Beginning to talk

You're not open to monologue!

Last week I talked about the tricky and wicked nature of environmental problems and how an environmental issue will affect and be affected by a range of spheres and areas. Addressing something like this implies having a broad and comprehensive idea to avoid worsening things. Now, the question is how to get to see the different perspectives of the same issue. To achieve a complete vision, it is necessary to involve different people from diverse areas of knowledge, levels of action and with different interests in an issue, area or resource, getting them together and reaching a whole picture by joining ideas. Simple, isn’t it?

Begin working on a solution means there is a problem, but the question that many times is overridden is “Is there a problem? And... which?”. The answer to this will vary depending on who you ask so contrasting opinions and getting an agreement is a need to reach common understandings. Problem definition issues are heavily influenced by who is involved and what are the underlying interests. This is a strong point of IEM as it starts at the very basic beginning of getting people together to avoid future fights; this way, valuable time is saved and potentially irreversible mistakes are minimized.

This apparently easy solution that is getting people to talk and work together has proved as one of the essential and most delicate points in any attempt to manage an environmental issue, as the fact of joining the four big spheres that get involved in them (environmental, economic, cultural and social) means bringing people that will speak different languages and putting them to work together as equals. Shall they agree that, they need trust in fair-play. Trust doesn’t grow out of nowhere; it has to be built and that implies time. But taking some time to think before acting in a mad race will prevent a lot of suffering and it’s better than wasting years fighting or correcting past mistakes, as I will study by observing real cases during the next weeks.

The problem of enrolling the right people, handpicking them most of the occasions, can create doubts about the democracy and power balance of the process and voices from non-involved people, know-it-alls, or, also, dismissed but important players, can break the idea apart. So, trust is not only to be built among involved speakers, but to the affected society they represent. Transparency will help, of course, but I cannot argue that things must be done, environmental issues need to be addressed and nobody can be completely satisfied, especially if they are not willing to cede a bit to win another bit. That brings three questions to my mind:
1: How to manage the trouble makers?
2: What credit to assign to every one of the single voices which will raise after every problem setting?
3: How to get the project evolving and the trouble being solved?

It’s a messy problem but, probably, a priority one. As a beginning, I really believe that the sincere willingness of talking as equals is a powerful and promising step. It’s the first one to build trust and, consequently, long-lasting relations between people and communities; this is, eventually, the most powerful weapon a society has to do the best or the worse for the environment: the human factor.

[Theory ideas for this entry have been extracted from:

Bardwell, L.V. (1991). “Problem-Framing: A perspective on Environmental Problem-Solving”, Environmental Management, 15:603:612, and

Swafield, S. (1998). “Frames of Reference: A Metaphor for Analyzing and Interpreting Attitudes of Environmental Policy Makers and Policy Influencers”, Enviromental Management, 22:495-504.]

IEM... what?

Will it fit here ALL they're gonna teach me at school?

Welcome to this blog about Integrated Environmental Management, born as a class job for Lincoln University’s Master in Environmental Policy homonym subject.

Are you wondering what all this is about? The idea of this blog will be trying to explain the concept of Integrated Environmental Management and discover what are the advantages and why is so important to address issues properly, not only for readers’ discovery but myself as a (yet) student.

Environmental issues are not easy, so managing them isn’t either. If you check the literature, you will find as many definitions as authors but the general idea for IEM may be regarded as coordinate control, direction or influence of all human activities in a defined environmental system to achieve and balance the broadest range of short and long-term objectives [definition by John Cairns, Jr. (1991) “The Need for Integrated Environmental System Management”, in John Cairns, Jr, and Todd V. Crawford (eds.) Integrated Environmental Management, Lewis Publishers, Chelsea, Michigan.]. In other words, the ideas of sustainability, responsible exploitation of resources, coordination among interests and balance among people, levels and times frames are compiled in a wide concept that tries to bring people and the environment together.

So many times we see environmental issues that seem to become never-ending battles in courts, sources of fights and rivalries in communities and one more of the myriad of examples of failing tried solutions. All this happens because the idea of a single simple solution turns infeasible when dealing such a broad problem as environmental repercussions in almost every single sphere of leaving: the environment influences economy, society and culture and it’s influenced by all of them as well.

Working on such a big issue can seem overwhelming and certainly it is if you take into account that the repercussions of any action will be spread in a range of fields, but precisely for that, studying the way of doing things correctly is so important and takes so much time. But time and resources mean money, so how to bring a slow-motion method to a world that wants results for yesterday? How to avoid the temptation of the straight lines and the easy and magic solutions? How to identify all the connections, involve the right people, see the correct problem and find the adequate solution?

I will explore all of these topics in the course of the next weeks and, hopefully, this semester will end for you and me getting a deeper understanding of them.
Every week-end will be a new update in the blog. Keep tuned to discover more about this matter. After all, this is the future!