The importance of training for environmental management

Conclusion I wish to conclude as I began, with a quotation from a newspaper on the potential damage and the attendant costs of not applying sound environmental management: The Guardian, Wednesday, 5 October 1983: “The Shell Oil Company which admitted yesterday that it had allowed dangerous pesticides to escape near Denver, Colorado has received a demand from the US Army for $1 8 billion to help to stop pollution from reaching the city ... Shell and the US Army research, which includes experiments with nerve gas, may have caused far more serious pollution in the area.” The need for sustainable development and for training in environmental management in Third World countries, should ensure that reports on environmental damage, such as the one above, do not become a common occurrence in developing countries in the next decade or hopefully forever after. This paper was presented at the conference “The Environmental Dimension in World Development, the contribution that British Companies can make”, organized by the Centre for World Development Education, London, UK, during October 1983. Dr Jose I. Furtado is Professor of Zoology in Malaysia, and is seconded as Science Adviser with the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.