ISO 14000 as Environmental
Standard
Federico San Martini
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a private sector,
international standards body based in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded to promote
the international harmonization and development of standards. In August 1991,
ISO established a Strategic Advisory Group (SAGE) to assess the need for international
environmental management standards, and to recommend an overall strategic plan
for such standards. This spawned Technical Committee 207 for Environmental Management
Standards (ISO 14,000). ISO's Environmental Management Standards are a series
of voluntary standards and guideline reference documents for:
- environmental management systems
- environmental auditing and related environmental investigations
- environmental labeling
- environmental performance evaluation
- life-cycle assessment
- environmental aspects in product standards
What distinguishes the ISO 14,000 from previous approaches to ensure environmental improvement is that it is a voluntary standard. It moves beyond the command and control approach that has dominated environmental regulation for the past two decades, and tries to achieve environmental improvement through voluntary means. What I want to look at includes: what are some of the legal ramifications of ISO 14,000? Both the GATT and ISO were brought about in an effort to facilitate trade and reduce trade barriers. However, certain aspects of the 14,000 seem likely to come into some form of conflict with the GATT. For example, the 'tuna-dolphin' case highlighted the WTO's refusal to distinguish products based on how they were produced -- a question of the definition of "like products." It seems that environmental management implicitly has a different answer to this question; and that environmental labelling and life-cycle assessment will have an explicitly different answer. Will ISO 14,000 aggravate the environmental insensitivity of the GATT, or will it serve as an impetus to international environmental improvement? I also want to look at exactly what it means to have an environmental management system by looking at the pulp and paper industry and examining what technologies are out there and what companies who wanted to get accredited could do.
It is important to realize that ISO 14,000 is not a performance based standard, but a management standard. Also, the US government is under a mandate to use voluntary standards when possible (through OMB Circular A-119); and the GATT calls on its signatories to adopt international standards whenever possible. The US representative to ISO is the American National Standards Institute, and not some governmental agency (such as the National Institute of Standards). What are the repercussions of all these factors? What are some of the potential pitfalls and successes of ISO 14,000? I hope to address these and more questions in my thesis.