Introduction - Environmental Management - page 2

The point of Hardin's paper is that technical solutions alone cannot
solve environmental management problems. The environment does not
exist in isolation from human society or the economic systems that operate
within society. The environment both dei nes, and is shaped by, the
activities of human beings. In the past, however, there has been a tendency
amongst environmental managers to try to implement technical natural-
science-based solutions to environmental problems without any attempt
to understand the socioeconomic dynamics that underlie the context
within which such technical solutions are applied. This has often resulted
in misaligned management objectives and ultimately management failure.
Leach and Mearns' (1996) study of the fuel wood shortage in Africa
in the 1980s provides a good example of this (Ockwell and Rydin, 2006).
The fuel wood shortage was perceived by most environmental managers
as the result of a wood supply gap. In other words, demand for fuel wood
exceeded supply and the technical solution was simple - plant more trees.
Unfortunately, this tree planting approach failed to address the problem
of the fuel wood shortage for the many African people whose livelihoods
were af ected. It emerged later that the problem was not a simple issue of
a lack of supply, but a far more complex problem related to the nature
of ownership and use of trees as a source of fuel in Africa. Following the
broad-scale failure of the tree planting policy to address the fuel wood
shortage, social scientists working together with natural scientists later
demonstrated that the basic assumptions that dei ne the idea of a supply
gap ignore more subtle issues such as the fact that most fuel wood comes
from clearing wood for agriculture or from lopping branches valued for
fruit and shade. From the perspective of people af ected by the fuel wood
shortage there was not one simple problem of a lack of supply, but many
more complex socioeconomic problems associated with command over
trees and their products to meet a wide range of basic needs. This high-
lights the need to attend to a range of socioeconomic issues in environ-
mental management, such as the nature of property rights regimes, local
cultural practices and the subjective, often conl icting, understanding of
dif erent resource users (Ockwell, 2008).
The constructive outcomes of natural and social scientists working
together to solve environmental management problems have led to an
increasing awareness of the need for interdisciplinary approaches to envi-
ronmental management. This requires managers to combine insights from
both the natural and social sciences in order to ensure sustainable out-
comes. In an attempt to help current and future managers to understand
how they might complement their natural science approaches with insights
from the social sciences, this Handbook of Environmental Management
contains a range of case studies that demonstrate the complementary