Although environmental problems have existed since humans began to roam the Earth, “the environment” only became a focus of politics and policy in the 1960s. Still, despite more than five decades of environmental politics and policy, societies everywhere struggle with the environmental challenge. On many accounts, in many countries and globally, environmental problems and conditions have worsened to the point that there is growing recognition of an environmental crisis and even the possibility of human species extinction. Yet, many people and governments fail to recognise the fundamental nature of this challenge and continue to tackle it half-heartedly and ineffectively. This page aims to explain the nature of the problem and the challenge it poses.
Human environmental impacts over time
Unavoidably, humans always affect their environment. When they climbed out of the trees and began using tools to meet their needs for food and shelter, they impacted other species and parts of the natural environment. Rather than just acting out genetically determined patterns of behaviour, humans began to use their ability to think as a basis for their actions and interactions. Through trial and error, learning, thinking, and communication, along with good luck, they developed more effective tools, including fire and cooperative hunting techniques, which significantly increased their environmental impact. For instance, as Elizabeth Kolbert points out in The Sixth Extinction,1 scientific evidence is tilting towards the view that humans played a large part in the extinction of the so-called mega-fauna, including Australia’s giants around 40,000 years ago, and the American mastodon some 13,000 years ago, not very long after the arrival of humans. The idea that early humans lived in harmony with nature is more a product of Romantic thinking than based on facts. While some societies undoubtedly learned from their mistakes, others did not, and even if they did, this did not mean they stopped making mistakes. As Jared Diamond has shown in his book Collapse, societies’ failure to consider the environment has often contributed significantly to their demise throughout history. Environmental history is replete with examples of how humanity has behaved like the proverbial bull in a china shop. The main difference between early and recent history is that the bull and the damage have become much bigger.
There is no shortage of information, data, reports, and analyses that indicate that not everything is going well with the environment. Instead, over the past 50 years or so, the number of reports on worsening environmental conditions and problems has become something of a flood. Almost daily, there are new reports about the acceleration of global heating and its disastrous effects around the world, the ongoing decline of biodiversity, forests, and fisheries, the degradation of water and soils, and the continuous stream of pollution of all kinds and from numerous sources, some of which (like pollution from micro-plastics) have only been recently discovered. While the situation is worse in some countries than others, no country is immune to the adverse effects of environmental deterioration, which is increasingly seen as a global problem.
What is the problem?
When asking people about environmental problems, most will probably refer to some of the abovementioned issues. People may come up with different lists depending on their views on the problems that affect them, their community, or their country, and how serious they are perceived to be for the world. Thus, many people and governments consider the environmental problem a collection of issues that have already (more or less clearly) manifested themselves. These are problems that people experience or are reported in the media, often following events, incidents, or accidents. Yet, while understandable, this approach to depicting and addressing the environmental problem is highly problematic.
The environmental challenge is more than an extensive collection of particular environmental issues. It goes much deeper, as pointed out by environmental thinkers, scientists, and advocates many years ago. Environmental problems are interconnected because “the environment” is one indivisible whole and because the impacts of human actions, including actions aimed at addressing issues perceived, reverberate through the system. Thus, human actions have environmental impacts that are not yet fully understood because they have not yet manifested themselves. Similarly, actions aimed at resolving environmental problems are likely to have unforeseen and unforeseeable effects that generate new problems as they affect the entire or parts of the environmental network (for instance, by having synergistic effects), not just the targeted problem. The greater the number, complexity, and scale of human actions affecting the environment (notably due to the technologies used), the greater the environmental impacts, including many that are unknown and that manifest as new environmental problems or unpleasant surprises later on.
Thus, dealing with environmental problems poses a big challenge, which has grown ever larger with the increasing number, scale, and nature of human actions that affect the environment. While, in principle, human environmental impacts were more easily manageable in small societies using low-tech means to meet their basic material needs with a small range of goods, controlling the effects of complex high-tech production systems putting out an endless flow of essentially unnatural goods and services for millions or billions consumers is quite a different story. Unless one is willing to go back to largely local production systems aimed at meeting the basic needs of local or regional populations, and to forego most of the trappings of a high-tech society (including cars, computers, mobile phones, and the rest of it), relying primarily on local and regional environmental management systems (indigenous or modern) won’t do. Somehow, that whole production and consumption system must be controlled and changed to make it environmentally manageable and sustainable.
This may seem impossible given the task’s scale and complexity. Yet, the fundamental truth still holds that all human actions have a (potentially significant) effect on the environment and thus need to be considered in their totality. Furthermore, we need to assess these total and cumulative effects against what we know about environmental limits or boundaries that, if transgressed, have consequences for the functioning of ecological systems. But as people are not and can’t be all-knowing, and as they are highly divided socially and politically, the idea that humanity can effectively manage its actions’ environmental effects looks highly unrealistic. This seems to be confirmed by the ineffectiveness of global environmental protection efforts.
Thus, unless we abandon that idea and continue business as usual, we need to seek realistic and effective ways to address the environmental challenge. On the one hand, we must transcend the reactive and fragmented approach to addressing individual environmental problems. On the other hand, we need to find realistic and practical ways of integrating environmental concerns into our thinking, behaviour, actions, and systems (of production, consumption, energy, transport, and other areas). In fact, over the past 50 years, governments and businesses have already developed and used many such ways (and tools). The problem is that these environmental integration tools and efforts have had minimal effectiveness, for various reasons that I have analysed in Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge.2
It is often said that the key to tackling big problems and tasks is to break them up into smaller ones. This also applies to the environmental integration challenge. However, we need to ensure that these smaller tasks, actions, and means add up, are at least compatible, and preferably support each other (create synergies) and work towards the same goals. If this is not the case, the effectiveness of these efforts is likely to be limited and temporary, as problems are shifted or new ones created, and as the sources or drivers of environmental problems are ignored.
Where do we start if we want to ensure that environmental integration efforts add up and become more effective? In the first instance, I suggest that this requires a closer examination of the concept of environmental management. I use this concept broadly, encompassing how people interact with the environment. Integral to this notion are two concepts that must be unpacked if we want to find a more integrated (if not totally comprehensive) way of managing the environment: environment and management.
What is the environment?
The notion of environment came into vogue in the 1960s as it was recognised that many if not all of the problems affecting different aspects of nature (like the threat to and extinction of species, deforestation, soil degradation, and chemical pollution) that were hitherto referred to and handled as separate issues, were all interconnected. Environmental scientists and thinkers, including Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, played a crucial role in raising awareness of the environment as an interconnected system.
As Barry Commoner pointed out, the environment is a complex, interconnected biophysical system encompassing everything on Earth (and beyond). This complex of interacting living and non-living systems has also been called the ecosphere (or biochemical or biophysical environment). In the ecosphere, “everything is connected to everything else,” a widely accepted statement that was formulated by Barry Commoner as the first law of ecology to acknowledge “the existence of the elaborate network of interconnections in the ecosphere: among different living organisms, and between populations, species, and individual organisms and their physicochemical surroundings”.3
Humans, individually and as a population, are an integral part of this network. They are constituted by nature (cells) and depend on many billions of microbes for their bodily functioning. Directly or indirectly, humans are affected by everything that surrounds them, and everything they do affects the ecological network, as Rachel Carson pointed out regarding the use of pesticides in Silent Spring.4 Although the term environment is often defined as everything that surrounds people, from an ecological or biophysical point of view, the environment includes humans. There is merit in this definition as long as the biophysical interconnectedness between humans and their surroundings is kept in mind. The biophysical impacts of human actions and behaviour on their surroundings can adversely affect their own well-being and the systems on which they depend for their well-being or even survival as a species. Thus, environmental problems are defined here as issues that arise from human actions that alter the biophysical environment in ways that negatively impact humans and the biophysical systems on which they depend.
It is often argued that the concept of the environment is all-encompassing and thus too big to be helpful as a basis for human or societal decision-making and action. Indeed, if the environment is everything, it is plausible to argue that the concept loses its practical usefulness, as this would imply the management of everything as one entity. Obviously, it is necessary to be more specific about what falls under the environment if its management is to become practicable. There are several ways to do this.
One way is by classifying environmental problems. Rather than see and treat them all separately as single and stand-alone problems, we can cluster them based on some common characteristic(s). Specifically, we can distinguish three main categories, each representing a dimension of the environment. I label these ecological, resource and human-environment dimensions. These dimensions overlap to some extent with the three dimensions or aspects commonly linked to sustainability or sustainable development. Thus, this classification is not new and has been widely accepted, albeit subjected to many different and often conflicting interpretations. For this reason, I aim to define these dimensions clearly.
Environment dimensions
| Environment dimensions | Description |
| Ecological | The biophysical environment encompasses all ecosystems, from local to global |
| Resource | Biophysical elements (potentially) of use to humans, including animals, land, water, forests, and minerals. |
| Human environment | The biophysical environment shaped by humans, including the built environment, agricultural land, and human-made products. |
The ecological dimension
The ecological dimension refers to ecosystems. Although the ecosystem concept has not provided the scientific basis for environmental management that some initially thought or hoped for, few people now deny the importance of considering ecological or biophysical conditions, processes and interconnections for environmental management. Early efforts towards integrated management began when attempts to protect animals were expanded to encompass their habitats. Protecting natural areas, parks, and reserves was a step towards more encompassing environmental protection. More recently, the need to protect ecosystems, whether or not they have been set aside as parks or reserves, has been incorporated into the concept of integrated environmental management. In short, the ecological dimension of environmental management refers to the protection of ecological systems and biophysical processes, not only for the sake of humans (as the unravelling of ecosystems will cause all kinds of potentially severe problems for the well-being or even survival of humans and societies) but also for the sake of other species and the incredible beauty and sophistication of nature, which beats everything that humans can create.
The resource dimension
The resource dimension overlaps with the biophysical dimension because humans also use animals, plants, and ecosystems as resources. The term “resource” is defined here from an anthropocentric perspective as anything that is potentially useful to humans, whether living or non-living. In many parts of the world, the decline, depletion or degradation of resources, including land, forests, and water, has long drawn concern. In 1972, concerns about resource depletion reached the global level with the publication of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report.5 Although there have always been sceptics who deny (the seriousness of) problems of this nature, or who have unlimited faith in human ingenuity to overcome any such issues if they arise, few people reject the desirability or importance of the judicious management of resources. Rational or science-based resource management emerged as a crucial branch of environmental management in the 19th century. More recently, the need to manage resources (like soil, water, plants, and animals) in a more integrated way has become an important plank in resource management. In brief, the resource dimension of environmental management refers to protecting the natural resource basis on which humans depend for their well-being and survival.
As economics is the discipline that focuses on allocating scarce resources, this dimension of the environment is often referred to as the economic dimension. I prefer to use the term ‘resource’ dimension, as resources are substantive (biophysical) elements of the environment, whereas the economic dimension, as used in the sustainable development discourse, has come to refer to non-environmental concerns, such as economic growth, competitiveness, and profits. Thus, discussing the economic dimension of environmental management shifts attention from concerns about physical or natural resources and their long-term availability, in both quantitative and qualitative respects, toward monetary issues and concerns. This has led to the management of resources, foremost, as abstract economic entities rather than biophysical environmental ones.
The human environment dimension
The human environment dimension offers the most scope for confusion, as it can be interpreted to encompass all aspects of human life and society, or refer to the highly elastic notion of “quality of life.” Here, I use it to refer to biophysical environmental conditions that humans have shaped. For many humans, the environment is foremost about the human environment, the environment shaped by humans, including cities and modified landscapes. Many, if not most, environmental problems have come to be recognised as such because of the effects on humans of human-induced biophysical changes, such as pollution, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, noise, the decline of natural areas for recreation, and the physical conditions in which people work and live in general. Environmental management includes the management of these modified environments, and their further modification, for their (potential) impacts on human health and well-being. Admittedly, this dimension centres foremost on humans rather than the other two dimensions of the environment.
More recently, the concept of quality of life has become an increasingly important topic in environmental and sustainable development discourse. Governments have incorporated quality of life as a concern in their environmental plans or sustainable development strategies, and quality of life indicators are increasingly being adopted in environmental reporting systems. Nonetheless, the notion of quality of life is commonly interpreted very broadly to include the extent to which people are affected by crime, unemployment, insufficient income, social breakdown, family abuse, and other socio-economic conditions. Although such issues are important, they are, in my view, not environmental but social and economic issues that need to be addressed, in the first instance, by social and economic policies.
As stated above, the approach advocated here delineates the human environment dimension by confining it to human-induced biophysical phenomena. Pollution, the built environment, the noise generated by human activity or machinery, the food manufactured by humans, sewage disposal practices, access to, and the quality of, drinking water, housing conditions, and waste disposal practices are some of the most obvious biophysical conditions and processes that affect people’s well-being, many of which have been a target of environmental management for quite some time. There is no doubt that transport, urban development, and housing are policy areas that have, or should have, a strong environmental component, as they create or affect biophysical conditions that impinge on human well-being and ecosystems and resources. But while improving the biophysical conditions that affect people’s well-being can contribute to reducing crime and other social problems, we should avoid defining all human problems as environmental problems, as this threatens to make the environment concept again all-encompassing, and thereby meaningless and unmanageable. Crime, alienation, youth problems, care for the elderly, family breakdown, unemployment, and insufficient income are social and economic issues that are or should be addressed by social and economic policies and institutions.
Ultimately, where to draw the line around these three environmental dimensions is a matter of judgment. It must be repeated that these are dimensions of one, indivisible biophysical reality, not separate areas that can or should be managed independently. All environmental management must look at the linkages between them. However, clustering environmental problems and issues into these categories provides a starting point for examining their similarities and connections, as well as shared underlying sources, causes, and drivers. This approach also facilitates thinking about how they can be addressed through a more comprehensive or overarching policy with shared or common goals.
How each dimension is managed affects the other two dimensions and their management as well. This issue is discussed below in the section on “management”.
What is “management”?
A second part of the effort to make the interconnected environmental challenge more manageable focuses on the concept of “management”. Broadly speaking, management refers to how humans interact with their (social and biophysical) environment. Again, this is a potentially all-encompassing notion involving physical (hands-on) actions, monitoring, analysis, decision-making, planning, consultations, financial management, staff management, PR and media communications, or even “doing nothing”. To make this concept practicable for environmental management, it is helpful to identify some key dimensions.
Here, I focus on three integral dimensions of all management efforts. These are cognitive, policy (or practical), and institutional dimensions or domains. The cognitive dimension refers to the ideas, assumptions, knowledge and views on which management is based. The policy dimension refers to what people do (or deliberately do not do) based on decisions, courses of action and the choice and use of means and technologies. The institutional dimension refers to the rules and organisations that influence or guide the practical or policy dimensions.
All three aspects of management are intricately interwoven and interdependent: policies, decisions and actions are based on cognitive (management) frameworks and supported or guided by (formal and informal) rules and organisations, which are themselves based on cognitive frameworks. Yet, in practice, at a higher (political) level, the three dimensions are often treated as different “domains”, operating with their own frameworks and specialised staff (experts, policy analysts, legal staff). The degree to which management is coherent and consistent within and across these three domains varies. Different ideas or ideologies may compete to be adopted as the dominant cognitive framework on which policies and practices are based and by which institutions are, or should be, shaped. Policies are remarkably inconsistent and incoherent, especially between policy areas or sectors. And not all organisations and rules use the same script as a basis, with tensions or conflict between mandates and interpretations of (formal and non-formal) rules being common. It hardly needs mentioning that, as many policy areas work in “silos”, the development of a coherent and consistent management approach across the three domains presents a significant challenge.
This also applies to the environment, which is seen as only one of the many “areas” of management. As a result, the effectiveness of environmental management is likely to suffer if exposed to different and often conflicting ideas about what “the problem” is (the cognitive dimension), about what must or should be done (the practical or policy dimension), and if occurring within an incoherent framework of rules and organisations that serve different and often conflicting aims and interests.
The table below summarises the three management dimensions as they apply to the environment and presents some examples of the issues involved.
Environmental management dimensions
| Dimension | Description | Examples of issues |
| Cognitive | The ideas, knowledge, interpretations and frameworks that guide human interactions with the environment | Taboos on (access to or use of) parts of nature; environmental laws and regulations; rules guiding businesses, government agencies; weak environmental agencies |
| Policy | Intentional courses of action affecting the environment (if by governments: public policy) | Aims, objectives and practices, including choice of technology and other means, linked to agriculture, mining, energy use, transport, building, fishing, and manufacturing |
| Institutional | Formal and non-formal rules and organisations that guide actions, behaviour and practices affecting the environment | Taboos on (access to or use of) parts of nature; environmental laws and regulations; rules guiding businesses, government agencies; weak environmental agencies |
Thus, integrated management requires and involves building bridges between the cognitive, policy, and institutional dimensions to ensure that they are at least compatible and not undermine or negate each other (“add up”) and preferably support each other to achieve shared or common goals.
Thus, advancing the effectiveness of environmental management requires that environmental concerns or imperatives be incorporated into all three management dimensions of all “areas” that significantly impact the environment. This includes, for instance, the cognitive frameworks, policies, and institutions of economic management, energy, transport, agriculture and most, if not all, other areas that have been the traditional concern of governments as well as relatively new ones (like the ICT sector, biotechnology, and AI). We must strengthen the status of environmental imperatives in each management domain of each area of collective concern. Environmental considerations need to be given (much) greater attention and priority and integrated into each area’s cognitive, policy, and institutional dimensions. This need is what I refer to as the environmental integration challenge. The environmental integration page discusses how this challenge can and should be tackled. How this challenge has been addressed in practice is discussed on the environmental performance pages.
Conclusion
Although environmental problems have been on public and government agendas for more than fifty years, little, if any, progress has been made in tackling them. In large measure, this can be attributed to two things: First, the way environmental problems have been interpreted and approached (as single issues after they have become evident and severe) and their interconnected and deeper nature has been ignored. Second, because government efforts aimed at tackling environmental issues have been based on traditional management practices that operate in silos and that have failed to integrate environmental concerns and imperatives into all management dimensions (cognitive, policy, and institutional) coherently and consistently.
This page proposes ways to make the potentially all-encompassing nature of the environmental challenge more manageable and effective. These ideas offer the basis for constructing an environmental integration matrix that can be used to analyse governments’ environmental integration efforts and explore better ways of advancing integration. Yet, although such ways can be regarded as essential for tackling the environmental challenge more effectively, significant obstacles stand in the way of their adoption, some of which are discussed on other pages of this website.
References
- Kolbert, Elizabeth (2014), The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. London: Bloomsbury. ↩︎
- Bührs, Ton (2009), Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge. Albany: SUNY Press. ↩︎
- Commoner, Barry (1972), The Closing Circle. New York: Alfred Knopf. ↩︎
- Carson, Rachel (1962), Silent Spring. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ↩︎
- Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jörgen Randers, William W. Behrens (1972), The Limits to Growth. A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. (1974 2nd ed.). New York: New American Library. ↩︎