Rethinking environmental management

Abstract

The field of environmental management developed as a technocentric problem-solving initiative, providing ‘practical’ assistance to state officials involved in environmental management. Since the field was largely associated with what state officials and associated experts ‘dO', little effort was devoted to understanding the political, economic or cultural forces conditioning the process of environmental management. The potentially significant contribution of diverse nonstate actors – for example, farmers, shifting cultivators, businesses or nongovernmental organizations – to this process was notably neglected. The field has recently become the target of mounting criticism with ‘environmental managerialism’ dismissed as a research agenda divorced from key issues in human–environment interaction.

This article argues that a recognition of the limitations of traditional understandings of environmental management ought to serve as the basis for a rethink of this field of study. This argument is developed in two stages. The article first explores how the traditional approach understands environmental management as a state-centred process, assesses diverse problems with that understanding and sketches an alternative way of thinking about this issue. The article then assesses how environmental management as a field of study is usually understood, the pitfalls of that understanding and the possible contours of an alternative appreciation of the field of environmental management. By adopting a more inclusive understanding of what environ-mental management is as a process, a broader appreciation of the nature of environmental management as a field of study can be obtained. The article concludes that a revitalized field can overcome existing deficiencies so as to be in a position to make thereafter an important contribution to research on human–environment interaction.