The Future of Standardization

Twenty years ago, dismissive members of the business community were calling environmentalists "tree huggers." Luckily, that changed. The environment is now high on the agendas of business, government, and society at large.

In a rapidly globalizing world, in order to achieve fair play in environmental and social issues, one must first define the rules of the game. This is where universal standards come into effect.

On a local level, many leading CEOs must juggle caring for the environment while taking care of business as usual. The successful ones are doing so with the help of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and its standards for environmental management systems and social responsibility.

The History of Environmental

Standardization

In the beginning, with the encouragement of organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, ISO had set up a Strategic Advisory Group on the Environment (SAGE), in which twenty countries, eleven international organizations and more than one hundred environmental experts participated in defining a new approach to environment-related standards.

This 1992 work led to the launch of ISOTechnical Committee 207 on Environmental Management (TC 207), the committee responsible for developing the ISO14000 series of standards and guidance documents, in 1993. Its goal was the development of practical tools for companies to use. These tools were meant to set environmental policies and achieve environmental objectives at the organizational level and the level of companies' products and services.

Today, seventy-four countries participate in TC 207, along with another twenty-six as observers and forty-one international or regional organizations, including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nationals Environmental Progamme, the World Health Organization, and the World Trade Organization.

The relevance of ISO's approach was clear at the second Earth Summit, the UN's 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the decade between the two summits, the debate had shifted from "what should we do and why?" to "how do we do it?"

TC 207 has tried to answer that pressing question by developing twenty-two international standards and related documents. The popular ISO14001 released in 1996, was one of those standards. It gives the requirements for environmental management systems (EMS).

ISO 14000 Standardizes Greenhouse

Gas Emissions

After the ISO14000 family established a strong foothold in the business world, it focused its efforts on sustainability: environmental labeling, performance evaluation, life-cycle analysis, communication, and auditing.

The latest standards in the family provide requirements for organizations or persons to quantify and verify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (ISO14064) and specify accreditation requirements for organizations that validate or verify resulting GHG emission claims (ISO14065).
ISO14064 and ISO14065 provide a universal framework for measuring GHG emissions and verifying claims made about them so that "a tonne of carbon is always a tonne of carbon".

The new standards are consistent and compatible with the GHG Protocol, published by the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development WBCSD. ISO, the WRI and the WBCSD have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to promote their GHG accounting and reporting standards.

Integration of the principles of ISO14064 and of the validation and verification requirements of ISO14065 is ongoing. The standards already involve the Voluntary Carbon Standard developed by The Climate Group, the International Emissions Trading Association, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development specifically.

The standards promote GHG reduction, but are also useful in the development of GHG credit trading schemes, where universal agreement on quantification and consistent verification of emissions is the key to success. ISO/TC 207 is now extending its work to other climate change-related issues such as desertification and eco-efficiency measurement. It's also looking into a potential standard for quantifying the carbon footprint of products and services.

Beyond ISO 14000

The ISO14000 family is the most visible part of ISO's approaches to environmental sustainability, but it does not stand alone. ISO also offers a wide-ranging portfolio of standardized sampling, testing and analytical methods. These have wide applications, such as the monitoring of air, water, and soil quality, for example. The standards are a means of providing business and government with scientifically valid data on the environmental effects of economic activity.

In a nutshell, ISO provides practical tools for meeting the environmental challenges facing the international community. And the latter is taking notice: ISO's work was highlighted at the 2007 World Energy Congress and at recent meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In the economic dimension, ISO standards for products, services, materials, systems, and good practice promote efficiency and effectiveness, facilitation of trade, and dissemination of new technologies. Most recent works include standards for the quality of information technology services, radio frequency identification, personal financial planning, biofuels, and nanotechnologies.

In the societal dimension, ISO's initiatives help developing countries on issues of health, safety, and security via the development of standards for medical devices, biometric-based security, safe food supply chains, information security, supply chain security, incident preparedness, and operational continuity management.

Standards for Social Responsibility

ISO is also working on a number of social guidelines. Current development of the ISO26000 standard is of great interest to business and political leaders. That standard will give guidance on social responsibility (SR).

Sustainable business for organizations means not only providing products and services that satisfy the customer without jeopardizing the environment, but also operating in a socially responsible manner. Pressure to do so comes from customers, consumers, governments, associations, and the public at large.

Far-sighted organizational leaders recognize that lasting success must be built on credible business practices and the prevention of fraudulent accounting and labour exploitation. While a number of high-level declarations of principle relating to SR have been established, the real challenge lies in putting those principles into practice. Of course, implementing SR effectively and efficiently would be much easier if the understanding of what "social responsibility" means didn't vary from one program to another.

ISO's expertise is in developing harmonized international agreements based on double levels of consensus: among the principal categories of stakeholders and among countries (ISO is a network of the national standards bodies of 157 countries). The future ISO26000 guidelines will distil a globally relevant understanding of what social responsibility is and what organizations need to do to operate in a socially responsible way.

The guidance in ISO26000 will draw on best practices developed by existing public- and private-sector SR initiatives. It will be consistent with relevant declarations and conventions by the United Nations and its constituents, notably the International Labor Organization, with whom ISO has established a Memorandum of Understanding to ensure consistency. ISO has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations Global Compact Office to enhance their cooperation on the development of ISO26000.

ISO26000 will integrate international expertise on social responsibility and continue along the path carved by the ISO14000 family: helping organizations move from good intentions to good actions on the quest for universal standards of sustainability and social responsibility.

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