•Environmental management must identify priorities, bottlenecks and barriers to counter degradation and, if possible, to achieve sustainable development.
•There are many strategies for improving environmental management and pursuing sustainable development. Environmental managers should take the initiative and steer the development and implementation of these and ensure co-ordination and regular review when they are running.
•Ways have to be found to ‘broaden out’ environmental management to enable and encourage wider participation.
•There are many problems and threats that need attention. Environmental managers must watch for and warn developers of these, and encourage them to focus much more on improving human adaptability and reducing human vulnerability.