Abstract:
Environmental management is a systematic approach to finding practical ways for saving water, energy and
materials and reducing the negative impacts. Environmental problems have arisen due to human influences on
environment in the worldwide. Many environmental problems like air pollution, illegal waste dumping, water
pollution, green cover reduction, and noise pollution can be identified in urbanized areas, and mostly human
impacted areas. But as a developing country, as well as affected by globalization, many rural areas in Sri
Lanka are threatened by environment related issues , but there is no a considerable attention to identify
environmental problems and threats in rural areas. This study is done for identify the necessity of application
of environmental management into rural areas. Specific objectives are to identify, main reasons for those
environmental problems, and to identify strategies that used by the community to prevent environmental
problems. The study area is Malimboda Divisional secretariat division. Data collection is done using primary
and secondary data sources. 40 questionnaires, 5 interviews, and field observations are used to collect primary
data. Published and unpublished literature sources, books and internet are used to collect secondary data. MS
Excel and SPSS are used to quantitative data analysis and some data which are received with interviews and
observation are analyzed qualitatively. Results of analysis showed the major environmental problems as soil
salinisation, water salinization, water pollution, water quality decreasing, soil degradation, deforestation, and
bio diversity degradation are arising. There is a high necessity of application environmental management into
Malimboda rural area. The rural community should be informed about future threat to increase existing
environmental problems, and promote to use environmental management activities locally. It should pay the
attention of governmental and nongovernmental attention to the rural areas, with establishing active laws and
regulations.
