Environmental planning and management is meant to guide and control human use of resources and interaction with the environment, in order to be able to impose some certain restriction on the use of space and land resources, and to ensure that the environments intrinsic quality is not adversely affected. In other words, it is a conscious process of making decisions that are geared towards safeguarding resources from abuse or misuse by humans.

The overall goal is to ensure the sustainability of the use of the natural and human environments. In the same vein, the notion of sustainability implies that humans derive the maximum benefit from the environment, both economically and socially while at the same time maintaining its intrinsic quality. Thus, the concept of sustainable development simply implies that we must meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.

[read more…]