ABSTRACT
As was argued in Chapter 1, environmental problems are human problems in two senses: humans defi ne a problem once they become aware of a decline in environmental services; human behaviour is often the direct or indirect cause of this decline, either directly through the degradation of environmental capital, or indirectly through settlement patterns in locations vulnerable to environmental hazards. That is why the analysis presented in these pages of environmental problems and environmental policy has been unashamedly anthropocentric.
