International Standards for Environmental Management Systems : A Future Promise for Environmental Policy

摘要

Businesses are increasingly adopting the global environmental management system (EMS), ISO 14001, in order to more effectively and efficiently manage their environmental impacts. This voluntary system, as well as all EMSs, has the potential to provide facilities with a structure to minimize their environmental impact, ensure compliance with environmental laws and regulations and address wasteful uses of natural resources. For these reasons, EMSs may greatly affect the environmental performance of facilities that adopt them and subsequently impact their financial performance, as well. There are numerous types of EMSs. The ISO 14001 EMS, however, has emerged as the most widely accepted international standard for environmental management and has the potential to harmonize EMSs worldwide. EMSs certified under the ISO 14001 standard conform to an internationally negotiated standard, which was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and employ a systematic structure to identify, mitigate, and prevent environmental harm. An independent third party to ensure that their structure conforms to the ISO standard, can certify these systems. Finally, the ISO 14001 standard requires that certified facilities commit to ongoing continuous improvement of their EMS and thus have the potential to reduce their environmental impacts significantly over time. While businesses are increasingly adopting these systems to better manage their environmental impacts, little is known about the potential these systems have for environmental protection, social welfare, and future public policy. This paper confronts these issues by first defining an ISO 14001 EMS and how it affects business operations and the environment. Then it evaluates a cross-section of 18 facilities that are designing and implementing ISO 14001 - based EMSs. The paper also addresses the issue of what potential merits ISO 14001 environmental management systems (EMS) may have to business operations and public policy. It evaluates the EMS structure and facilities'- specific EMS components are assessed to determine the extent to which EMSs are designed to ensure that facility-level environmental management is likely to lead to larger private and public gains than those obtained via the current environmental regulatory regime. Finally, we consider internationally certified EMSs and their future promise for public policy.