This document discusses environmental planning and management. It begins by defining key terms like environment, ecology, and sustainable development. It then discusses Agenda 21, a UN plan for sustainable development. The document outlines several environmental planning approaches such as comprehensive, incremental, and consensual planning. It also discusses the steps in environmental planning process, which include forming a planning team, assessing the situation, setting priorities, and drafting the environmental plan. The overall document provides an overview of concepts and processes involved in environmental planning and management.

1. Management of environment to
safeguard human health
Dr Nik Nor Ronaidi bin Nik Mahdi

2. Content
• Definition
• Introduction
• Agenda 21
• Environmental Health Planning
• Environmental Protection And Sustainable
Development In Malaysia

3. Definitions

4. Definitions
Environment:
• The sum of all external conditions affecting the life,
development and survival of an organism.
Ecology:
• The relationship of living things to one another and
their environment, or the study of such
relationships.
Environmental Sustainability:
• Long-term maintenance of ecosystem components
and functions for future generations.
(US EPA)

5. Sustainable development :
• A pattern of resource use that aims to meet human
needs while preserving the environment so that these
needs can be met not only in the present, but also for
generations to come
Environmental Planning:
• The process of facilitating decision making to carry out
development with due consideration given to the
natural environmental, social, political, economic and
governance factors and provides a holistic frame work
to achieve sustainable outcomes.
Environmental management:
• the idea of humans interacting with the environment in
a responsible and ethically sound way, without
sacrificing productivity

6. Introduction

7. Introduction
• In the process of development, the issues confronting
today are achieving desired development for economic
or social reasons on one hand and safe guarding the
environment and maintaining good quality living
conditions on the other.
• While taking up developmental activities, the
assimilative capacities of the environmental
components i.e., air, water and land to various
pollution are rarely considered.
• The developmental activities being haphazard and
uncontrolled are leading to over
use, congestion, incompatible landuse and poor living

8. Introduction
• Conventionally, the environmental pollution problems
are solved by introducing environmental management
techniques such as control of pollution at source,
providing of sewage treatment facilities etc. However,
environmental risks are not being controlled
completely by such solutions.
• Presently, the environmental aspects are not usually
considered while preparing master plans and the
process is skewed towards developmental needs.
• There is a need for assessment of the land in terms of
not only the economic aspects but also the
environmental aspects and the land uses are
accordingly to be allocated so that the natural
environment and ecological balance is not disturbed.

9. Introduction
• Environmental Planning:
– It concerns with the decision making processes where they
are required for managing relationships that exist within and
between natural systems and human systems.
– It endeavors to manage these processes in an effective,
orderly, transparent and equitable manner for the benefit of
all constituents within such systems for the present and for
the future.
• Some of the main elements of environmental planning
are:
– Social & economic development
– Urban development
– Regional development
– Natural resource management & integrated land use
– Infrastructure systems
– Governance frameworks

10. Introduction
• Environmental management is not, as the phrase
could suggest, the management of the environment
as such, but rather the management of interaction
by the modern human societies with, and impact
upon the environment.

11. Agenda 21

12. Agenda 21
• It is a comprehensive global plan of action by UN to
achieve sustainable development.
• It was an outcome of the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED) held in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, in 1992.
• Adopted by 178 countries
• Sustainable development itself has three important
pillars, which are mutually supportive of each other:
1. economic development
2. social development
3. environmental protection

13. Agenda 21
• There are 40 chapters in the Agenda 21, divided into
four main sections.
– Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions
• which deals with combating poverty, changing consumption
patterns, promoting health, change population and sustainable
settlement
– Section II: Conservation and Management of Resources for
Development
• Includes atmospheric protection, combating deforestation,
protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity
(biodiversity), and control of pollution.
– Section III: Strengthening the Role of Major Groups
• Includes the roles of children and youth, women, NGOs, local
authorities, business and workers.
– Section IV: Means of Implementation
• Implementation includes science, technology transfer, education,
international institutions and financial mechanisms.

14. Environmental Health Planning

15. Forming a Planning Team
• A planning team is made up of people who
represent the different views and constituencies in
the community.
• The planning team will guide the community
through each step of the planning process
• There are many possible approaches to forming a
planning team. For example, many communities
already have land use planning commissions. This
commission has demonstrated an interest and
commitment to community environmental
issues, and might be willing to oversee the
environmental planning process.

16. Forming a Planning Team
• Planning team should include some of the following
types of people:
– Managers or operators of environmental facilities (such
as water and wastewater systems), who are
knowledgeable about environmental issues and the
condition of existing facilities.
– Elected officials or board members, who already are
involved in managing local communities and are familiar
with issues that affect the area’s environment.
– Local physicians, engineers, and scientists, who can
provide technical information about environmental and
health issues, links between pollution and health, and
other key data.

17. Forming a Planning Team
– County and state health agencies, which can provide
local, state, and national health statistics so that local
conditions can be compared with state and national
averages.
– Emergency response personnel, usually the community’s fire
department, who often know about environmental
accidents, the location of underground storage tanks, and
potential sites and types of community exposure or risk.
– Community residents, who represent specific interests or
the “general public.”
– Business owners and farmers, who represent important
views in the community and can help determine future
trends. (Getting a local industry or agriculture enterprise
involved is especially important if the industry or enterprise

18. What Are the Different Environmental
Planning Approaches?
Comprehensive Planning
• Comprehensive planning is considered as a pioneering
method advocated and applied in environmental
planning.
• It builds on the idea that a harmonious relationship
must be forged between man and his environment to
prevent irreversible damage. This ensures the
achievement of sustainable development in society.
• This environmental planning approach follows the
conventional steps in decision making, i.e., identifying
the problem, formulating a set of solutions to the
problem, and selecting the best solution based on pre-
set criteria for judgment.

19. Incremental Planning
• Planning does not necessarily have to proceed by
means of specific, time-bound plans. It can proceed
incrementally, by making small local changes.
• It is applied if environmental problems have already
become so disturbing, magnified or reach crises
proportions.
• It is not holistic, rather piecemeal, planning approach.
• It is reactive, rather than proactive.
• It relies heavily on the capacity of decision makers
instead of information gathered from well-founded
scientific evidence.
• Incremental planning is inappropriate to environmental
impacts which are irreversible.
• It violates the precautionary principle in dealing with
environmental problems.

20. Consensual Planning
• It is a participatory planning where the concerns of
the different sectors of society are taken into
consideration in the planning process.
• Environmental problems are given solutions by
involving those who are affected in finding a
common, agreed solution to environmental
problems.
• Although this is a democratic environmental
planning, in reality and in practice, the consensual
planning approach takes time.
• Sometimes, compromises are arrived to ensure that
none of the different sectors of society is put in a
disadvantaged position.

21. Adaptive Planning
• It builds on people’s experience.
• Past mistakes are valuable inputs to resolve current
environmental problems.
• It is founded on the idea that prediction of the
outcomes of resource use is difficult.
• Its weakness is that it does not foresee future
problems associated with current technological
advances.
• It may be too late to do something if irreversible
damage has been done to the environment.

22. Advocacy Planning
• It entails competition between different groups in
influencing decisions concerning environmental
issues.
• Group-backed arguments or positions strive for
influence to resolve environmental problems.
• There is no guarantee, however, that the most
influential solution to a given environmental
problem is the most appropriate one.
• This is a highly political approach to dealing with
environmental problems.
• The most popular or influential group or solution
may not necessarily address environmental
problems.

23. Contingency Planning
• Contingencies are relevant events anticipated by a
planner, including low-probability events that would
have major impacts.
• It focuses on environmental problems that have
adverse environmental consequences such as
natural and man-made hazards.
• Preparations are made to minimize risk due to
unexpected, high impact environmental problems
or disasters.
• Contingency planning is a sensible environmental
planning approach as it provides a leeway for
ordered action necessary in mitigating or reducing
the impact of an environmental hazard.

24. • Many organizations and professionals tasked
with the management of natural resources
may apply any of these environmental
planning approaches to realize their
objectives. Selecting the most appropriate one
depends on the specific environmental
problem at hand. It is possible that a
combination of these environmental planning
approaches may be applied at certain points
in time.

25. Steps in planning process
1. Raising awareness
2. Reviewing and managing municipal environmental
health performance
3. Reviewing existing municipal policies affecting
environmental health
4. Making and reporting a local situation analysis
5. Building effective public participation
6. Setting priorities for practicable action
7. Drafting the environmental plan
8. Securing support from other levels

26. Steps in planning process
1. Awareness
• It may be necessary to raise awareness and provide
training for employees of the municipality in the
issues that are to be addressed
• All employees of the municipality, particularly those
who have to deal with members of the
public, should be fully aware of, understand and be
committed to the process.

27. Steps in planning process
2. Municipal environmental health performance
• Municipality and other principle partners need to
review environmental health performance and how
their activities affect the environment and community
• How Effective Are Your Community’s Environmental
Facilities?
– Evaluation of the community’s environmental facilities will
help to:
• Identify problems (E.g. a landfill could leach chemicals into ground
water that constitutes the town’s drinking water, or a wastewater
treatment plant could generate odors in the surrounding area).
• Identify potential risk
• Determine whether the community is complying with regulatory
requirements

29. Steps in planning process
3. Existing municipal policies
• Many policies will already have been formulated and
strategies implemented that will cut across the environmental
health agenda.
• These existing efforts need to be recognized and integrated
into the new programme.
• Policies and strategies need to be considered:
– Land use planning
– Transport
– Economic
– Development
– Housing services
– Tourism
– Welfare
– health

30. • Don’t forget about environmental regulations
– Federal and state governments have many regulations
covering almost every environmental issue that could
concern local governments.
– These regulations are meant to protect everyone from
the potential hazards associated with pollution.
– E.g.: If a town upriver from your town dumps untreated
sewage into the river, this sewage could pollute your
water supply. Even if your community is environmentally
responsible, you can’t be sure that other communities
will be the same. Protecting the environment and
preventing pollution has to be a collective effort.

31. • Knowing about environmental regulations is
important because:
– The regulations might help you identify some of the
environmental issues that you face.
– Complying with regulations will help you protect
people’s health and the environment.
– Complying with regulations will help you avoid the direct
financial costs of pollution. (Pollution of natural
resources costs money and jobs.)

33. PRESCRIBED ACTIVITIES
Industry
Infrastructure Agriculture
Quarries Airport
Railways Fisheries
Transportation Forestry
Petroleum
Prescribed
Land reclamation
Activities
Water Supply Housing
Ports Mining
Waste Treatment & Disposal Drainage & Irrigation
Resort & Recreational Development Power Generation & Transmission

34. Steps in planning process
4. Situation analysis
• Before planning a strategy, it is necessary to have some idea
of the major issues that need to be addressed.
• Analysis of environmental health status of the community
provides some of this information.
• It is to determine which are the “high-risk” problems: which
pose a serious threat to health, the environment, or quality of
life.
• Situation analysis include gathering data on environmental
conditions and health of the population such as:
– Socioeconomic factors
– Air, water and soil quality
– Levels of noise and radiation
– Status of land use and green space

35. Steps in planning process
5. Effective public participation
• The public includes everyone in the community.
• Public participation is essential because:
– The residents the community are the ones who will end
up paying for most new environmental programs.
– Residents will benefit from good environmental planning
and management.
– The public knows the community and has ideas about
the kind of place in which they want to live.
– If concerned, responsible community leaders are
involved in the process, they are more likely to generate
broader support for the environmental plan and for the
work needed to carry it out.

36. Steps in planning process
• Effective public participation can be achieve by
building trust and openness among the
stakeholders and demonstrates the authorities
strong commitment in recognizing the community’s
perceived needs.
• Developing strategies for public participation is a
major, complex and inevitably lengthy process.
• The quick provision of meaningful feedback to
those have participated is very important. They
must see that it is making a difference, or they will
begin to lose their enthusiasm for and commitment
to it.

37. • Ways to encourage public participation include:
– Distribute flyers and other information
• E.g. Fact sheets on local environmental issues written by local
experts, minutes of planning team meetings, or information about
important team decisions.
• can be given at public meetings, through mailings (such as with
utility bills), at local stores, and publish them as notices or articles in
the local newspaper.
– Talk to local groups, such as volunteer organizations and
business associations.
– Publicize the meetings of the planning team, or hold special
meetings to get community input
– Ask for volunteers for tasks such as conducting surveys,
taking minutes at team meetings, organizing public meetings,
and reviewing information.
– Do a survey.
– Organize activities on local environmental issues.
• E.g.:workshop, classroom program, or festival on water
conservation, recycling, or other environmental issues.

38. Steps in planning process
6. Priorities for practicable action
• The issues and their proposed solutions always
exceeds the resources available to address them.
• Decisions must therefore set priorities and allocate
resources to make the best impact on health and
the quality of life.
• As a guidance, priority should be given if:
• the problem has very significant effects on the
environment or environmental health; and
• Immediate or urgent intervention is necessary to
avoid irreparable damage

39. Steps in planning process
• Another factors that need consideration for
prioritization:
– Values exceeding environmental quality cut-offs. How
often and to what extent do pollution levels exceed
specified permitted values?
– Nature and extent of deviation from the norms and
indices for the environmental condition.
– Number of people or size of the area affected by the
environmental problems

40. Steps in planning process
• The Environmental Health Action Plan for Europe
divides types of action into 3 groups to help set
priorities:
Group Description of action Priority
Group 1 Addresses the basic requirements for environmental health. It aims at Most
preventing or mitigating conditions whose environmental causes are well important
established and that can give rise to widespread and often acute health
effects.
Group 2 Concerns the prevention and control of medium and long term Less
environmental hazards. Causal relationships for these hazards may be important
difficult to establish at existing levels of environmental exposure, but
their potential for adverse effects on health is recognized
Group 3 Concerns the promotion of human wellbeing and mental health, rather Almost an
than the prevention of diseases. optional
extra

41. Steps in planning process
7. Drafting the environmental plan
• The project team produces a first draft of the plan
for a process of wide-ranging consultation with the
public and relevant partners.
• The draft should be distributed to community
stakeholders, national and neighboring authorities
for consultations, contributions and comments.
• Benefits of wide consultation:
– It improves the document
– Prepares people for action
– Makes the actions and processes more workable

42. Steps in planning process
8. Securing support from other levels
• National governments and international
organizations can facilitate and support the
processes and resultant action.
• National frameworks provide inspiration and
encouragement for local communities to begin their
own planning processes.
• Support in the form of national guidance, technical
resource centres, legislation and financial resources
can help communities in their own activities

43. Environmental Protection And Sustainable
Development In Malaysia
• “We are here to seek ways of achieving sustainable
development and of establishing a solid foundation
for world-wide co-operation on the environment
and development. We appreciate that if anything is
to be done towards sustainable development, all
countries everywhere must work together”
(Mahathir, 1992).
• At the national level, sustainable development is
addressed in the Development Plan.

44. Environmental Protection And Sustainable
Development In Malaysia
• The development planning usually starts with the
discussions and deliberations among the technical
working groups based on various sectors such as
health, education, housing, public works, utilities,
agriculture, environment, natural resources and
others.
• The technical working groups are normally made up
of all the relevant stakeholders such as government
agencies, private companies, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), institutions of higher learning
and local communities

45. Environmental Protection And Sustainable
Development In Malaysia
• The proposal from the technical working groups will
further be tabled and discussed at the inter-agency
planning group (IAPG) for review and then further
taken up to the national development planning
committee, national development council, and
finally to the Parliament for consideration and
approval.

47. THaNK YoU