ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the groups involved in environmental management. Adams (1990) identified two groups involved in environment and development:
‘the blind’ and ‘the dumb’. The ‘dumb’ may include people or governments who are uninformed of the implications of development, or are unable adequately to voice their views and affect change. The ‘blind’ may include consultants, scientists, economists, bankers, those bent on riches or blinkered by concern for sovereignty, religion, or national security. The ‘dumb’ are often marginalized people, victims of disaster or unrest, underclasses, or simply those without enough influence or power to realize what the ‘blind’ are doing and to lobby them to act when change is needed. The environmental manager has to try to disseminate information to the ‘dumb’, and possibly protect or empower them and, if need be, inform and control the ‘blind’.
