Environmental Management: Principles and practice

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS
By the late seventeenth century in the Caribbean, Mauritius, and many other places,
trade in sugar, timber and other commodities by bodies like the Dutch East Indies
Company and the (British) East India Company and clearances by numerous smaller
plantation owners were causing deforestation and soil erosion (Grove, 1995). By the
1830s, English Romantic socialist-environmentalists like William Morris, and in
Russia the proto-anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin began to criticize industrialization for its
pollution, human degradation and shoddy products (MacCarthy, 1994). But there
was little popular protest until the 1960s, by which time people in developed countries
had improved standards of living and enjoyed sufficient free time and access to a
more or less democratic media, to become aware of and lobby for environmental
issues. Accidents like the Torrey Canyon oil-tanker spillage and pollution disasters
like Three Mile Island, Love Canal and Seveso had raised public awareness in USA
and Europe by the mid-1970s. Also environmental NGOs, consumer protection groups
and popular writers (like Carson, 1962) fanned public interest.
Accidents prompted environmental controls. Also by the 1970s American NGOs
and groups of lawyers interested in environmental issues (notably the Environmental
Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Fund) began to fight group court
actions against those damaging nature and lobbied for environmental legislation. In
Europe and New Zealand green politics began to emerge. Research and contact between
scientists increased after the 1957–8 International Geophysical Year, leading to
improving awareness of environmental issues, better understanding of Earth’s structure
and function, the development of international standards, and sharing of data.

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BUSINESS AND LAW
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The USA passed the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970,
and established an Environmental Protection Agency (Seldner and Cottrel, 1994:
61–96). The UN held the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm,
and in 1973 established the UN Environmental Program (UNEP). A deluge of
publications fanned concern for the environment and realization there was a need to
review practices and ethics, e.g. Schumacher’s (1973) Small Is Beautiful voiced
concern about material consumption, pollution and uncaring business. Overall, the
mid-sixties to mid-seventies was a decade of increasing environmental concern.
NEPA required developers to meet environmental standards, and effectively
promoted the precautionary principle. Business was also being prompted by legislation,
public opinion and self-interest to pay attention to the environment. It was not enough
to obey the law and reduce liability, there was a need to look concerned—what Brenton
called ‘defensive greenness’ (1994:148). Some companies saw opportunities for
commercial gain through environmental management—building a green image and
marketing environmentally friendly products or providing services for environmental
management (Greeno and Robinson, 1992). There was a realization that ‘end-of-pipe’
solutions (i.e. cleaning up rather than prevention) were more costly, gave a bad public
image, and that environmental management could be a way of cutting costs to get a
‘competitive edge’ (Beaumont, 1992:201; Taylor, 1992; Winter, 1994).
Other factors have prompted business interest in environmental management:
♦
globalization (i.e. media, finance, etc., becoming global);
♦
‘glasnost’ (i.e. increasing public demand for access to information);
♦
activity of green business groups, especially since the 1992 UN Conference
on Environment and Development;
♦
trade union and NGO concern for environmental issues;
♦
a wish by companies to reduce inspection by regulatory bodies;
♦
insistence by funding, insurance and licensing bodies that impact assessment
and eco-audit be conducted;
♦
ethical (green) investment policies adopted by some companies (in the USA a
group of powerful investors now apply a set of environmental policy
principles—the ‘Valdez Principles’) (North, 1992);
♦
genuine sense of responsibility (some companies have been founded by people
with a strong sense of moral duty);
♦
avoidance of litigation;
♦
the establishment since the 1970s of increasingly powerful environmental
ministries in most countries;
♦
formation of bodies like the Institute of Environmental Management (UK);
♦
promotion of the Integrated Systems for Environmental Management and the
Business Charter for Sustainable Development (International Chamber of
Commerce, 1991);
♦
provision of courses on environmental management at university business
schools;
♦
the UN Center on Transnational Corporations has promoted sustainable
development.

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CHAPTER THREE
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