Environmental risks and impacts - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 209

and impact assessments to create a more dynamic and more quantitatively based risk
management tool (read more about LCA in Chapter 10).
6 INTEGRATED AND RISK BASED MANAGEMENT OF THE
ENVIRONMENT
Contrary to simple sources and individual risk components, the study of complex inter-
actions between dangerous agents, environmental compartments and users needs an
integrated approach, dynamic and multivariate modeling, a number of modern engi-
neering tools to prognosticate fate, behavior and effects of environmentally dangerous
substances and matters.
Integrated means that all compartments and users of all environmental com-
partments are considered and studied together, taking into account the interactions
and interconnected relationships of living systems and their habitats, including man.
Humans should be considered as one of the users of the environment, with special
social, cultural and economic needs, which require sustainability in the sense of keeping
or increasing the level of their welfare.
The application of an integrated approach means that in daily practice the risk of
deterioration or the contamination of the different environmental compartments have
to be managed not individually (air, water, soil, etc.) as individual sources or single
effects, but all together and in a complex way. The damage or contamination of one
environmental compartment in order to prevent, reduce or eliminate the contamina-
tion of another is unacceptable. Human health risk from contaminated air, drinking
water and food should be summarized and evaluated as a total. One ecosystem mem-
ber (one species) is not decisive for the whole ecosystem; a healthy distribution of
all species should be the target. Managing the environment includes the continuous
monitoring of possible sources, transport pathways and the receiving environmental
compartments, as well as the health of the receptors, i.e., the users of the environ-
ment, both ecosystems and humans. Based on monitoring data, the risk should be
quantitatively characterized and if its value is higher than the acceptable risk, reduc-
tion measures should be implemented. Both point and diffuse sources, interactions
between environmental compartments, hazardous agents and contaminants and the
users of the land should be considered in an integrated way.
Management of the environment means the application of managing tools in
the broadest sense for all components of the environment, both biotic and abiotic
parts of the oceans, freshwater systems, land and atmosphere. Environmental man-
agement deals with all kinds of dangers of natural or anthropogenic origin, taking
into account the sensitivity of the environment and the actual land uses, as well as the
users and their exposures. Environmental management makes the decisions on land
development, changing land use or conservation of natural land, set up, start or end
of activities, establishes environmental monitoring systems and introduces preventive
(e.g. best option selection, innovation, closed production systems), restrictive (e.g. stop
production, ban on an agent) or other risk reduction measures such as remediation,
rehabilitation, revegetation of already contaminated land.
The best and the most efficient way of managing the environment is the preven-
tion of contamination and deterioration of land by unacceptable emissions and land