ABSTRACT
We refer to the general challenge facing environmental management as the ecological crisis. There are many related terms that capture some of the challenges facing environmental managers, at many different scales – environmental issues or problems, environmental performance or quality, environmental incidents, accidents and disasters, etc. – but none, we argue, are as powerfully compelling and all-encompassing as “the ecological crisis”. In order to do justice to the scope and magnitude of the challenges facing environmental management, we must consider environmental problems in their many forms and dimensions and in all their complexity. Otherwise, we underestimate, disaggregate and oversimplify the challenges. The challenge or goal is often referred to as “sustainability”, but we prefer the term ecological crisis, with its more urgent connotation, its somewhat less anthropocentric meaning (sustainability of what and for whom?) and its vast, nearly imponderable implications. It is precisely our collectively weak grasp of the ecological crisis that reflects the attitudes and qualities needed for effective environmental management: humility, wariness and cautiousness are all in order. This philosophy can be thought of as a version of the “precautionary principle” in which action is to be taken on the basis of the weight of evidence rather than waiting for the point in time at which the evidence is considered to be conclusive – at which point it may be too late to respond effectively. The precautionary stance is proactive rather than reactive.
