Managing Our Environment

Managing is not the same as protecting

It is easy to read a topic called managing our environment as though it were a topic about being in favour of the environment. It is not, and answers written that way score poorly. Management means DECIDING, and the reason environmental decisions are difficult is not that people disagree about whether clean air and clean water are good. Almost nobody disagrees about that. They are difficult because every option hands benefits to some people and costs to others, and because the benefits and the costs usually land in different places and at different times. A recycling centre has to stand somewhere, and the streets nearest it carry the traffic while the whole town gets the benefit. Closing a power station delivers cleaner air for decades and takes away a town supply of jobs within a year. A coastal defence protects one stretch and, by changing how material moves along the shore, can take sand from the next. So the geography of environmental management is a geography of WHO and WHERE and WHEN, and this module teaches three questions that unlock almost any decision you are given. What is the resource, and who uses it. At what scale is the decision being made. And who bears the cost of the option chosen.

Five words for a decision

These are the words that turn an opinion about the environment into an answer about management.

Who gains and who pays?

What makes management sustainable?

A forest is used for timber. Which arrangement best deserves to be called sustainable management?

• Cutting is kept to the rate at which the forest grows back, so the same timber is available to people later
• Cutting stops altogether and the forest is left untouched
• Cutting continues at any rate, provided something is replanted each year
• Cutting is allowed only by people who hold a permit

Two kinds of resource, two kinds of problem

The management question is not the same for both, and answers that treat them alike lose marks.

Evaluate a decision in this order

Five steps for answering a question about an environmental management decision. Put them into the order that produces an argument rather than an opinion.

• Name the resource, and say whether it is renewable or not
• Name who uses it and what they use it for
• Say at what scale the decision is being made
• Work out who gains and who bears the cost, and where each of them is
• Reach a judgement, and say which group the judgement is made from the point of view of

What a strong management answer has

Which THREE of these does a strong answer about an environmental decision contain?

• Named groups who gain and named groups who lose
• A statement of where the benefits and the costs each land
• The scale the decision is being judged at
• A statement of how strongly the writer feels about the environment
• A conclusion that both sides have good points and it is hard to say

Scale changes the answer

This is the idea that makes environmental management a geography topic rather than a general-studies one, and it is worth holding on to. The same decision can be plainly right at one scale and plainly wrong at another, and both judgements can be correct, because they are answers to different questions. A wind farm judged nationally supplies power without burning anything, and that is the whole case for it. The same wind farm judged from the three farms it stands among is a change to the view, to the land available, and possibly to the value of a house, decided by people who live somewhere else. Neither of those readings is a mistake. A new road judged regionally takes heavy traffic out of a dozen villages; judged from the one village it now passes, it brings the traffic that the other eleven lost. Two things follow, and they are both examinable. First, whenever you evaluate a decision, SAY WHAT SCALE YOU ARE JUDGING AT, because a judgement without a scale is not really a judgement. Second, when you meet opposition to an environmental scheme, do not reach for the idea that the objectors simply do not care about the environment. Usually they are reading the same decision at a smaller scale, where the costs are concentrated and visible and the benefits are spread thin. An answer that says so is doing geography. An answer that calls them selfish is not.

Complete the management sentences

A resource replaced by natural processes about as fast as it is used is _____. One not replaced on any useful timescale is _____. Managing use so that what is available to people later is not reduced by what is done now is _____. Anybody who gains or loses from a decision, including people who are never asked, is _____.

One decision, worked through

A stretch of woodland on the edge of a town is going to be managed, and three options are on the table. Run the three questions rather than reaching for an opinion. First the resource. The wood is renewable in the sense that trees grow back, but slowly, and the mature trees that make it valuable as a habitat and as a place to walk take many decades to replace. That single fact rules out treating it like a crop. Next, who uses it. People walk in it, a small number of households look out at it, a contractor would like the timber, and a set of species live in it and are not represented at any meeting. Now the scale. Judged at the scale of the town, the wood is one amenity among several and the timber is money that could pay for others. Judged at the scale of the streets beside it, it is the view and the walk and the quiet. Judged at the scale of the region, it is a fragment of habitat connecting two larger areas, and a fragment that is cut loses that role entirely. Finally the options, and the costs. Clearing it hands the benefit to the whole town in money and the cost to the neighbours and the species. Leaving it entirely alone hands the benefit to the neighbours and the cost, as forgone money, to everybody. Thinning it slowly takes some timber, keeps the canopy, and gives everybody a smaller share of both. Notice that no option costs nobody anything. That is what makes it a management decision.

Find the sentence that ignores who pays

Five sentences from an answer about a proposed wind farm. Tap the ONE that leaves out who bears the cost.

• At a national scale the scheme supplies electricity without burning a non-renewable fuel.
• The households nearest the site lose part of their view and were not the ones who chose the site.
• The benefit is spread thinly across many people while the cost is concentrated on a few.
• The scheme is clearly a good thing, so the objections do not really need answering.
• Judged from the scale of the nearest village, the same scheme looks very different.

Write the judgement

A judgement earns marks when it names a scale and a group. Choose the option in each gap.

The management run

Five quick questions on managing an environment. Three lives.

Three decisions about one wood

A council is deciding what to do with a wood on the edge of a town. Some of it could be cut for timber, all of it could be left alone, or it could be thinned slowly. You have been asked to write the evaluation. Work through three decisions.

• Where do you start?
• You find the wood connects two larger habitats, but the households beside it care mainly about the view and the walk. How do you handle that?
• How do you finish the evaluation?

Evaluate the decision

A town is deciding whether to build a large recycling centre on its edge. Evaluate the decision. You are not being asked whether recycling is a good thing.

• Say what resource is being managed and who uses it
• Explain who gains from the centre and where those people are
• Explain who bears the cost and where those people are
• Show how the decision looks different at the scale of the town and at the scale of the nearest streets
• Reach a judgement, naming the scale you judged from and who still carries a cost under it