The success of environmental management today depends on due regard for the socio-cultural foundations of each society. It helps to extend the range of acceptable solutions for resource managers in institutional contexts. Emphasis on socio-cultural aspects has become the main impetus of the new “glocalization”. It has special importance for the environmental sphere.
A socio-cultural methodology uses a special range of tools to prevent conflicts between the imported, unified environmental institutions typical of the world economy and the socio-culturally determined institutions that have emerged during the evolution of traditional, long-standing relationships between humans and nature. The presented socio-cultural methodology enables vital theoretical and practical conclusions, which are of great importance today.
Such an approach depends on an interdisciplinary synthesis using the methodological principles of social, economic and political geography, management theory, ethnology, sociology, macro and microeconomy, and political and cultural studies. The practical recommendations, presented in the book, for taking proper account of the socio-cultural features of territories in the process of environmental management could not have been formulated without this interdisciplinary context.
Key words: nature protection activity, environmental management, socio-cultural methodology of environmental management, environmental institutions, prevention of environmental conflicts.