Environmental Resources Management - Tools

Tools

As with all management functions, effective management tools, standards and systems are required. An environmental management standard or system or protocol attempts to reduce environmental impact as measured by some objective criteria. The ISO 14001 standard is the most widely used standard for environmental risk management and is closely aligned to the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). As a common auditing standard, the ISO 19011 standard explains how to combine this with quality management.

Other environmental management systems (EMS) tend to be based on the ISO 14001 standard and many extend it in various ways:

• The Green Dragon Environmental Management Standard is a five level EMS designed for smaller organisations for whom ISO 14001 may be too onerous and for larger organisations who wish to implement ISO 14001 in a more manageable step-by-step approach,
• BS 8555 is a phased standard that can help smaller companies move to ISO 14001 in six manageable steps,
• The Natural Step focuses on basic sustainability criteria and helps focus engineering on reducing use of materials or energy use that is unsustainable in the long term,
• Natural Capitalism advises using accounting reform and a general biomimicry and industrial ecology approach to do the same thing,
• US Environmental Protection Agency has many further terms and standards that it defines as appropriate to large-scale EMS,
• The UN and World Bank has encouraged adopting a "natural capital" measurement and management framework,
• The European Union Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).

Other strategies exist that rely on making simple distinctions rather than building top-down management "systems" using performance audits and full cost accounting. For instance, Ecological Intelligent Design divides products into consumables, service products or durables and unsaleables - toxic products that no one should buy, or in many cases, do not realize they are buying. By eliminating the unsaleables from the comprehensive outcome of any purchase, better environmental resource management is achieved without "systems".

Recent successful cases have put forward the notion of "Integrated Management". It shares a wider approach and stresses out the importance of interdisciplinary assessment. It is an interesting notion that might not be adaptable to all cases.