Holistic risk-based approach to identify significant environmental aspects within an environmental management system

Abstract

Environmental Management Systems (EMSs), such as ISO 14001 and EMAS, are used by many organizations across the globe, with the overarching goal of continual improvement of environmental performance. Proponents claim that properly implemented, supported, and maintained EMSs will result in many organizational benefits; detractors claim EMSs are more akin to "greenwashing" and do not provide much in the way of organizational benefit. Central to EMSs is the identification of significant environmental aspects, which many consider to be the most important and the most difficult piece of the EMS process. Due to a lack of specificity in EMS guidance regarding how to determine significance, many different protocols have been independently developed. These many processes contain various weaknesses that limit their usefulness to broad application. The Aspect-Impact-Mitigation (AIM) Prioritization Program was originally developed to provide a holistic risk-based approach to identify significant environmental aspects in accordance with the guidance in the ISO 14001 standard. While the current version of AIM orders environmental aspects by relative risk (i.e., significance), it is not without its own shortcomings, which are addressed in this research. The outcome of this research -- a revised AIM approach -- will represent an improved process of identifying significant environmental aspects through its assessment of environmental impact risks and prioritized mitigation potentials. The verification and validation (V&V) process employed in this research was not found in a review of contemporary EMS decision support tools.