The complexity of managing natural resources in the context of the many driving forces that impact daily decisions requires integration at a variety of levels. As this chapter has revealed, complex problems are often a result of interconnected causes that require a more integrated response to deal with the complexity.
Margerum (1997, p. 459) notes that ‘the movement towards integration has emerged from changes in scientific information, the recognition of a wider array of issues and stakeholders, and the increasing complexity of environmental issues’. Management activities have to transcend traditional single management objectives and assimilate a wider range of political, organizational and natural boundaries.
What does integration mean? Ifintegrationis an important part of a growing trend in natural resource management, how is it applied? Hooperet al. (1999) provide an overview of integration in their paper and suggest that various mea- sures are available to achieve integration and that they fall along a continuum
with an increasing amount of intervention. Thus, at one end of the continuum, we have a minimal approach to integration, with voluntary actions such as goodwill, trust, respect and willingness to cooperate as the means of integrating interests. In the middle, integration consists of cooperative action where agencies and individuals follow prescribed goals and specified planning processes. Then, at the other end of the continuum, coercive action is taken in order to get individuals and agencies to cooperate. A new lead agency is formed to prescribe integration procedures and ensure cooperation amongst stakeholders.
More recently, Harriman and Baker (2003) suggest that integration has to be formed around a common interest. In other words, people tend not to integrate their interests without a reason. They propose that integration be arranged around a ‘substantive’ common interest and different parties can align their particular views and values to a shared theme. This is particularly important in field operations where time and budgets constrain a comprehensive approach to resource management. Integration of stakeholders’ interests and values needs to be strategic and focused in order to manage for the widest range of resource values within a given landscape.
Integration is a management action that selects both the process of how we integrate and onwhat issues. It is a deliberate scoping action that requires intervention. Integration is not always necessary, and some problems can be managed without integrating a wide range of interests or stakeholders. It can be a costly process that may not bring the appropriate benefits for the solution of a problem. An integrated approach is best used where there are complex problems and a need can be established amongst stakeholders that there is value in coordinating interests. The complexity of driving forces and their impacts on natural resource management provide an increasing need for integration in resource management decision making.
Summary and Conclusions
Although there are still thought to be small pockets of Stone Age civilization yet to be uncovered in the more remote parts of Polynesia, and there remain other societies that make very modest demands on the world’s natural resources, most societies, even in the developing world, make substantial demands on our natural resources. As we have seen in this chapter, the driving forces impact- ing resource and environmental consumption are increasingly interwoven and powerful and, when considered in total, continuously stretch the globe’s capacity to meet these escalating demands. Ironically, as developing nations transform into more complex societies relying increasingly on greater quantities and more sophisticated services from natural resources, and they increasingly join the ranks of the so-called ‘developed’ world, they progressively damage the earth’s life support systems and reduce the potential for a more sustainable society.
As various societies increase their standard of living, each family’s desire for a large number of children decreases. However, this decrease in the rate of
population growth does not necessarily provide environmental benefits. We have seen that increased development which reduces family size is a double- edged sword, as each surviving child makes proportionally greater demands on the globe’s natural resources. A child born in the USA or Canada, for instance, will consume approximately 20 times the natural resources of a child born in a more modest developing country such as Bangladesh. Given this analysis, it should be clear that overpopulation in the developing world is only a partial cause of the world’s environmental health problem. By far the greatest threat leading to environmental catastrophe comes from the collective behaviour of developed nations and their consumption patterns. These patterns produce excess greenhouse gases, destroy the atmospheric ozone layer and produce dangerous amounts of toxic residues.
After reading this chapter, it should now be obvious that the driving forces influencing natural resource and environmental management are multifaceted and complexly interwoven. They combine to threaten the vital life support resources of the globe, such as clean air, drinking water and acceptable levels of greenhouse gases. While technological development allows society increasingly to access once inaccessible natural resources and employ them with increasing efficiency, technology on its own has not provided any adequate solution to the problem of overexploitation and pollution. Our dominant cultural, market and political characteristics have combined to increase both individual and collective consumption in the face of increasing efficiency rather than to stabilize or reduce it. In the end, even though international conventions and signed agreements have targeted substantial reductions in consumption over the past 10 years, the reality has been acceleration in consumption, an overall increase in environmental pollution and an increasing escalation of the problem.
What can be done about this? While many environmentalists call for radical solutions to address the problem of environmental degradation and non-sustainable exploitation of natural resources that require drastic changes to our consumer society, IREM offers one approach to make resource and environmental management more sustainable.
As was seen in this chapter, the problem of sustainable resource and environmental management is a multifaceted one that does not lend itself to simple, single-dimensional solutions. Often there are competing interests, differ- ing perceptions or other factors such as demographic characteristics which serve as ‘driving forces’ that shape the individual’s and society’s perspective of natural resource use.
On the surface, IREM appears as a rather conservative adjustment to present-day resource management systems that is hardly likely to make much of dent in present-day practices. If applied carefully and sensitively, however, it has the potential to transform renewable resource management to sustainable levels and has the possibility of substantially reducing the pollution effects of non- renewable resource exploitation. As will be seen in the following chapters, the human dimensions of resource management are highly complex and extremely challenging. Just how IREM will be applied in some sectors and situations of high complexity remains to be seen.