Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Life-cycle analysis
Many development activities are processes which have different stages—for example,
manufacturing a car or running a power station involve raw materials and energy
provision, plant construction, manufacturing, distribution, use and disposal or
decommissioning. Equipment is usually subject to wear and tear, and so varies in
performance and presents different risks as it ages and as management acquire
experience (or become complacent). Industrial and power generation sites, for
example, often accumulate contamination, and so the environmental threat is not
constant. It is therefore undesirable to assess impacts or develop environmental
management policies by simply taking a snapshot view. Life-cycle analysis (or
assessment) has been developed to try to consider the whole of an activity, which
may extend beyond the time horizon of a single owner. It is cradle-to-grave study of
an activity or company (British Standards Institution, 1994a; Fava, 1994; Pidgeon
and Brown, 1994; Franklin, 1995).
Environmental management and business: the current situation
One may summarize the present situation (see Beaumont, 1992:202) as:
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the majority of businesses are aware that environmental issues are important;
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some businesses are doing something—it may be from genuine concern, but
often it is for public relations or profit motives;
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too often businesses adopt a ‘react and repair’ approach, rather than following
precautionary principles;
♦
only a few businesses are acting at a strategic level;
♦
business is in need of strategies like industrial ecology, but will need to be
encouraged or forced to adopt them.
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND LAW
Law should provide a framework for regulating use of the environment (Harte, 1992;
McEldowney, 1996; Bell, 1997) (Box 3.2). Law is crucial for environmental
management in a number of ways, aiding:

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♦
regulation of resource use;
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protection of the environment and biodiversity;
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mediation, conflict resolution and conciliation;
♦
formulation of stable, unambiguous undertakings and agreements.
Environmental management may involve a number of resource situations, e.g.
individually-owned (private) resources; national resources; shared resources; open-
access resources; common property resources; global resources. Some of these are
better covered by law than others (Berkes, 1989; The Ecologist, 1993). There are
different legal systems—for example, based on Roman Law, on customary laws,
Islamic Law, the Code Napoléon—to name but a few. Some countries have legal
systems that combine more than one of these, say indigenous and colonial era
legislation, plus Islamic Law. Areas may be subject to state and federal laws and to
secular and religious laws. In most countries statutory law is written by politicians
and passed by national legislature; and common law is compiled by judges (with
reference to past cases and prior statutory law).
Most legislation evolves in response to problems, so there is often delay between
need and the establishment of satisfactory law. Without effective legislation, resource
use, pollution control, conservation, and most fields of human activity are likely to
fall into chaos and conflict. Law can encourage satisfactory performance, enable
authorities to punish those who infringe environmental management legislation, or
confiscate equipment that is misused or faulty, or close a company; it may also be
possible for employees, bystanders and product or service users to sue for damages
if they are harmed.
Some countries have been active in developing environmental management
law, notably Sweden, The Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Some environmental laws are ancient: Indian rulers promulgated controls on hunting
and forest felling centuries ago; the UK had local pollution control laws as early as
the twelfth century AD, and passed nationally enforced pollution control legislation
like the Alkali Act (1863) over a century ago.
Environmental management increasingly involves transboundary problems that
reach beyond traditional sovereignty limits, issues of negligence, and the need for
nations to co-operate. International law is evolving to address such issues, although
it is difficult to develop and enforce (McAuslan, 1991). Often powerful MNCs or
TNCs are involved in issues and these may prompt and drive forward innovation,
not necessarily to the benefit of the environment or the public. Walker (1989: 30)
likened them to seventeenth-century city states that had insufficient public
accountability. The problem is to ensure that changes are for the good of the
environment and the greater common good, rather than just suiting a large company
or more countries.
Most laws, whether civil or criminal, are corrective—punishing wrong-doers
and deterring others from infringing rules and agreements or from causing nuisance
or injury. In the main, therefore, legislation has not been very pre-emptive.
Environmental managers must also be aware that there is little point in passing laws
or making international agreements if there cannot be adequate enforcement.

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