Natural resource management refers to the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship).
Natural resource management deals with managing the way in which people and natural landscapes interact. It brings together land use planning, water management, biodiversity conservation, and the future sustainability of industries like agriculture, mining, tourism, fisheries and forestry. It recognises that people and their livelihoods rely on the health and productivity of our landscapes, and their actions as stewards of the land play a critical role in maintaining this health and productivity.
Natural resource management is also congruent with the concept of sustainable development, a scientific principle that forms a basis for sustainable global land management and environmental governance to conserve and preserve natural resources.
Natural resource management specifically focuses on a scientific and technical understanding of resources and ecology and the life-supporting capacity of those resources. Environmental management is also similar to natural resource management. In academic contexts, the sociology of natural resources is closely related to, but distinct from, natural resource management.
Read more about Natural Resource Management: History, Ownership Regimes, Stakeholder Analysis, Management Approaches, Frameworks and Modelling, Other Elements, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words natural, resource and/or management:
“We have become unsure of the rules and unsure of our roles. Parenting, like brain surgery, is now all-consuming, fraught with anxiety, worry, and self-doubt. We have allowed what used to be simple and natural to become bewildering and intimidating.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity.”
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)
“The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)