ABSTRACT
Multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity have become part of the language of environmental education, research and management. Courses move between environmental biology, waste biotechnology, geographic information systems, risk assessment and even into ethics and aesthetics. An increasing acceptance about the complex nature of environmental systems and what is becoming recognised as the ‘seamless web’ between social and natural has accompanied a burgeoning of disciplines and skills under the environmental umbrella. While this is largely desirable two concerns must be expressed. Firstly, multi-disciplinarity can disappear into a generality which constrains the development of single disciplines. Secondly, and central to this book, is the concern that the introduction of more disciplines to the environmental melting pot is considered as the best way to represent the complexity of issues. This is a premature assumption if those issues are inadequately defined and the information requirements inappropriately specified. There is a danger that environmental education can become a catalogue of disciplines, information and techniques rather than a guide to learning how to structure issues or environmental problems (Lemon and Longhurst, 1996). It is this framework for structuring issues which should provide the basis for selecting the requisite contributions from different disciplines.
