Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Standards
A standard may be defined as a widely accepted or approved example of something
against which others may be measured. They allow meaningful evaluation, exchange
and comparison of data, improve objectivity of judgement (so are important to
science), aid recognition of crucial thresholds and limits, support negotiation, law
making and comparison (between sites, between countries and between years).
Standards have existed from ancient times: the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had
units of measurement and coinage, medieval European craft guilds set standards for
the quality of goods, and by the nineteenth century Britain, France and some other
countries had institutes and observatories which developed, managed and regulated
the standard units used to record data.
Unfortunately, national standards often ran in parallel, so that data collected
in, say, a French colony would have to be converted to units used in Britain. Conversion
may sometimes be easy, but if the indicators used or the means of gathering data
differ, even rough comparison may be difficult. A useful standard in a temperate
country may be meaningless in the humid tropics (there are still tropical countries
which have building standards inherited from temperate colonial powers which specify
roofs to cope with snowfall). Without world-wide standards it is difficult to research
the structure and function of the environment and to monitor global conditions. Before
the late 1950s various international unions had agreed standards for some fields,
such as telegraphy and radio, but not so much for the environmental sciences. One
achievement of the International Geophysical Year (1957–58) and subsequent global
exchanges of hydrological, meteorological, geophysical and biological data was the
development of better international environmental standards.
As research into environmental issues progresses, new standards are needed,

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for example to assess ‘safe’ levels of chemical pollution or radioactivity. The process
is ongoing, involving various national and international institutes and standards
organizations (e.g. the British Standards Institution or the International Standards
Organization). Advances in medical knowledge, toxicology, ecology, etc., force the
revision of some established standards. Ozone-damaging CFCs were considered inert
and safe in the late 1930s, and environmental levels of DDT caused little concern
before the 1960s. New standards are being developed which take into account factors
like the greater vulnerability of children to some pollutants.
There are a number of ways of developing a standard, each with advantages
and disadvantages, e.g. a standard for checking that fruit does not exceed ‘safe’
levels of a pesticide might be based on a simple maximum residue level (MRL), or a
sort of lump sum, or an acceptable daily intake (ADI) —which assumes consumers
all eat a given amount per day. It is consequently important that an environmental
manager knows the characteristics of a standard as well as the levels measured by it
(and the reliability of the measurements). The methods of data collection as well as
the agreed units must be standardized. Taking the same meteorological measurements
in the lee of a house and in open countryside or at various times of day gives quite
different results, making comparison difficult. Collecting data is often expensive; it
is therefore important to avoid poorly focused, encyclopaedic data collection, and it
is a good idea to ‘scope’ first (assess what should be measured and how).
Standards often rely upon indicators, things that can be relatively easily measured,
and which have specific meaning. Some indicators are precise and reliable, others less
so. Sometimes when a broader focus is needed, or the process to be monitored is
complex, a composite index may be devised which is the sum of a number of different
measurements, e.g. the Human Development Index (OECD, 1991; UNDP, 1991).
Environmental standards may be divided into broad groups: those concerned with
ensuring human health and safety; those concerned with maintaining environmental
quality; those concerned with the quality of consumer items.
Standards play a crucial part in:
♦
monitoring;
♦
modelling to understand the environment and establish trends;
♦
negotiation;
♦
enforcement of rules;
♦
environmental auditing;
♦
maintaining environmental quality.
The fields of activity which make use of standards include:
♦
pollution control;
♦
health and safety;
♦
public hygiene and health (especially domestic water supplies, sewage and
waste disposal);
♦
consumer goods (food standards; electrical safety; electromagnetic radiation
safety);

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♦
pharmaceutical products;
♦
transport safety and quality;
♦
disclosure of information to the public.
Standards are of little use if they are not effectively enforced. Another
difficulty is that standards may sometimes be relaxed, usually for profit or strategic
reasons. The expression REGNEG (renegotiation of regulations) has been applied
to the situation where a developer succeeds in persuading the authorities to relax
or modify regulations in its favour, making it easier to meet standards or avoid
assessments.