The widespread adoption of environmental management systems (EMSs) by a variety of facilities has the potential to alter profoundly the relationship between their economic and environmental performance. An EMS is a formal set of procedures and policies that define how an organization will manage its potential impacts on the natural world and on the health and welfare of its workers and nearby citizens. When implemented, an EMS represents a commitment and a verifiable process to improve a facility's regulatory compliance, to promote its adoption of pollution-prevention measures, and to assure continuous improvement in its management of its impacts on the environment. Furthermore, by adopting a an EMS, the facility has the potential to discover many opportunities to reduce wasteful uses of resources, thus saving money and otherwise enhancing its economic performance while reducing impacts on the environment.
To date over 950 U.S. facilities have been certified as conforming to the ISO 14001 international voluntary standard for EMSs. Some major businesses have announced deadlines for EMS implementation by all their suppliers, and a presidential executive order has mandated implementation by all appropriate U.S. government facilities. EPA and a number of states have also announced "performance track" initiatives which include EMS implementation mandates.
Environmental regulators in the United States, at both state and federal levels, have been closely watching the development of EMSs. In theory, a facility that adopts an EMS should, over time, conform with all applicable environmental regulations, and should also achieve continuous improvement in its environmental performance. Because the ISO 14001 standard requires a procedure for identifying and complying with regulations, and provides for voluntary third-party certification of those facilities that have implemented an ISO 14001-based EMS, facilities that have achieved such certification and are in full compliance might be candidates for more flexible application of environmental regulations and inspection and monitoring procedures, and might also be candidates for public recognition for superior performance and best practices - as might some other facilities, perhaps, whose EMSs incorporate identifiable "best practices" without third-party certification. Some government officials therefore see in EMSs an opportunity to reduce the regulatory burdens of facilities, thereby requiring less oversight by government and redirection of government enforcement priorities to more problematic facilities. Other regulators and many environmental groups, however, remain skeptical of the idea that, even once an EMS is adopted, facilities will continue to monitor and properly correct their negative environmental impacts without effective regulatory oversight.
To date there has been little systematic research on the environmental or economic effects of EMS adoption and certification. Such research is essential in order to determine whether either EMS implementation or ISO 14001 certification do, in fact, achieve equal or better environmental results than regulatory compliance alone - and if so, under what circumstances or with what identifiable EMS characteristics. This research is also needed to determine the environmental and economic results of EMS implementation, both for the adopting facilities and on the public.
In 1996, therefore, officials of nearly a dozen states, the U.S. EPA, businesses, universities, and some non-profit organizations formed the Multi-State Working Group (MSWG), to develop a common set of ground rules and data collection protocols for state pilot projects with facilities adopting EMSs, and to pool data on the environmental and economic results into a national, publicly-accessible database, the National Database on EMSs (NDEMS). EPA's Offices of Water and of Reinvention (now Policy, Economics and Innovation) have provided funding to support the creation of this database as well as most of the state pilot projects contributing data to it. Ten participating states and the facilities themselves also have contributed substantial amounts of in-kind staff effort to this project.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) have developed and managed this data collection and research program since 1997, with funding from the U.S. EPA. UNC and ELI have developed a common set of protocols for the pilot projects and are responsible for data quality, the management of NDEMS, and production of the resulting public reports. In doing so, UNC and ELI have developed research questions, formulated hypotheses, and designed detailed data collection protocols. In addition, the research team has conducted training sessions on how facilities should complete the data collection protocols and how state personnel can facilitate the data collection process. UNC and ELI have also performed extensive quality control checks to assure the accuracy, quality, and completeness of the resulting database.
The fundamental question to be answered by this research is, to what extent does the implementation of an EMS change a facility's behavior with respect to each of six primary dimensions:
1. Management Systems
2. Environmental Performance
3. Regulatory Compliance
4. Economic Performance (costs and benefits)
5. Pollution Prevention
6. Interested Party InvolvementMany other important research questions can also be addressed through use of NDEMS data, and are being addressed as the data become available. For instance, what features do ISO 14001 EMSs have, and how much variation do they exhibit in practice? Which of these differences are associated with superior environmental performance and regulatory compliance, and which might be considered best practices? EMSs allow great flexibility to facilities as to what environmental performance attributes they select for detailed attention, what environmental goals they set for themselves, and other considerations. Examining the implementation process therefore offers real-time opportunities to determine:
· Why organizations choose to implement an EMS;
· What personnel are involved in designing the EMS;
· What environmental aspects and impacts they include in the process;
· How organizations determine the significance of these impacts;
· What objectives and targets they set for improvement of them, and how they set them;
· How they involve and communicate with the public;
· Whether differences in the EMS process affect the quality of the environmental outcomes;
· How the process of certification affects the outcomes.The answers to all these questions are important to both federal and state environmental policymakers, as well as to the public and to businesses themselves, as they seek to verify what contributions EMSs do in fact make, and under what circumstances, to environmental performance and other policy-relevant outcomes.