Planning for environmental factors

Developing ecological planning
Planning using ecological principles
Environmental planning
Implementing effective environmental plan

Context

Environment is the complex of climatic, edaphic, and biotic factors which act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival. Social environment is the aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual, organization, or community.

Implementation

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

Agenda 21 recommends adopting planning and management systems that facilitate the integration of environmental components such as air, water, land and other natural resources, using landscape ecological planning (LANDEP) or other approaches that focus on, for example, an ecosystem or a watershed.

In 1992, seven Thai cities joined together in a project to develop and apply environmental planning guidelines for community priority-setting on environmental issues. Stakeholder groups were established with municipal support to engage residents and key sectors in the process. Specific projects are being funded to address the identified priorities. Chaing Mai municipality has developed its own Local Agenda 21 within this process.

Counter-claim

A New York summit of 70 world leaders in 1997 examined progress since the Earth Summit five years before in Rio de Janeiro. They agreed that the global environment continued to deteriorate and that reversing the trend was more urgent than ever. However, nations were further away than ever before on agreeing how this should be done. Eminences from 108 countries signed a treaty to combat global warming, but emissions of carbon dioxide and its concentrations reached new records. Despite another treaty to protect wildlife, at least 40,000 more species became extinct. And despite agreement on the principles designed to protect the world's forests, more than 100 million acres (an area five times the size of England) was cut down since then. Far from increasing aid to the Third World to enable it to develop more sustainably, the rich have cut it by 10 milliard dollars, which is 20 percent when measured as a proportion of their gross national product.