Moving Forward with IEM

Recipes for an Integrated Environmental Management approach

Buhrs (2009) believes that in practice, environmental integration is about enhancing the incorporation of environmental knowledge, values and interests in human thinking, decisions, actions and institutions as well as about promoting the consistency between environmental management efforts by a variety of ways and means. So if we know what a rough definition of guideline of what IEM is, how do we apply it to environmental issues?

To begin with, we need a set of integrated environmental management criteria to assess how the environmental problem is currently being managed. In my second IEM blog post, I briefly referred to an IEM matrix that was produced by Buhrs (1995). This is a type of IEM matrix that encompasses a broad range of initiatives and helps us to understand environmental problems by resolving the ‘x’ and ‘y’ questions, which can be very useful in the initial stages of IEM. 

From reading the literature on the topic of IEM, I have however come up with a ‘recipe’ style criterion that can be used to assess various forms of integration.

Google defines a recipe as “a set of instructions for preparing a particular dish, including a list of the ingredients required” or “something, which is likely to lead to a particular outcome”.

A recipe for preparing a cake is just as important to follow as a recipe to integrated environmental management if we desire to achieve a purposeful outcome. The missing of particular ‘ingredients’ may lead to a final result that we did not intend to achieve or do not want. We must remember the key term integration.

IEM Recipe

The following is my recipe for assessing the integration of environmental management. My recipe uses a combination of criterion types ranging from the meta policy level right down to the most practical approaches that can be undertaken in IEM.

POLICY Buhrs (2009)	IMPLIMENTATION Margerum & Hooper (2001) and Margerum (1995)	OPERATIONAL Margerum and Born (1995) and Margerum (1995)	GOVERNANCE Scrase and Sheate (2002)
A policy focussed approach involving the dimensions of cognitive, policy and institutional. There are two influences: (internal & external) External Forms: - EIA, CBA, environmental assessment/education. Strategic assessments, economic instruments & greening of institutions Internal Forms: - sustainable development, CRA, integration of environmental institutions, integrative principles, national councils.	Collaboration – encouraging the involvement of stakeholders and community into various stages of the process.  Consensus support and building of relationships Using leverage point mapping process Use of strategic direction involving data collection, remedial activities and decision making Laws and policies should support an integrative approach	A coordination focused approach using communication and conflict resolution Tools: Communication – information and data sharing, joint budgets, coordinating committees, joint planning process, Plans (projects, programmes, policy, other) Conflict resolution – additional research/analysis, appeal to higher authority, interpersonal or inter-group communication. Resources need to be available to support collaborative processes	Uses integrated information resources Involves multiple tiers of governance Include Integration of business concerns into governance View the environment holistically (development values) Ensure the integration of stakeholders into governance

Now that we have seen the tabular version of the criteria, the following are brief explanations for each individual criteria and why they may have significance:

Policy Criteria

The inclusion of a policy focussed approach that involves the internal and external forms of the cognitive, policy and institutional dimensions is critically important because there is a wide range of environmental and non environmental policies that contain significant sources of environmental pressure. Such policies may include economic, agriculture, transport and energy. These three dimensions determine the knowledge that guides human interactions with the environment, the intentional courses of action affecting the environment and the formal and informal rules that guide actions and behaviour affecting the environment (Buhrs, 2009).

Implementation Criteria

The implementation approach is fundamentally valuable as it provides for the practical approach to managing environmental issues. This criterion encourages a bottom up approach to solving environmental issues involving an emphasis on the collaboration of stakeholders and the community to encourage consensus building and healthy relationships, which can encourage effective decision making. Margerum & Hooper (2001) emphasise that stakeholder groups make use of strategic direction from the ground up which involves the collection of data, remediation and the direct influence on decision making.  Another key process that is advocated by Margerum & Hooper (2001), is a process called leverage point mapping. Because there is not one dominant policy or agency, but rather a multitude of actors where one shall not surpass another, the advantage of using leverage point mapping is that it forces stakeholders to specify how they expect to achieve their goals and objectives. By being able to map out the steps that all of the stakeholders may take, it is possible to recognise what they can and cannot achieve.

Operational Criteria

The emphasis of the operational criteria is to evaluate the coordination of the management i.e., how communication and conflict resolution processes work. The communication process is critical for the purposes of sharing information, analyses, setting goals and evaluating objectives ( Margerum & Born 1995). Because the process of coordination involves multiple stakeholders or participants bringing together multiple ideas, perspectives and biases, resolving potential conflict is very important. A lack of coordination can be directly attributed to inconsistencies within policies and objectives.

Governance Criteria

The governance criteria views the environment holistically using integrated sources of information. It includes involving the use of integrated information resources, integrating the concerns of businesses into governance, and ensuring the integration of stakeholders into governance. Ensuring facts and data are integrated into decision-making is important for the outcome of policies and ensuring the successful monitoring of future problems can be achieved. Any environmental decision that overlooks the interests of businesses imposes excessive costs on industry and threatens the goals of public policy (Scrase & Sheate, 2002). The final point of the criteria is ensuring that stakeholders are integrated into decision-making.

Approaches to institutional reform designed to enhance integration

The following are 6 suggested approaches from Buhrs (1995) to enhance the use of integrated management within environmental management:

1. Increase range of powers/ responsibilities in central govt

2. Tools to improve coordination, e.g., EIA requires integration

3. Integration of env. legislation & decision making - RMA

4. Devolution to lower levels of govt., e.g., RCs and DCs

5. Integration of environmental & economic decision making

6. Incorporating public input into decision making

Note there are also many other approaches that may exist, the following are two that were generated by our 633 class and lecturers.

·         Encourage cooperation between agencies, e.g., Memorandums of understandings

·         Devolution to community groups?

References:

Buhrs, T. (2009). Environmental Integration: our common challenge. Albany: Suny Press.

Margerum, R. D. (1999). Integrated Environmental Management: The Foundations for Successful Practice. Environmental Management, 24(2), 151-166.

Margerum, R. D & Born, S. M. (1995). Integrated Environmental Managemnt Moving from  Theory to Practice. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 38(3), 371-390.

Margerum, R. D & Hooper, B.P. (2001) Integrated Environmental Management: Improving Implementation Through Leverage Point Mapping. Society and Natural Resources, 14 , 1-19.

Scrase, I. J & Sheate, W. R. (2002). Integration and Integrated Approaches to Assesment: What do they mean for the environment? Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 4, 275-294