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Newsletter and Technical Publications
<Technical Workbook on Environmental Management Tools for
Decision Analysis>
EM Overview: Slide No. 1
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Orientation Seminar on Environmental Assessment Tools For
Decision Analysis
Objectives
1. To enable local officials, policy makers and project implementors to
appreciate the nature of environmental decision-making and some of its basic
approaches
2. To provide participants with an overview of five Environmental Management
Tools, namely,
- Environmental Technology Assessment (EnTA)
- Environmental Risk Assessment (EnRA)
- Rapid Urban Environmental Assessment (RUEA)
- Environmental Profiling (EP), and
- Environmental Management Systems (EMS) for decision-making
3. To familiarize participants with the UNEP Training Workbook on EM Tools as
a resource for conveying the perspectives, approaches and coverage of these five
EM tools to local officials and policy implementors |
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EM Overview: Slide No. 2
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World Environmental Situation
"But the closing of a century is always a time
for reflection, for reviewing where we have been and considering where we might
be going. People will be asking themselves what the next hundred years -
indeed, on this occasion, perhaps, the next thousand years will hold for the
planet upon which we all depend."
"The Lonely Planet" by Claude Martin
President, World Wildlife Fund |
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EM Overview: Slide No. 3
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2000 Global Environment Report
(GEO-1, UNCSD)
Significant progress during the last decade:
- institutional development
- international cooperation
- public participation
- private sector action
Especially on E/i>
- legal frameworks
- economic instruments
- environmentally sound technologies
- environmental impact assessments (EIAs)
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EM Overview: Slide No. 4
| Focus: Institutional Development
Advances:
- decentralization of environment responsibilities from national to
subnational authorities
- increasing roles of transnational corporations in environmental stewardship
and policy development,
- increased integration of environmental policies and management practices
- increased global cooperation by governments
Limitations:
- lack of urgency in working towards a sustainable future due to:
- funding;
- political will to stop global environmental degradation
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EM Overview: Slide No. 5
Overall global environmental situation is still
gloomy:
- Renewable resources -land, forest, fresh water, coastal areas, fisheries,
and urban air used beyond their natural regeneration capacity;
- Greenhouse gas emissions levels: higher than stabilization targets
internationally agreed upon under the UN Convention on Climate Change;
- Natural areas and their inherent biodiversity diminished / stressed |
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EM Overview: Slide No. 6
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Key Ecological and Environmental Management
Perspectives
1. The existence of natural and unnatural ecological systems
Ecosystems
- basic functional units of nature
- provide the habitat for living and non-living elements of the earth
- serve as "venue" for energy movement that serve the earth's various life
support systems
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EM Overview: Slide No. 7
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Two Major Types of Ecosystems
Natural ecosystems
-uplands
-coastal and marine
- grasslands
- marshlands
- freshwater
Unnatural / adapted / manmade
("copies" of natural ecosystems)
- agricultural areas
- urban areas
provide evidence of changes in natural states resulting from environmental
impacts of various activities |
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EM Overview: Slide No. 8
| 2. The cyclical pathways of the earth's matter
and the crucial roles these play on the earth's environment.
Cycling of materials (e.g. oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, water, phosphorous etc.)
- basic ecosystem function
- enable earth to sustain itself without much need for human intervention
- maintain equilibrium and healthy existence across ecosystems
- also become the media for transporting environmental pollution (e.g. acid
rain from urbanization activities)
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