Environmental management is therefore concerned with the description and monitoring of environmental changes, with predicting future changes and with attempts to maximise human benefit and to minimise environmental degradation due to human activities. Yet, characteristically, environmental management is about decision-making - and it is especially concerned with the process of decision-making in relation to the use of natural resources, the pollution of habitats and the modification of ecosystems. Fundamentally, then, environmental management is a political activity because those decisions - about resources, pollution and ecosystems - are never neutral or objective; on the contrary, they are value laden and they reflect the exercise of power by particular groups over others. Moreover, in general, it is naïve to conceive of environmental management as being about simply 'the management of the environment' in the sense of humans manipulating and controlling the components and processes of the earth system. Of course, humans do exert such influences on the earth system; but it is a fallacy to think that humans 'manage', for instance, populations of humpback whales. Instead, it is more accurate to suggest that humans may be able to make some progress towards managing human impacts on humpback whales. Ultimately, then, environmental management is more concerned with the management of human activities and their impacts than with the management of the natural environment
