This book focuses on environmental planning and management. Environmental problems are not purely scientific; some of the major problems deal with poor management and the inability to involve people in environmental decision making process. The approach taken in this book is to review environmental problems as they are affected by poor planning and management. Understanding of management issues involved will help to get top management to buy into environmental management. The tendency is for top management to view environmental management efforts as expensive and wasteful to an organization. However, when top management is exposed to the high cost of doing nothing and the lack of competitiveness as a result of poor environmental quality, it is more likely to buy into the idea of environmental quality and work towards achieving sustainable goals.
History has shown how powerful societies decline when natural resources are unable to be replenished. This book explores the challenges facing coastal areas during in the near future. It emphasizes beliefs that the convergence of seemingly disparate viewpoints and uncertain and limited information is possible only by using available risk assessment methodologies and decision-making tools such as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).
Focuses on the instruments and tools currently available to the environmental manager. A theoretical background to the instruments is given together with an overview of those instruments that are in common use today, with particular attention to the physical, economic, legislative and communication instruments.
A comprehensive overview and discussion of all major aspects of environmental planning and management, Professor Baldwin's textbook highlights the causes and interrelationships of environmental problems, emphasizing the important economic and ecological functions of the land as the stage for all human activities and the "source" and "sink" for all