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Weekly UpdatesHanna, Kevin and D. Scott Slocombe. 2007. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 288 pages ISBN 978-0-19-542049-4 (paper), CDN $49.95
Suitable primarily for upper level undergraduate university students as well as environmental manager-practitioners, this volume provides an epigrammatic briefing of several emerging directions in the field of integrated resource and environmental management (IREM). In this book, Hanna and Slocombe set out to "update and expand on the notion of integration" (p. xii) and demonstrate that IREM has progressed "beyond discussions of particular resources" (p. xii). For evidence, the book draws on the works of 22 contributing authors from Canada, the United States and Australia.
The book begins with an overview of the conceptual evolution of IREM, touching on the dimensions of resource management that require integration and key challenges in definition and practice. The strength of the opening chapter is in the referencing: many seminal papers from a wide variety of foundational disciplines are cited, providing a valuable guide for those interested in tracing the roots of IREM. However, as a touchstone for the chapters that follow, the discussion is relatively underdeveloped. Slocombe and Hanna follow IREM from its early incarnation as "multiple use" forestry through to its more recent influence by ecosystem management, a story oft been told, but they stop short of any nuanced discussion of current theoretical influences that underpin the "new directions" discussed in subsequent chapters. This is unfortunate as the evolution of theoretical paradigms is a critical dimension demonstrating a "progression" in IREM.
The bulk of this book is a diverse collection of essays that illustrate several new ways in which the integration imperative is being pursued, from integration in information management to the integration of civil and conventional science. While these ideas are not themselves new, their development in the IREM arena is. Wiseman contributes a particularly captivating chapter on equity issues. Wiseman focuses on integrating social equity with economic and environmental issues, arguing that without strategies to address the conditions that have led to social inequity in a particular region, the state of inequity will recreate itself in the course of resource management and compromise intended results.
This book also contains some solid case examples of IREM that would make a great instructional resource, such as Hanna's description of the Fraser River Estuary Management Program in British Columbia and Wilson and Clark's dual case studies of grizzly bear conservation in Montana. Gibson, reporting from the field of environmental assessment, describes a newly evolved tool known as sustainability assessment, while Susskind and others provide a useful "how to" on joint fact finding.
As a book of specially commissioned essays, however, the content of several chapters is not so much "new" IREM insomuch as it is redeveloped IREM based on previous works of the authors. In other words, some of the content in this book can and probably has been viewed previously in some other form. This takes away the critical edge of the book, but still makes it a useful consolidation of IREM thinking and case examples. The book's diversity of themes, however, is something of a liability.
The key contribution of the book is that it showcases innovative examples of IREM in practice, be they new or old, although a deeper treatment of the theoretical issues at hand would have provided a stronger context for the diversity of material that follows and a foundation for debate on IREM itself. While IREM is said to be evolving, the helpful nature of recent evolutionary turns remains to be established. As the definition of integration expands, is IREM becoming ever more complex and unwieldy, or are we making real strides with respect to implementation and better decision-making?
Reviewed by Jill Harriman, Department of Geography, University of Saskatchewan
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