Abstract
Agriculture is one of the primary activities that affects the environment due to natural resources consumption. Therefore, systematic environmental management for the agricultural sector is required. This study was conducted to analyze the paradigmatic perspective and strategies of agricultural environmental management in Iran. Considering basic criteria of environmental management, three paradigms of frontier economics, eco-development and deep ecology were compared using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP, is a multi-criteria decision making techniques which is useful when there are different alternatives or indicators in decision making. Comparisons were based on the viewpoints of 117 policy makers, superior managers and main elites and agriculture sector researchers. Environmental managerial strategies also have been studied. Findings revealed paradoxes among the paradigmatic perspectives and selected strategies of different agricultural stakeholders which reduce their effective interactions. Frontier economics is the dominant viewpoint of key agricultural policy makers and other governmental executives. They prefer independent reactive strategies to cope with environmental challenges. Agricultural researchers and private sector authorities believe in eco-development. They have selected cooperative proactive strategies in this regard. Finally, deep ecology has the highest priority according to environmental specialists, who endorse strategic maneuvering and believe in modifying, rethinking and redesigning previous strategies. A paradigm shift, as well as consistency between paradigmatic perspectives and executive strategies, is suggested.
Highlights
Sustainability has been emphasized due to the imbalanced development of human societies, especially after the industrial revolution, and the negative consequences of population growth, capitation and consumption patterns (Wackernagel and Yount, 2000)
Since strategies and decisions are rooted in the intellectual foundation, one can perceive the strategies and behaviors of the individual or organization by reviewing their intellectual paradigm
Eco-development and deep ecology are considered as the three fundamental paradigmatic perspectives relevant to environmental management debates
Summary
Sustainability has been emphasized due to the imbalanced development of human societies, especially after the industrial revolution, and the negative consequences of population growth, capitation and consumption patterns (Wackernagel and Yount, 2000). Colby (1991) classified different paradigmatic viewpoints of environmental management into five categories much more explicitly defined and much evolutionary in terms of described relationship among them that include Frontier Economics (the same as technocrat-adventurer), Environmental Protection (close to steward), Resource Management (the same as manager-engineer), Deep Ecology (identified closely with partners) and Eco-Development (mixture of cultural and steward). Organizations must implement diverse strategies in order to rectify existing environmental situations, so they would become proactive entities of change by trying to manage their exterior environments. A multiple criteria evaluation of different paradigmatic perspectives of environmental management with an emphasis on the agricultural sector, as well as comparing diverse managerial strategies of the environment, are the main purposes of this study. Appropriate categories of environmental management strategies were studied and ranked based on to the viewpoints of different groups of the study
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