Research project HL/DD/03 (Research action HL)
On 14 June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development adopted Agenda 21 - an action programme for the twenty-first century based on the 27 principles contained in the Rio de Janeiro Declaration on the Environment and Development. This places strong emphasis on the role of the various target groups.
Thus, businesses have to take their share of responsibility when it comes to putting sustainable development into practice. This is also known as the "internalisation" of environmental policy (DE MAN, 1989). In order to achieve this, businesses need to introduce the necessary organisational (structure, assignment of responsibilities), administrative (procedures) and technical provisions. In striving to bring about sustainable development, naturally a major role must be reserved for the government; after all, the latter as far as possible needs to place responsibility for sustainable development in the hands of all actors within society, including businesses.
The aim of this project is to investigate the role that voluntary approaches might play in bringing about sustainable development. To this end, the project is divided into two main modules. The first of these investigates the existing voluntary environmental management instruments - and, more specifically, environmental control systems - available to businesses in order to ascertain the extent to which these may contribute to achieving more sustainable development.
The second module then investigates a voluntary approach in which government and businesses collectively shoulder their environmental responsibility in order therefore to bring about sustainable development. Thus, the two modules together encompass two key actors in the process of achieving sustainable development (business and government) and attempt to provide an overall picture of existing voluntary approaches for achieving sustainability. Furthermore, these two voluntary instruments (environmental management systems, environmental policy agreements) fit in easily with the overall culture of consultations in Belgium, which is characterised by co-operation between different social partners (government, businesses, trade unions, etc.) on different levels.
Different voluntary approaches exist that businesses can use in order to internalise environmental policy.
The first module of this study investigates the existing environmental management instruments available to businesses, with which they can take on their own responsibilities in order to achieve specific environmental objectives. Within this framework, attention will be focused chiefly on the environmental management system and the role this instrument can play as sustainable development is achieved. A typical feature of these instruments is the fact that businesses are able to decide on a voluntary basis whether or not to use the same environmental management systems.
In order to achieve more genuine sustainable development, it is necessary to integrate this instrument within all operational management and formulate it along sufficiently ambitious lines. This therefore also calls for the fundamental adaptation, or otherwise total revision, of policy, strategy and all operational management.
For its part, the government to date has experienced many problems in terms of encouraging the different sustainable development responsibilities of the various actors by means of traditional regulation. For that reason, new instruments have become necessary that are based on shared responsibility and on co-operation with businesses. Environmental policy agreements may be viewed as one of the new instruments that go furthest here. They are discussed in module 2 of this study.
Environmental policy agreements are defined as: "Agreements between the government (federal or regional) and businesses, under which both parties commit themselves to achieving the environmental objectives contained in the environmental policy agreement". However, this is too narrow an approach for this instrument since it places too much emphasis on two or more parties signing a contract in which reciprocal obligations are recorded. Consequently, this study will also analyse business undertakings and initiatives recognised by the government that have not been placed on a proper, formal footing in a contract, but which may indeed be viewed as actual agreements. At present, fifteen or so such environmental policy agreements have been concluded in Belgium with varying success.
Het gebruik van vrijwillige instrumenten bij de realisatie van een duurzame ontwikkeling: eindrapport
De Clercq, M. - Struyf, I. - Senesael, F. ... et al. Brussel: DWTC, 2001 (SP0936)
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[Exhausted]
Het gebruik van vrijwillige instrumenten bij de realisatie van een duurzame ontwikkeling: syntheserapport
Brussel: DWTC, 2001 (SP0937)
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The use of voluntary instruments for the realisation of a sustainable development: summary
Brussels: OSTC, 2001 (SP0938)
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