in EM
68. • State environmental managers have been
largely characterized by utilitarian
environmental attitudes based on the
maximization of human use of
environmental resources
• State environmental managers sought to
teach utilitarian attitudes among some
environmental managers who directly
interact with the environment (e.g. farmers,
shifting cultivators), thereby promoting a
broader societal shift in attitudes
69. • Industrial development was also associated with the
rise of new types of environmental managers with
distinctive environmental attitudes.
• On the one hand, it gave rise to the development of
large business firms, and ultimately TNCs, which
have had an increasing impact on EM worldwide.
• These firms have been characterized by strongly
utilitarian attitudes linked to a quest for profit
• Industrial development has been associated with
the growth of a large and somewhat diffuse
"conservation movement" which has manifested
itself increasingly in the form of environmental
NGOs with staunchly conservationist attitudes
70. • The development of the conservation movement was
associated with a largely urban and middle-class
population that revolted against the “growths” of
industrial capitalism
• This conservation movement, and associated
conservationist attitudes, did not begin to have a major
impact on environmental attitudes until well into the
twentieth century, when the role of the NGO as an
environmental manager first became prominent.
• As a result, industrialization was initially at least largely
associated with the achievement of utilitarian attitudes
in society.
• This process stood in sharp contrast to the
predominantly (although not exclusively)
conservationist attitudes of preindustrial societies.
71. Environmental managers and
attitudes
• Increasing uncertainty in EM is linked to a shift in societal
attitudes towards the environment from preindustrial
conservation-orientated to industrial utilitarian attitudes
• Uncertainty also arises from the fact that different types of
environmental managers are more or less conservationist
or utilitarian in their environmental attitudes
• This kaleidoscope (complex type) of attitudes interacts in
complex ways.
• The different types of environmental managers fall into one
of three broadly distinctive attitudinal categories
(conservationist, utilitarian or both)
72. Environment
al managers
Predominant environmental attitude Associated EM practices
State
UTILITARIAN
Some state agencies more utilitarian than others (e.g.
fisheries vs environment). Possible shift in late 20th
century towards more conservationist attitude overall.
Promotion of maximum
fish catches, mineral
extraction, etc.
Environmenta
l NGOs
CONSERVATIONIST
Some environmental NGOs are more conservationist
than others (e.g. Earth First! vs Worldwide Fund for
Nature), but all prioritize environmental conservation
over exploitation.
Debt-for-nature swaps,
prevention of whale
killing, etc.
TNCs
UTILITARIAN
Strongly utilitarian due to quest for maximum profits.
Growing public pressure to adopt a more
conservationist attitude.
Clear felling of tropical
and temperate forests,
drift net fishing, etc.
International
financial
institutions
UTILITARIAN
Strongly utilitarian reflecting the influence of
Economically More Developed Countries (EMDC) state
backers and market principles on which international
financial institutions act.
Loans associated with
mega-development
projects (e.g. large dams,
trans-migration),
structural adjustment,
etc.
73. Environmen
tal
managers
Predominant environmental attitude Associated EM practices
Farmers and
fishers
UTILITARIAN / CONSERVATIONIST
Great diversity of attitudes depending on various factors
(e.g. size of operations, link to global markets). Significant
proportion of farmers and fishers guided by conservationist
attitudes, even though utilitarian attitudes tend to
predominate.
Industrial agriculture and
extensive land clearance for cash
crops, depletion of local fish
stocks; preservation of remnant
natural habitats on farms,
restrictions on over-fishing, etc.
Nomadic
pastoralists
and shifting
cultivators
CONSERVATIONIST
Do not always adhere fully to conservationist attitudes, but
the latter often required due to harsh environments that
nomadic pastoralists and shifting cultivators manage.
Increasingly forced to abandon conservationist attitudes
due to restrictions on their EM practices.
Rotational agro-pastoral and
agricultural practices with
adequate regeneration of
vegetation during fallow periods,
use of organic fertilizers (e.g. ash,
compost), etc.
Hunter-
gatherers
CONSERVATIONIST
Long-term, low impact EM practices generally based on
spiritually-sanctioned conservationist attitudes. Some
elements of utilitarian attitudes, but harsh environment
often encourages the primacy of conservationist beliefs.
Selective culling and propagation
of forest species, taboos against
environmental degradation, etc.
74. Factors associated with the utilitarian
attitudes of pioneer farmers
1. Believe natural resources in their new
homelands to be inexhaustible
2. Frontier thesis
3. Adapting to an “alien” environment
75. • First, they typically believe natural resources
in their new homelands to be inexhaustible
• Although the environment that colonial
Europeans encountered was not “untouched”,
the pioneer farmers often perceived it to be in a
pristine state.
• This perception was important because to these
farmers their new environment appeared
limitless in extent and its natural resources
seemed inexhaustible
76. • Second is frontier thesis
• The frontier is an imaginary bound any beyond which
limitless environmental resources seem to stretch
• It encourages a utilitarian attitude towards the
environment
• Considered “nature in the raw” was perceived as
menacing, threatening, alien “wastelands”
• A central task of New World farmers was the
transformation of these alien environments into
“cultural” landscapes
• These environmental managers were reinforced in this
quest by the prevailing technocentric worldview that
encouraged the development of “productive”
landscapes.
77. • Third is adapting to an “alien” environment
• Fear of the unknown helps in part to explain the fervor
with which pioneer farmers sought to manage the
environment in line with highly utilitarian attitudes
• Fear of the unknown reinforced utilitarian attitudes
among many pioneer farmers may be contrasted with
how a similar environment prompted many hunter-
gatherers to adopt conservation-orientated attitudes
• Hunter-gatherers reflected a spiritually based fear of
alienating the gods that were believed to be living in the
environment, whereas the pioneer farmer’s was driven
by the fear of "dangers" that lurked in the forest,
amplified in turn by religious notions of “mastery” over
the environment
78. • Pioneer farmers has explored some of the EM
implications of environmental attitudes based on
utilitarian ideas
• Many farmers may favor EM policies and practices
based on conservation-orientated attitudes, the
growing dependency of most farmers on the global
capitalist economy, and the associated reliance on
industrial-type agricultural techniques, suggests
that, a majority of today's farmers have to be
utilitarian in outlook
• This trend is increasingly challenged by the growing
influence of conservationist attitudes in society
79. •Utilitarian ideas have been more
influential in shaping the environmental
attitudes of different types of
environmental managers.
•Growing popular disenchantment with
the environmental degradation has
prompted the increasing popularity of
conservationist attitudes
•The possible connection between this
potential shift in environmental attitudes
and multi-layered EM is twofold
80. • One, it may be associated with a comparable
shift in the environmental attitudes of
selected environmental managers(e. g.
political leaders, state bureaucrats, TNCs, or
international financial institutions)
• Second, it may serve to enhance the position
of those types of environmental managers
especially noted for their conservationist
attitudes.
• In this regard, the role of environmental NGOs as
potential societal “opinion-formers” on
environmental matters may be of crucial
importance
81. • Environmental NGOs are the most recent
arrivals in multilayered EM, they are the only
environmental manager whose main objective
is to change the attitudes of other
environmental managers and the public in line
with conservationist ideas
There are different “shades of green” in the
attitudes of environmental NGOs:
82. First
• The revulsion of the urban middle classes in
nineteenth century Europe and North America
against the social and ecological effects of industrial
development was associated with the development
of a “conservation movement”.
• The so-called “romantic” thinkers (e.g. Thoreau [USA],
Wordsworth [Great Britain], Eichendorff [Germany])
were part of a major attitudinal change that was
central to the spread of conservationist attitudes
• They were critical of industrial “progress” and the
associated social and environmental uncertainty
linked to the ensuing degradation of the environment
83. • The growing disappointment with industrial and
increasingly urban development prompted a
glorification of the "natural" environment that was,
in turn, equated with non-urban areas (i.e.
countryside, mountains).
• This anti-urban and anti-industrial mood was an
important contributing factor in the growth of early
conservationist initiatives aimed at preserving
selected natural habitats (i.e. national parks), and it
formed the basis for early environmental groups,
such as the Sierra Club in the USA (established
1892), and the National Trust in Great Britain
(established 1894)
84. Second
• Growing concern over the rapid depletion of forests
and other natural resources, and the associated
awareness that such EM practices were leading to
resource scarcity and environmental degradation.
• An early critic of these practices, and the associated
utilitarian attitudes upon which they were typically
based, was George Perkins Marsh.
• He was particularly incensed by deforestation
worldwide: “we have now felled forest enough
everywhere . . . Let us restore this one element of
material life to its normal proportions, and devise means
for maintaining the permanence of its relations to the
fields, the meadows, and the pastures” (Marsh 1965)
85. • As one of the founders of conservation
movement, Marsh's ideas were especially
influential in shaping the content of
conservationist attitudes.
• In the twentieth century, a growing emphasis
on the idea of absolute limits to possible
resource exploitation further sharpened
concerns over resource scarcity.
• By this time, the conservation movement was
gathering political and social momentum and
environmental NGOs were a notable
institutional manifestation of this trend.
86. Third
• The conservationist attitude of environmental NGOs also
partly derives from a strong moral sensibility that it is
wrong for humans to eradicate other species
• Although there is some recognition that flora need to be
protected from unsustainable EM practices, this moral
sensibility is undoubtedly strongest with reference to fauna
• Many of the oldest environmental NGOs were created in
order to lobby for the protection of endangered species and
this concern continues to be reflected in the activities of
many modern environmental NGOs
• The common concern linking together these various
campaigns by environmental NGOs is based on the notion
that “non-human beings have intrinsic value” and that such
a recognition must be embodied in EM.
87. • Environmental NGOs pursue environmental policies
and practices based on conservationist attitudes
linked to anti-urban, anti-industrial, pro-wilderness
and species-protection concerns.
• There are notable differences in attitudes within the
environmental NGO community.
• The range of environmental attitudes among staff of
environmental NGOs is much smaller and is
confined to the conservationist end of the
spectrum.
88. • Environmental NGOs are differentiated according to
“different shades of green”, reflecting the depth of
their attachment to ecocentric worldviews
• The attitudes of some managers in environmental
NGOs reflect a “shallow approach” (i.e. reformist) to
conservation, whereas the attitudes of others is
indicative of a “deep approach” to the issue.
• The reasons for these differences are due to strong
correlation between socio-economic status and the
extent of “greenness”
89. • Environmental NGOs and farmers have further
complexity associated with the environmental
attitudes of individual (as opposed to group)
environmental managers.
• The adoption of these attitudes is linked to diverse
social and economic factors like education, income,
urban / rural residency, and gender
90. • Education, is seen as a critical factor in the
determination of environmental attitudes of
individual environmental managers.
• Environmental managers with higher formal
education tend to be more aware of the
implications of environmentally destructive
behavior than their poorly educated
counterparts
• This is seen to be one of the bases for their
greater support for conservationist measures
91. • Gender, female environmental managers may tend
to adopt more conservation-orientated attitudes,
their male counterparts more frequently adhere to
utilitarian attitudes.
• Various reasons have been suggested for this
discrepancy, notably male domination of political,
economic and scientific activity, or even women’s
inherent “closeness to nature”
• These and other socio-economic characteristics
relate to attitude formation in complex ways.
• These relationships add to the uncertainty
surrounding the cultural influences on EM policies
and practices.
92. ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES
• Environmental discourses link together the environmental attitudes
and worldviews of different environmental managers.
• They present an “argument” for given sets of EM attitudes &
practices, and a social and ecological justification for those
attitudes and practices.
• These discourses are “frameworks that embrace particular
combinations of narratives, concepts, ideologies and signifying
practices”, each of which is relevant to a particular area of
environmental and social action.
• Different environmental managers may promote different
environmental discourses, with the result that multiple discourses
are a prominent cultural attribute of multi-layered EM, adding
potentially further sociocultural uncertainty to such EM.
93. • Environmental discourses may be related to highly specific
EM issues and practices, or may be associated with broad
themes of human-environment interaction.
• Different environmental managers may promote different
environmental discourses
• The purpose of such discourses is precisely to try and create
a common understanding of environmental issues and their
management implications.
• Such an endeavor is proving increasingly difficult in the
context of intensifying conflict in multi-layered EM,
rendering the quest for predictability ever more
complicated.
Two examples of environmental discourses serve to illustrate
this point
94. • Scientific forestry linked to a highly specific understanding
of the utility and purpose of selected forests
• This discourse developed in the nineteenth century, but is
still prevalent in many parts of the world
• It suggests that the utility of forests resides primarily in the
promotion of long-term commercial exploitation of selected
key species for use in the global capitalist market
• Central to this discourse was the quest to measure
“progress” through quantitative indicators: volumes of
timber extraction, export figures, rate of replanting, or
financial revenue
Scientific forestry
95. • This discourse inevitably privileged certain
environmental managers over others.
• As a form of EM, scientific forestry has been a
vehicle for promoting the interests of states and
businesses who possess the legal, political, or
financial means to pursue this EM practice
• Scientific forestry is portrayed as an “ecologically
sound” EM practice that also promotes social
wellbeing through the generation of revenue and
employment
96. • This discourse is about the attempted reconciliation
of continued economic growth and environmental
conservation, and has become increasingly
influential in national and international policy-
making circles
• Once again here at a general level, declarations
about “correct” forms of human-environment
interaction are made, based on the general idea
that the global capitalist system needs to be
perpetuated
Sustainable development
97. • The discourse of sustainable development favor capitalist
over non-capitalist practices and also favor those
environmental managers who benefit disproportionately
from the global capitalist system, namely, states, TNCs and
international financial institutions.
• The environmental managers who are the primary losers
under that system (e.g. poor farmers, shifting cultivators,
fishers) have little opportunity to shape the discourse on
sustainable development
• Their “participation” and “approval” may be solicited by
traditionally powerful environmental managers seeking to
implement sustainable EM policies and practices, but the
role of marginal actors in multi-layered EM remains firmly
subordinate to more powerful environmental managers -
and this hierarchy is implicitly sanctioned through the
environmental discourse of sustainable development
98. • Discourses on scientific forestry and sustainable
development have not succeeded in reconciling the
differing interests and attitudes of environmental
managers
• Therefore, they have not helped to reduce
uncertainty in EM
• On the contrary, these and other environmental
discourses have generated massive opposition from
environmental managers threatened with further
marginalization because of the specific EM practices
promoted through those discourses
99. • Community forestry has been promoted to counterbalance
scientific forestry
• Its proponents suggest that the community forestry is much
better placed than the scientific forestry to deliver both
social justice and environmental conservation in terms of
forest management
• Just as with the discourse of scientific forestry that it seeks
to displace, the discourse of community forestry privileges
certain environmental managers (e.g. shifting cultivators,
small-scale farmers) over other environmental managers
(e.g. logging companies)
Community forestry
100. • This discourse has emerged in recent years to
challenge directly the discourse of sustainable
development
• The argument here is that the world’s growing social
and environmental problems can never be resolved
through development under the global capitalist
system precisely because that system is the root
cause of these problems
• This discourse asserts the need for a more locally
based and non-capitalistic set of EM policies and
practices
Anti-development discourse
101. • Environmental discourses are therefore the subject
of growing dispute among environmental managers,
not least because these discourses favor certain
interests and activities over others
• Rather than serving to reconcile the often different
environmental worldviews and attitudes of
environmental managers, environmental discourses
serve mainly as a means to assert and justify those
differing worldviews and attitudes and the EM
interests associated with them
• Thus, the existence of multiple environmental
discourses has only added to uncertainty in EM
![First
• The revulsion of the urban middle classes in
nineteenth century Europe and North America
against the social and ecological effects of industrial
development was associated with the development
of a “conservation movement”.
• The so-called “romantic” thinkers (e.g. Thoreau [USA],
Wordsworth [Great Britain], Eichendorff [Germany])
were part of a major attitudinal change that was
central to the spread of conservationist attitudes
• They were critical of industrial “progress” and the
associated social and environmental uncertainty
linked to the ensuing degradation of the environment](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/unit1-environmentalmanagementpoliticsand-250815083354-59976bae/85/Unit-1-Environmental-management-politics-and-pptx-82-320.jpg)
