Implementing Environmental and Resource Management

Abstract

The environmental challenges of the modern era cannot be faced with scientific knowledge alone. Additionally, experience of how such knowledge can be com- municated and applied, an understanding of the inherent social factors as well as knowledge of the economic causes and effects, are all of equal importance. It is therefore important that practitioners of Environmental and Resource Management (ERM) combine the fields of environmental science, engineering, management and sociology. Environmental and resource managers may be found in all industry sectors, as well as in politics, commerce and academia, thus must be fundamen- tally transdisciplinary. This volume illustrates the broad range of work currently being performed by practitioners of ERM by presenting a collection of papers written by ERM Alumni from the Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany. The work in this volume, which has been divided into three distinct sections: Energy Efficiency and Innovation; Planning and Decision Making; and Limits to Managing the Environment, demonstrates the wide reaching implementation pos- sibilities of ERM as well as the range of knowledge and experience of it’s practi- tioners. The need for such a broad expertise in global environmental issues has been demonstrated repeatedly over recent years. Consider for example the damag- ing disconnect between climate scientists and climate change-denying politicians in the USA or the need to negotiate an accord on cash benefit sharing for genetic resource exploitation before any agreement on biodiversity protection could be reached at the COP10 in Nagoya Japan. These examples demonstrate a very cur- rent and serious breakdown in communication between socio-political and scien- tific bodies. Clearly there is a need for politicians who can communicate with ecologists, economists who understand scientific dialogue and scientists who can argue their case with social advocate groups. Graduates in ERM can provide a method of bridging these seemingly incompatible issues or even become special- ists in one field while retaining sufficient knowledge and experience in others to make that bridge unnecessary. This volume is the result of the 2008 BTU ERM Alumni Conference and repre- sents the collected works of ERM Alumni as well as young professionals and re- searchers who are involved in the field of ERM. The connecting theme of these works is the successful implementation of environmental and resource manage- ment in a wide range of issues including energy management, climate change re- sponse, fossil fuels, sustainable development and the economic, social and legal aspects of resource management in developing countries. The completion of this volume leaves us indebted to many people. First of all we wish to thank all authors from the various countries for their valuable articles, which made possible this comprehensive publication. We thank the German Aca- demic Exchange Service in Bonn (DAAD – Deutscher Akademischer Auslandsdi- enst) for its generous support in organising the ERM Alumni Conference and in publishing the resulting book. We are very grateful to Gerhard Wiegleb for his help in preparing this volume and for the comprehensive review of all chapters We also wish to express our gratitude to Ernest Fongwa, Ingmar Lippert and Sat- yanarayana Narra for their special assistance in the initial stages of the preparation of this book project and we are very thankful for their help at such a crucial time. We are particularly indebted to the excellent work provided by Robert Atkinson without whom the finalising of this volume would have been much more difficult. We hope that researchers, academics, students as well as teachers of ERM will find the content of this book valuable in their work, research and studies.