Lecture 05 NATURAL RESOURCE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

1. Lecture 05NATURAL RESOURCE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT Dr. Aneel SALMAN Department of Management Sciences COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad

2. Recap Lecture 04 • How to achieve sustainable development? • Integrated Natural Resource Management • Challenges for planners and managers

3. How to plan • Planning may proceed in several ways. • One agency may be responsible for leading and controlling the planning process without involvement of the population. • In contrast, an elected planning committee representing all different interests and perspectives within the community may be responsible for planning.

4. How to plan • Also, the analyses applied may be mainly quantitative or qualitative. • Planning models describe these different kinds of planning.   • Planning also varies regarding the unit for which planning is carried out (planning unit).

5. Planning Models • Planning models describe how planning may proceed. • Several models have been developed over the past decades. • Each reflects different values and assumptions about the nature of the world for which planning is done and about the role of the planner.

6. Planning Models • Two important ones for natural resource management and development are: • Comprehensive rational planning • Transactive planning • Note how they differ concerning the involvement of the local population in the planning process. • It is increasingly recognised that participative ways of planning are essential for natural resource management and rural development.

7. A model that explicitly considers uncertainty in prognoses about reactions of systems and limited knowledge of the planner – two challenges the planner is faced with - is adaptive planning. • New information and insights are integrated quickly and continuously in the planning process, and management is adjusted correspondingly.

8. Comprehensive rational planning • Comprehensive rational (synoptic) planning was for a long time the predominant planning model. • It is based on instrumental rationality when analyzing and making decisions (goal-rational) • Central assumptions: • There is always a right or wrong way of management, problem solving or development. In a positivistic view this model assumes that it is possible to find this best way, the best solution to all planning issues.

9. Central Assumptions • The environment is controllable by using scientific knowledge and modern technologies (belief in progress). • There is a common public interest. • Change has to be engineered from the top.

10. Assumptions and role of the planner • The planner is considered as a ‘homo economicus’. If he has collected and analyzed all necessary data his scientific knowledge and experience enables him to • identify the common public interest • identify all solution options • evaluate them against specific criteria (especially economic ones) • choose the best solution to all planning issues (benefit maximiser)

11. Thus, the planner is considered to be the expert capable to cope with the complexity of the world by using special techniques and technology to solve the relevant problems. • Role of the population • There is virtually no role designated for the people affected by planning.

12. Planning process • Planning is carried out in a centralistic way. • The planning process consists of six successive steps These steps are connected by feedback loops. They create the possibility to incorporate changes into planning as a result of new information or experiences. • Several modelling and analysing techniques are used, especially quantitative analyses. •  Thus, planning is considered as a scientific-technical process without any involvement of the public.

13. Criticism • undesirable ethical effects (planning as an objective activity without participation of the population on whom objectives and measures are imposed top-down cannot be considered ethically correct) • undesirable environmental effects or no successful results (as local knowledge and practices are not incorporated in planning and management, the measures are not adapted to the specific conditions, the population does not support the measures ordered from the top, and no inter-jurisdictional cooperation is intended in this planning model)

14. Criticism • doubts on objectivity and rationality (data are not always available and difficult to analyze, nor are the attributes of the planner always made known) • In reaction to the critics, many alternative planning models were developed, for example transactive planning.