Although one of the first international symposia was held in Princeton, New Jersey, the world had to wait another 24 years before the introduction of an international standard (ISO 14000) (Tansey and Worsley, 1995). Some of the most important milestones that led to the development of the environmental standard ISO 14000 are given synoptically in Table 2.1. There is a growing critique on intensive agriculture developed in the indus- trial world which, though productive from a short-term economic viewpoint, has sub- stantially reduced the biological complexity of farming systems because of its imposed strict production control aimed at increasing capital and energy inputs (Tansey and Worsley, 1995). The significance of the sustainable development concept to the emerg- ing worldwide interest in environmental management is clearly shown by the voluntary adoption of many codes and charters that promote sustainability. One of the most
omising New System for Environmental Management or Just Another Illusion?41
12683
7872 7080
6223
5100 50944955 4043
212221002089 17061562
1500 1494
1406
1153 1111 993 973 837 752 658 597 566 550 530 504
454 452 422 400 393 385 369 361 354 313
15000
ISO 14001 Total: 103583
January 2006 1600 1491
522 394
265 121 100
63 43 42 34 27 22
EMAS
Total: 3202 1200
800 400
0 Germany Spain Italy Austria Denmark Sweden UK Finland Portugal Belgium Greece Netherlands 10000
5000
0 Japan China Spain Italy UK USA Germany Korea Sweden Czech Republic Brazil France Canada Switzerland India Taiwan Australia Thailand The Netherlands Hungary Finland Denmark Romania Singapore Poland Malaysia Austria Belgium Portugal Argentina Norway Mexico Iran South Africa Hong Kong Indonesia Philippines Egypt Slovenia The worldwide statistical data of ISO 14001 were collected by Reinhard Peglau from the interested
people throughout the world and subjected to a schematic process to present the graph by Corporate Risk Management (former ISO World).
Figure 2.1 Current state of ISO 14001 certificates worldwide (January 2006) (http://www.ecology.or.jp/)
notable examples is the Business Charter for Sustainable Development developed by the International Chamber of Commerce (Tibor and Feldman, 1997). The ISO 14000 series emerged primarily as a result of the Uruguay round of the GATT negotiations (to reduce trade barriers) and the Rio Summit on the protection of the environment held in 1992.
Over the past ten years, a steady growth of national and regional environmental stan- dards has occurred (Boudouropoulos and Arvanitoyannis, 1999, 2000). The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992, was convened to address global environmental issues and recommend solu- tions. The two most important results of this conference were the compilation of Agenda 21 and ISO 14000. The former is a comprehensive set of guidelines for achieving sustain- ability and was overwhelmingly adopted by 172 nations at the conference. ISO 14000 stands for a series of standards among which ISO 14001 addresses environmental man- agement and pollution prevention (http://www.quality.co.uk/quality). By late 1994, sev- eral European countries had stated their intention to commit themselves to the basic principles of sustainability as expressed and formulated in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. As for the USA, despite their leading role in developing national environ- mental legislation and environmental technology in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, they saw their role gradually shrinking by the late 1980s despite some isolated efforts such as the establishment of the Environmental Technology Initiative (ETI) in 1993 and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) (Haklik, 1998).
Table 2.1 Conception and development of various environmental standards across the world which led to ISO 14000
Year Event
1955 Princeton (USA). International Symposium on Environment
1972 Stockholm. United Nations’ sponsored conference on Human Environment 1980 Washington. Carter administration published its Global 2000 Report
1984 Responsible Care
1987 a) ISO 9000
b) Common Future c) Montreal Protocol
d) SAGE recommends international trade
1988 a) CMA (USA)
b) SAGE recommends international trade
1989 a) Costa Rica established INBio
b) CERES
1991 Keidahren Charter (Japan)
1992 a) EU proposed Eco-Audit Management Regulation b) BS 7750
1993 EU agrees to adopt EMAS and EMAS is published
1994 BS 7750 revised
1995 EMAS goes into effect
1996 ISO 14000: 1996 series
2004 ISO 14000: 2004 series
Worsley, 1995; Tibor and Feldman, 1997
New regulations requiring EMS in place are currently implemented in most coun- tries. It has been a great challenge for the environmental management to decide which systems to design and how to implement them in a cost-effective way (Lash and Buzzelli, 1995). When one adds the comprehensive management systems that will now be required for ISO 14001 certification, the task for the environmental manager could easily become overwhelming. The first two published standards are ISO 14001 (EMS – Specification with guidance for use), and ISO 14004 (EMS – General guide- lines on principles, systems and supporting techniques). These two documents are the pillars of the ISO 14000 series since they specify the requirements against which a company’s EMS is to be judged. Further documents regarding auditing principles and procedures, auditor qualifications and life cycle assessment principles have been approved and published since October 1996.
Since 1997, various ISO 14000 committee documents have reached the draft inter- national standard (DIS) stage. These documents focus on environmental labels and declarations, life cycle assessment and environmental management terms and defini- tions (http://www.envir.com/iso/; Hunt and Johnson, 1995).
Several proposed standards have been involved in the merging of environmental management and standardization. Figure 2.2 illustrates several of these environmen- tal standards, such as BS7750, that have been considered. Many different organiza- tions and individuals around the world have worked on the proposed standards in an attempt to make them as convenient as possible, user friendly and acceptable to all the countries that have endorsed ISO 14000 (http://www.scc.ca/iso14000/infobref.html).