Traditionally, environmental management has been considered in light of the best technological solution. A significant case study that represents a technological solution to environmental management is the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) on the Yangtze River in China. The dam has two main management purposes. These are; provide energy from more renewable sources than alternatives to coal burning, to meet growing demand and reduce flooding of the Yangtze River. After a more in-depth introduction of the TGD case study, four main perspectives will be used to evaluate environmental management outcomes and approaches. First, the social implications and possible benefits of the project will be analysed, including issues relating to social injustice and lack of intragenerational equity. Secondly, environmental damage and issues, including biodiversity loss and erosion, will be similarly analyzed and critically assessed against the environmental benefits of the project. Third, alternative solutions to technological TGD for China, along the lines of managing people and society, will be evaluated in terms of management results and compared. Limitations to technical solutions such as TGD will also be assessed. Finally, the social management concept of the “bottom-up” approach will be analyzed and contrasted with the more technical top-down approach used in the TGD case study. It is argued, in evaluating the case study from these social and environmental perspectives together with alternative people management solutions and decision-making concepts, that managing the environment well is more about managing people and society than knowing the best technological solution. study and detail the topic...... half of the document ......ment on the Environment in the Reservoir Area and Countermeasures, Population and Environment, 27 (4): 351-371.Turvey, S., Risley, C., Barrett, L., Yujiang, H., Ding, W., 2012. River dolphins can serve as population trend indicators in degraded freshwater systems, PLoS ONE, 5(7).Xu , Ye, G., Zhu, C., 2012. Ecological Civilization Research and Low-Carbon Economy in the Yangtze River Delta (Conference Paper), Advanced Materials Research, 524-527: 3667-3673.Zhou, Y. , Zhang, Q., Singh, V., 2014. Fractal-based assessment of the effect of watersheds on hydrological processes: dams in the Yangtze River as a case study, stochastic environmental research and risk assessment, 28 (2): 263-279.