Environmental Management: Issues and Concerns in Developing Countries

This book deals with issues and concerns for the human environment in the developing countries incorporating natural processes and systems, pollution removal technology, energy conservation, environmental impact assessment process, economics, culture, political structure and societal equity from a management point of view. Solutions to the emerging problems of the environment need a paradigmatic shift in approach from a process based model to a socio-political-economic model. Hence environmental management should involve equality and control over use of the finite natural resources and the balance between Earth’s biocapacity and humanity’s ecological footprint. Changes such as green technologies, human population stabilization and adoption of ecologically harmonious lifestyles are absolutely essential and will require redesigning of political institutions, policies and revisiting forgotten skills of sustainable practices of environmental management. These challenges should centreon environment governance using the concepts of common property, equity and security.

This book is relevant for academics, professionals, administrators and policy makers who are concerned with various aspects of environment management and governance.

Professor Pradip K. Sikdar, former Acting Registrar, Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management and currently Professor, Department of Environment Management, is actively engaged in research and teaching of groundwater hydrology and environmental impact assessment with over 30 years of experience in project management and implementation, field and research work in groundwater systems including the application of computer models. He has carried out extensive research on arsenic contamination in groundwater of the Bengal Basin and his present research also deals with the sustainability of water supply in the fluoride affected and semi-arid regions of West Bengal and the design of groundwater abstraction structures. 

Prof. Sikdar has supervised several students for Master, Doctoral and Post-doctoral research work and is also a Visiting Faculty in the Departments of Geology, Environmental Science and Atmospheric Science at University of Calcutta and the Department of Geology, at the Presidency University. He is a reviewer for many national and international journals and is a member of several national and international professional institutions and societies. He is also on the Board of Editors of some leading national journals. Prof. Sikdar has published more than 150 research papers in international and national journals, conference proceedings, books and is the leading author for several project reports. He is a recipient of the 22nd Dewang Mehta Business School Award 2014 for the ‘Best Professor in Water Resources Management’, and Groundwater Science Excellence Award in 2015 by the International Association of Hydrogeologists (India Chapter)  in appreciation of his contributions in the field of groundwater research.