ISO 14001

Once you have a solid handle on the internal and external factors affecting your environmental management system and have good engagement with stakeholders, you’ll be better positioned to understand the risks to your company’s environmental performance, as well as opportunities to improve performance. Section 6.1.1 also reminds us that the purpose of identifying risks is to control risks, or as the standard puts it, to “prevent or reduce undesired effects, including the potential for external environmental conditions to affect the organization.”

Compliance (or non-compliance) with established environmental regulations has a huge potential impact on a company’s environmental performance. The drafters of ISO 14001 recognize this, and state in Section 6.1.3 that organizations need to understand which regulatory obligations are applicable, and take those obligations into account when “establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving its environmental management system.” Companies need to not only know their regulatory requirements, but also be able to show they know them, and to understand how the requirements affect their environmental management strategies.

The developers of ISO 14001 understand that the best-conceived and best-written plans won’t work unless all the right people know about them and understand and accept their roles in executing the plans. Section 7.4 states that companies need to determine the “what,” “when,” “where,” “who” and “how” aspects of communication and ensure that they’re including both internal and external stakeholders.

ISO 14001 rightfully identifies that organizations need to have active, thorough emergency preparedness and response plans alongside their plans for “regular” operations. Section 8.2 states that organizations need to plan “actions to prevent or mitigate adverse environmental impacts from emergency situations,” periodically test their planned response actions, and revise plans when necessary. Good emergency planning is one of the prerequisites for building resilience—a term for a company’s ability to adapt to a changing environment, overcome challenges, and maintain business continuity.

Companies need good data to enable better decision making, which is why Section 9 of ISO 14001 connects data management to performance evaluation. Your organization needs to determine the most relevant data to measure, how to measure it, and a frequency for reviewing the data (in some cases, alongside key internal and external stakeholders) to evaluate environmental performance. In some cases, you may also need to collect data to report to regulatory agencies and use the data to ensure your compliance with applicable regulations.