TABLE OF CONTENTS The comments in earlier chapters have already demonstrated that environmental regulations and trends cover many areas of business activities. A comprehensive treatment of this topic would require a separate book, but some of the key issues may be touched on here. It would be an omission to ignore the vital area of environmental issues in a book on corporate governance and due diligence.
In a good practice series published by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Enterprise the publication Responsible Entrepreneurship (2003) it was stated (at p32) :
'Recent decades have seen a marked increase in awareness and public concern about the impact of productive activities on the natural environment. Environmental impacts associated with business operations include:
Inefficient and unsustainable use of natural resource such as oil, gas and water;
Emission of greenhouse gases such as CO2 contributing to climate change;
Emission of pollutants contributing to air and water pollution;
Long-term effects of hazardous chemicals;
The rapid loss of biodiversity; and
A high level of waste generation and hazardous waste.
These impacts increasingly result from goods and services rather than production processes. Instruments used by business to address such environmental impacts are manifold and include amongst others: environmental management systems, both formal (EMAS, ISO 14001) and informal, eco-design tools, cleaner production techniques and technologies and eco-labels'.
In the discussion below some of the instruments are referred to. The main headings in relation to traditional EDD and risk management may be categorised in the following...
