NOTES

1. ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING
AND MANAGEMENT
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2. Introduction
• Environmental planning is deciding how to use
natural resources to achieve and maintain a high
quality of life.
• Environmental planning is done to help communities
to avoid or minimize air and water pollution, loss of
wildlife, the conversion of farm and forestlands, and
degradation of the built environment.
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3. Introduction
The environment is made up of three main land uses:
1. Natural areas that provide environmental services, including
wildlife habitats, wetlands, water supplies, most coastal and
riparian regions, national and state parks, and wilderness
areas; natural areas that also contain lands that pose
environmental constraints, such as natural hazards, including
floodplains and landslide areas;
2. Working landscapes, including farms, rangelands, forests,
mines, and recreation areas, that provide jobs and contribute
to the health of rural economies; and
3. Built environments of cities, suburbs, and towns that involve
the design of buildings, transportation systems, sewer and
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4. Introduction
• How these three land uses interact with one
another will affect the quality of the
environment.
• Deciding how, when, and where these land
uses should or should not change is the
primary challenge of environmental planning.
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5. Characteristics of a Plan
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6. Characteristics of a Plan
• A good plan must fulfill the following
characteristics:
–Comprehensive,
–General and flexible,
–Take a reasonably long time.
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7. Characteristics …
• "comprehensive" suggests that, to be useful, a
plan should encompass all geographical parts
of the community and all functional elements
that influence physical development.
• If the plan is not complete and if certain
critical features are omitted from
consideration, it will not provide the guidance
or detail needed to direct change.
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8. • Flexible:- If a plan introduces too specific
design it leaves little room to adapt to changes
that may result over the time horizon.
• By maintaining a more generalized and flexible
posture, the plan may accommodate new
changes and new needs.
•
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Characteristics …

9. • A plan must be forward-looking. Must be
forward-looking, i.e., look beyond the
foreground of pressing current issues and
consider instead the problems and
possibilities 10, 20, 30 years into the future.
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Characteristics …

10. • Elements of the environmental planning
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11. Elements of EP
• While plans will vary in content and format,
fundamental topics of interest and concerns
include: -
–Land use
–Conservation
–Public safety; and
–Environmental quality
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12. Land use - describing the
• Current characteristics of the land-use system,
future conditions that may arise, and
• Policies and programs directed at specific
land-use issues or development goals.
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Elements of EP

13. • Public safety - characterizing natural and
human-made hazards including geology,
floods, hazardous materials, wildfires, and
other potential sources of risk within the
planning area, along with policies and
programs designed to reduce human injury,
loss of life, property damage, and socio­
economic dislocations due to these events.
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Elements of EP

14. • Conservation - describes existing natural
resources within the planning area and
presents goals and policies designed to
enhance the conservation and management of
natural resources and open space, the
preservation and production of resources, the
promotion of outdoor recreation, and the
protection of public health and safety.
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Elements of EP

15. • Environmental quality – focus on pollution
factors and concerns such as those affecting
air, water, and soil
• ……with reference to existing pollution levels
and goals, policies, and programs
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Elements of EP

16. The Environmental Planning Process
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17. • Although the environmental planning process
appears as a sequential process,
• ……. in reality it is iterative, as all steps are
considered simultaneously, with changing
emphasis as the process proceeds.
• The process is always open to new information
about subsequent or previous steps at any time.
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The Planning Process

18. 18

19. 3.2 The Planning Process
• Planning begins with scoping, a key first step to
identify stakeholders and develop a work-plan.
• It continues with data collection and analysis:
Defining community needs and develop a factual
base of environmental conditions and analyze the
information and identification of Issues,
Opportunities and Concerns (IOC)
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The Planning Process

20. • Plan Formulation
–Draft a vision statement, goals, and
objectives
–Formulating alternatives,
–Assessing and evaluating impacts
–Selection of Plan
• Implementation, monitoring and evaluation of
the performance of the Environmental Plan
through an annual review, and make revisions
and updates /modification as needed.
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The Planning Process

21. Content of the Plan
1. Vision
• The vision statement describes what the quality
of the natural, working, and built environments
of the community or region should be in the
future.
• The vision statement serves as an overall policy
directive and as the foundation for a variety of
environmental goals and objectives.
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22. Content of the Plan
2. Goals
• Goals are broad statements reflecting a community's desires.
• The goals expressed the vision of the future and a means to
attain that vision.
• Examples
I. to ensure compliance with regional and federal
environmental standards for air and water quality;
II. to increase the recycling of trash into useful products;
III. to conserve the amount of land used for development by
promoting compact, mixed use development;
IV. to expand mass transit and thus reduce reliance on the
automobile and air pollution;
V. to increase the amount of public parkland; and
VI. to protect farmland from conversion to nonfarm uses.
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23. 3. Objectives
• Objectives spell out specific ways in which goals can be attained.
More than one objective per goal is often needed.
• Examples
a) Adopt a wellhead protection ordinance to limit development near public
water supplies.
b) Contract with a private recycling firm to increase the amount of trash
recycled.
c) Revise the zoning ordinance to allow smaller minimum lot sizes and a
mix of commercial and residential uses.
d) Explore funding for additional buses or the construction of a commuter
light-rail system.
e) Revise the subdivision ordinance to require mandatory dedication of
parkland or fees in lieu thereof.
f) Explore the creation of a local purchase or transfer of development
rights (TOR) program to preserve farmland.
Content of the Plan
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24. Content of the Plan
GOAL OBJECTIVE MEASURABLE INDICATORS
To ensure compliance
with regional and federal
environmental standards
for air and water quality;
Adopt a wellhead
protection ordinance to
limit development near
public water supplies.
Protection ordinance signed and
adopted
To increase the recycling
of trash into useful
products;
Contract a private
recycling firm to increase
the amount of trash
recycled.
Contract signed and amount of
trash (Kg) recycled
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25. Content of the Plan
GOAL OBJECTIVE MEASURABLE INDICATORS
To conserve the amount of
land used for development
by promoting compact,
mixed use development
Revise the zoning
ordinance to allow smaller
minimum plot sizes and a
mix of commercial and
residential land uses.
Zoning ordinance signed
and operationalised.
Number of land use mixes
allocated
To expand mass transit and
thus reduce reliance on the
automobile and air
pollution.
Explore funding for
additional buses or the
construction of a
commuter light-rail system
The additional number of
buses bought
To increase the amount of
public parkland
Revise the subdivision
ordinance to require
mandatory dedication of
parkland or fees in lieu
thereof.
Subdivision ordinance
revised, signed, and
operationalized
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26. Formulating and Identifying Alternative
Environmental Solutions
• There are a variety of options for achieving envi­
ronmental goals.
• Options can be eliminated based on their degree
of feasibility.
• Options may also be eliminated due to cost
considerations.
• In many situations it may be necessary to employ
a combination of solutions,
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27. Plan implementation - The Action Strategy
• A plan is only meaningful if it is implemented.
• The main reason to so many Development plans end up sitting
on a shelf is because they do not include a detailed Action
Strategy as follow through to the goals and objectives.
• The successful implementation of an Environmental Action Plan
requires the use of effective spending programs, incentives, and
environmental and land use regulations.
• Above all, it requires cooperation among government,
businesses, citizens' groups, and private individuals.
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28. Monitoring
• Monitoring of the implementation efforts not only points out
successes and shortcomings, but can be the basis for
recommending changes to existing programs as well as the use of
new techniques.
• To monitor the progress of the Action Plan and to keep the local
government accountable, it is a good idea to use benchmarking.
Benchmarks are measurable targets, such as acquisition of a
certain number of hectares of parkland, improvements in water
quality, and slowing the annual loss of open space.
• Each year, the planning commission or elected officials could set
targets tied to specific goals and objectives in the Environmental
Action Plan.
• The planning commission can then assess the progress toward
the benchmarks and publish an annual Environmental Action
Report. The report can indicate which benchmarks were met and
which were not, and suggest needed adjustments in policy
priorities, regulations, and spending programs.
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29. Plan Evaluation
Do plans work?
• Evaluation in planning is complex, and embodies a variety of instruments
and methodologies.
• for evaluation to be successful, evaluative criteria must be carefully selected
and defined.
• since plans are formulated with the intent of being implemented, an
evaluative component must be part of the planning process to provide
feedback as to how well the process is working.
• The key to integrating a dynamic evaluation component into the plan rests
on the planner's ability to
– incorporate evaluative methods explicitly, and
– provide a means to measure the achievement of each goal as an
integral part of the plan.
• Once planners know what elements of plans are successfully implemented
and what elements are not, they can move quickly to the next tier of
evaluation.
• This aspect of evaluation directs efforts toward the identification of the
underlying factors associated with successful plan implementation and
where things went wrong.
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30. 3.2.8 Review
• Finally, the Environmental Action Plan should
be reviewed and updated by the planning
commission every three to five years
– to reflect changes in community desires and
priorities,
– to keep the plan responsive to changes in
environmental quality, and
– to keep the community on course toward long-
range goals of sustainability.
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