The provincial development plan reflects this
demand as it envisions the island as the tourism
centre for Andaman region .This creates
tensions between environmental management
and the developmental directions influenced by
multiple interest groups which leads to the
need to look beyond traditional top-down
management regime in order to effectively
address the problems.
It is the objective of this paper to
improve the way environmental problems are
addressed and resolved in the areas that are
subjected to great developmental pressure such
as Phuket. The paper proposes the use of soft
system methodology [2] and participatory
approach [3, 4] for analysing a wicked
environmental problem through the use of
mixed methods. We assert that the success of
the solutions requires not only the integration
of technical expertise and local knowledge but