Environmental Management Systems: Regulatory or Voluntary Approach?

Cities are the highest consumers of resources that directly or indirectly affect the environment. Experts comment is that if no immediate action is taken to reverse the present situation, the problem will not only affect human health and safety but also international and national security. Improving environmental management without compromising other aspects of sustainable development is a major challenge, particularly for developing countries. The long prevailing tradition of environmental management through a command-and-control approach based on existing rules and regulations has not mitigated the problem, but rather, has aggravated it. ISO 14001 standards provides the only internationally accepted voluntary tool for environmental management. Its adoption is taking precedence over the long-prevailing traditional end- of-pipe solution approach based primarily on enforcing regulatory compliance. The research works tried to find out the ways and means how to incorporate the ISO based EMS standards in the context of Bangladesh.