A Study about Necessity for an Application of Environmental Management into Rural Areas (Special Reference to Malimboda Divisional Secretariat Division)

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 Published and unpublished literature sources, books and internet are used to collect secondary data.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.