ABSTRACT
This chapter relates the understanding of Environmental Management (EM) as a multi-layered process to an appreciation of how power relations condition EM practices, and how they may affect different environmental managers within that process. The politics of EM is, therefore, not only about unequal exposure to uncertainty and the unequal ability to enhance predictability in EM, but is also about the power to transfer uncertainty from stronger to weaker environmental managers. Further, state EM is conditioned by the formal political process insofar as constitutional arrangements and electoral practices influence the possibilities and constraints of state environmental managers. In other countries, control over EM is located more at the provincial or regional level, particularly EM activities associated with natural resource exploitation. The existence of a diverse range of non-state environmental managers reiterates that EM is a multi-layered process in which environmental managers interact in the pursuit of their political interests and objectives.
