4: What is IEM (Integrated Environmental Management)?
Environmental challenges are complex and interlinked, not only in themselves but also with social, economic, and cultural issues. The solution devised for one problem, can, and often do yield unintended repercussions, escalating into new environmental or socio-economic problems. Likely, the rampant usage of face mask as a precaution against COVID today will yield a waste management problem in the foreseeable future, reiterating the interconnectivity of one solution escalating problem for another. As discussed in our first ever ERST 633 class, the current trend in environmental panacea must be defined by the principle of comprehensiveness, integration, interdisciplinarity, and transregionality (such as the GERD). Today, more than ever, extreme natural events have increasingly become the new normal in many parts of the world. From extended droughts or severe flash floods to landslides and rampant wildfires, the severity of these climate calamities has been terrifying. As a response to these issues, the dire need for integrated management practices has never been stronger, and while conceptualizing the idea of “Integrated Environmental Management (IEM) I’ve labored my best to summarize some of the readings, as well as class discussion to frame the definition from my perspective.
“When you are living in a globalized economy and a globalized world, you cannot live in isolation; all the problems and solutions are interconnected…”
Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize winner
What is Integrated Environmental Management?
As alluded in earlier sentences, IEM for me somewhat stands elusive in its conceptualization. In a nutshell, IEM can be defined as a “method of thinking/considering the environment as a whole”. More comprehensively, IEM is a systematic effort to understand, through interpretation and analysis, the linkages between ecosystems, resources, and people. Through the amalgamation of a diversity of perspectives, disciplines, and practices, along with an appraisal of associated institutions and policies, the IEM approach attributes towards the assessment of an issue concerning the various dimensions of the environment in a comprehensive, inter-connective, strategic and coordinated manner (Adapted from Bührs). Furthermore, an IEM approach takes into account political, practical, and strategic concerns. Unlike in Bardwell’s paper, the significance of expanding cultural dimensions as part of the IEM analysis has also been included as a major component of holistic IEM during our class discussion.
As reiterated by Bardwell, our social connections and values attribute our mindset, and eventually, our mindsets make our perception. This perception then defines how we discern terminologies such as “Integrated”, “Management”. This aspect of IEM being a broad concept and relatively all-encompassing term can be quite difficult to define as it can mean different things to different individuals, and can vary from one region to another, one country to another. The vague and broad definition can mean all things to all people but will not be easily translated into an operational strategy. Furthermore, term such as “sustainable development”, or “sustainability” also elicits similar sentiment of elusiveness and all-encompassing reference. But amongst all the definitions and connotations associated with this terminology, I strongly feel if there’s one way simple of viewing this term, it is, balance and maintaining balance with everything that’s around it.
My experiences of engaging in conversation on topics related to IEM have illuminated my understanding of this concept to be, initially difficult but eventually simple, but transforming that simple ideology into an operational level is what defines teh sucess of it. The connection to “word soup” is so apt with the definition of “IEM” as there are a plethora of terms associated with IEM. Rather, it is more of a stew where different ingredients can be added as per the need and requirement. Although the recipe for cooking the perfect blend of stew is still yet to be found, and will unlikely be found, since everybody has different preferences of taste, I’ve outlined some ingredients that might help build the recipe of IEM.
Apply systems thinking: Address the component of inter-connectivity and inter-dependency of environmental, social, economic, cultural, and governance challenges across different sectors towards the objective of attaining resilience, incremental, and transformational change.
Develop a clear rationale comprehensiveness and theory of change to tackle the drivers of environmental degradation through assessing the potential risks and vulnerabilities, measure its resilience to expected and unexpected changes, and the need for incremental adaptation or more fundamental transformational change.
Adaptive implementation pathways: Devise a logical sequence of interventions, which are responsive to changing circumstances and new learning. Develop clear indicators that will be monitored to determine progress and success in achieving lasting outcomes.
Apply exemplary stakeholder engagement, including with local communities and indigenous members, not just government officials, from inception and design, through to project completion. This is crucial for identifying diverse needs and managing trade-offs.
Develop explicit plans and funding for good quality knowledge management including sustainable databases; simple, useful, and usable common indicators; face-to-face consultations; and building stakeholder capacity. This is essential for ‘lessons learned’, and scaling up.
Allow flexibility in project preparation to accommodate the additional transaction costs and time required to tackle complex issues through multi-agency teams. Allow flexibility for gaining incremental changes, rather than a big transformational one.
As mentioned above, there are many important interconnections at different scales, and levels: across different driving factors, socio-economic and environmental objectives, environmental issues, and across stakeholder groups. Thus, going forward to understanding more about IEM, I believe understanding these connections will be paramount to address environmental and development objectives simultaneously, including the SDG (Sustainable development Goals).
References:
Bardwell, L.V. (1995). Problem-Framing: A perspective on environmental problem-solving. Environmental Management, 15, 603–612. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02589620
Born, S.M., and Sonzogni, W.C. (1995). Integrated Environmental Management: Strengthening Conceptualization. Environmental Management, 19(2), 167–181. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02471988
Bührs, T. (1995). Integrated Environmental Management: Towards A Framework for Application (pp.1–19). Lincoln University. Christchurch, New Zealand
