Introduction

Kia ora!

Yes, i'm in New Zealand! Some of you may be familiar with that Maori greeting which means hello!. Maori is the indigenous people of New Zealand. Anyway, welcome to my blog! As you can see from the blog tittle "Integrated Environmental Management" you may have had some idea of what I'm going to post about. Shortly, it must be about environment and something relates to it. Talking about environment is identical with nature and something natural. Lucky me to be in New Zealand which is famous with its image of "clean and green" country and study about environment here.

Integrated Environmental Management (IEM) is one of the courses which I take in semester 2 2013 study Master of Environmental Policy (MEP) in Lincoln University, New Zealand. Not only it has succeeded attract me to take it as an instrumental course but also it is compulsory for MEP students. That’s why I don't have choice at all except to immerse in the IEM world.

One thing that really interesting for me when I saw this course title in my academic planner is that IEM may provide a comprehensive method of environmental management. What an excellent approach I thought! Most of environmental management have not been success which may be caused by fragmented management (Cairns, 1991). While environment is a whole integral ecosystem that can't be separated each other, it is not possible to solve with disintegrated solution. I see environment as an engaged gear system which link each other. It rotates simultaneously, if one gear moves other gears will rotate as well. If one gear stop or there is a problem with it, other gears will not move as well. Environment is like that when an environmental problem arises it will influence other, as Buhrs (1995) express it “everything is connected to everything else” (Buhrs, 1995:1). For example, if there is water contamination, fish and vegetation in the water will be contaminated as well.      Therefore, an environmental problem needs to be solved in an integrated way due to the integrated system of environment. The solution for environmental problem in disjointed methods may even have caused another problem. I see IEM as an opportunity to manage the environment in a better way. As Buhrs (1995) identified IEM as “an approach to manage the environment considering its complex, multi-facetted and interconnected nature” (Buhrs, 1995: 1).

It means that IEM may encompass the whole component of environment and seen as a holistic approach. I'm optimist that this course will enlighten my view about how to manage environment comprehensively. Well, let me spread my enthusiasm to you by sharing my updated enlightenment with this blog. I have to post at least nine items in this blog including temporary topic about environment. I haven’t decided yet, as you know there are a lot of complex environmental problems. While I’m searching for the topic, I’m going to post some theories of IEM that I get from the class and course book on the next postings. At the end of this blog, I hope you and me and everyone who see this blog will get an idea on how to manage the environment in an integrated way.  

Reference

Buhrs, Ton. (1995). Integrated Environmental Management: Towards A Framework For Application (pp. 1-19). Lincoln University.

Cairns Jr., J. (1991). Chapter 2: The Need for Integrated Environmental Systems Management. In J. Cairns Jr. & T. V. Crawford (Eds.), Integrated Environmental Management (pp. 5-20). Michigan: Lewis Publisher.

Picture source from http://beyondplm.com/2012/11/15/why-plm-is-more-complicated-than-google/