ENVIROMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SBEV3103

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

September 2014

NAME : DEVENDRAN SUNDARARAJAN

MATRIX NO : 890928085847001

COURSE : BOSHM

E MAIL : dave12345@[email protected]

CENTRE : PULAU PINANG LEARNING CENTRE

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CONTENTS PAGE NO

INTRODUCTION 3 -

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ENVIROMENTAL REGULATORY COMPLIANCE 7 - 11

ENVIROMENTAL RISK MANAGEMENT 11- 13

BUSINESS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 14 -15

CONCLUSION 17

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INTRODUCTION

It is widely accepted and acknowledged that human factors

are the main contributors in pollutions and environmental

destruction where the earth’s ecosystem only capable to provide a

limited resources and services to regenerate its sources as we

are consuming the resources infinitely. So, as the nation’s grow

apart the concept of sustainable development has been introduced

in early 1970s to 1980s to curb the struggle emerged from the

Cold War. There are many definitions of sustainable development

present, but the most widely used is

"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of

future generations to meet their own needs."

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- World Commission on Environment and Development

(Oxford University Press), 1987

The history of sustainable development started with the

World Commission on Environment and Development which was

initiated by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1982

and it was chaired by the Prime Minister of Norway of Harlem

Brundtland thus earning the name “Brundtland Commission’. In the

years following the Brundtland Commission’s report, they began to

work on the unity of environment and development of the earth’s

resources. The use of the definition as above has led to many to

see sustainable development as major focus on intergenerational

equity. The definition by then does not explicitly mention the

environment health or its development but it’s rarely quoted in

meeting and reports.

Thus, the concern mainly on human needs which are basic and

essential -the economic growth but also equity to share resources

with the poor. This led to a simple environment management with

effective citizen participation around the world as below

diagram. This is also known as the milestones for The Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs) were derived from the United Nations

Millennium Declaration, adopted by 189 nations in 2000 after lots

of improvement done in years of environmental baseline.

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Figure 1. Definitions of sustainable development

SOURCE: U.S. National ResearchCouncil, Policy Division, Board on Sustainable Development, Our Common Journey: A Transition toward Sustainability (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999).

But although interpreted over times peace, freedom, development

and the environment remain prominent issue for years. The United

Nations Rio20+ in Brazil committed government to create a set of

sustainable development goals (SDSs) that would be integrated to a new

level and from the follow up from the Millennium development Goals

(MDGs) after their deadline which after discussion on how to

formulate it in UN headquarters in New York. The main argument was the

protection of Earth life support system and poverty reduction become

the must priority for SDGs. It is not simply enough to extend MDSs as

some are suggested human are transforming the Earth in ways that could

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undermine the development plan which have been undergo various changes

over time decades.

So, towards curbing the sustainable development boundaries, the

Sustainable Development Goals was created. As mounting research

conducted, the stable functioning of Earth system including

atmosphere, oceans, forests, waterways and biodiversity cycles,

unified framework created with a set of six development goals follow

form MDGs with stable conditions necessary to assure the stability of

Earth’s system.

Figure 2. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Basically, sustainable development helps to promote the idea

that social, environmental and economics are achievable within

the limits of our earth natural resources. The sustainable has

been overhauled many times to fulfill the needs of future

generation as everything in the development world is being

connected through space, times and quality of life which means in

the term our act can affect other nations throughout. For

example, the pesticides sprayed in Malaysia have the potential to

harm fish stocks in the coast of Japan. Same goes, clean air

practices in one continent will positively affect the air quality

in another region across ocean. Thus, sustainability creates and

maintains a condition which human and nature can go along in

productive environment, fulfilling the requirements of the

present and future generation, be it social, economic or other

aspects.

Sustainable development has been constantly pursues waysto

achieve social and economic progress in ways that will not

exhaust the Earth’s natural resources.  The urge of needs in

world today is real and immediate, but it’s necessary to develop

ways to meet these needs that do not disregard the future.  The

capacity of our ecosystem is not limitless which means that

future generations may not be able to meet their needs the way we

do now.

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Some of the more common examples of sustainable development

practices are:

Solar and wind energy .  Energy from these resources is

limitless, meaning we have the ability to eliminate dependence

on non-renewable power sources by harnessing power from

renewable resources.

Sustainable construction .  Homes, offices and other structures

that incorporate recycled and renewable resources will be more

energy efficient and withstand the mother nature

Crop rotation . Farmers and gardeners are using this method as

a chemical free way to reduce diseases in the soil and

increase growth potential of their crops.

Water fixtures .  Water conservation is critical to sustainable

development, and more and more products are available that use

less water in the home, such as showers, toilets, dishwashers

and laundry systems.

The world’s resources are getting limited by day, and

unnecessary wastage will lead to increased poverty and weakening

of the environment.  We owe it to future generations to explore

lifestyles and paths of development that effectively balance

progress with awareness of its environmental impact.  In order to

preserve the future, we must appreciate the interconnectedness

between humans and nature at all levels.  Sustainable development

practices can help us do this, and through education and building

awareness, preserving the future is within everyone’s reach.8

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATORY COMPLICANCE

For the past years, environmental law and regulations has

been fundamental to government hard work to implement a wide

range of environmental programs designed to protect air, water,

natural resources, wildlife and public health. Countries from all

over the world use environmental law to help address problems

such as the discharge of waste toxics into the environment, the

protection of flora and fauna, the handling, storage and disposal

of solid and hazardous wastes, the usage of pesticides,

controlling air contamination, and protecting the quality and

accessibility of clean pure water.

Environmental Compliance can be also address as a way to

conforming to environmental laws, regulations, act standards and

other requirements for a industry to operate on regular basis..

This has led to environmental concerns which have a significant

growth in the number and scope of compliance laws across all

global regulatory environments. This entire links connected

environmental concerns and compliance activities are increasingly

being combined and aligned to some level in order to avoid

encounters, wasteful overlaps and gaps.

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As a result to meet with the above necessities and obligations,

certain situations within them must be met. Thus, it is a must to

include criteria such as:-

Organizing monitoring programs or schedules, ensuring that

the monitoring required in the permit has been done, in

precise locations, for the accurate parameters, and at the

correct frequency

Assessment on processing activities, performing calculations

and validating the data for compliance with any alert or

reporting levels

Generating routine compliance reports for authorities as in

the Environmental Quality Act 1974

All the above obligation of management can be complex and time

consuming, leading to an increasing application of software

systems designed to manage environmental compliance and with the

help of Environmental Data Management System technology, those

task will be more systematic and precise and able to meet the

deadline in every quarters.

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Figure 3& 4. The Environmental Management Cycle

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However, just by having environmental laws in place is not

enough to address these

problems. Government and authorities must find way to ensure the

regulated community meets the requirement and their implementing

regulation. So as part of environmental compliance and

enforcement, the comprehensive environmental management cycles

was created as guideline. This cycle basically help recognize

certain environmental problem and thus address the specific

approaches to reach the goal.

Awareness and Strategic Planning

The cycles start with awareness of there is an environmental

problem and support to address th problem. With the awareness and

supports for action, we can begin strategic planning and goal

setting. This goal setting may include environmental risk or

preventing pollution.

Selecting a Management Approach

Once the goals are set, focus on selecting the most suitable

management approaches in order to achieve program goal. It can

vary as voluntary, market-based and mandatory.

Developing Effective Requirements

The selected approaches may require specific law and regulation

thus some specific practices and procedures needed directly or

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indirectly to reduce the pollution. Effective requirement demand

that’s specific things to be done or outcome reached.

Evaluation and Adjustment

Once the implementation begins, evaluation as an important part

needs to be initiated to review the impact of the program through

use of the environmental management compliance. Evaluation leads

to greater awareness on how good the program is addressing the

targeted environmental problem which feedback to a better

planning and implementation.

Strategies to improve the Environmental Regulatory Success

Recently, the government and industry have begun to explore

innovative strategies that can seek directly to shape the

internal management practices in their section. These new

strategies focus squarely on management and seek to provide

incentives for firms to develop management practices that in turn

can lead to improved environmental benefits. Stated below are

some the example:-

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Introduce new policies and adjustments to legislation to cut

formalities and streamline processes that are focused on

strong environmental outcomes.

Develop easy to understand instruction and information

material for industrialist and their staff, including

guidance on making and assessing uses, complying with the

department’s expectations and taking enforcement action.

Collaborate with industry associations, community groups on regulatory matters that affect their members.

Introduction of market-based incentives which will provide

clients with greater flexibility to meet their environmental

obligations, for example, water quality offsets.

Adopt and learn new technologies and skills, such as

innovative remote sensing platforms, to aid identify high

risk activities requiring closer on-ground monitoring.

Distribute compliance alerts, prosecution bulletins and

other information to clients, industrialist and to the

community.

Introduce measurement to calculate the continued improvement

in application processing times and industry compliance.

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This assessment proved to increase the benefits to both

industry and environment as well helping them to reduce the

burden of compliance which loss of time, money and precious

environment.

Environmental Risk Management

Environmental risk management is the next phase on the

passage towards sustainable development in industries nowadays.

Until the 90s, there was little concern with environmental risks

on the part of government, business and societies with a naïve

attitude which considered that natural systems had infinite

capacity to absorb the pollutants and waste of industrial

economies. Various events, such as smog levels in capital, flash

flood in cities and burning forests in Asia, began to gradually

change public opinion to realize importance of environmental risk

to indeed exists and require the attention of risk management

systems.

Environmental risk management places a strong emphasis on

targeting the problems that could arise and implements a

structure of metrics that help with prevention. This practice is

used by both public and private sectors of the economy. An

organization must establish techniques that manage the

uncertainty of its operations, which involves following certain

protocol and implementing tools that will ensure conformance to

those procedures. These procedures must be applied to daily

activities that may be a threat to environmental well-being, as

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well as overall infrastructure assessment, to eliminate damage to

the environment caused by the organization.

Figure 5

Environmental risk assessment can be thought of as containing the

following

key stages.

Hazard identificatio n

This would typically include identification of the situation that

could lead to harm and assessment through scientific method to

find out the exposure between pollutant and human health. This

step is sometimes also known as problem formulation

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Dose Response Assessment

Identification of significances if the hazard was to occur and

calculate the quantify relationship between dosage of contaminant

and humans health.

Exposure Assessment

Estimation of the magnitude of the hazard from the angle of

frequency, duration, time of exposure. This can include

consideration of the spatial and temporal scale of the

consequences and the time to onset of the consequences.

Strategies to improve the Environmental Risk Management Success

Regulating SMEs

Regulating small and medium enterprise helps to curb and improve

their control on environment assessment, conduct EHS assessment

to day to day basics.

Education and Training

Conducting seminar and training for those who are in charge of

EHS in their section. Proper exposure to environment policies,

law and regulation helps to prevent more pollutant in near

future.

Facilitating Self-Inspection and Self-Audit

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Self-inspection and self-audit promotes continues improvement to

enterprise which can led to ‘green star’ award for enterprise

which do complete environmental audit or inspection.

Implementing Recycling Program

Techniques such as pollution prevention or recycling are used to

translate policy objectives into practice.

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Business and Sustainable Development

Business strategies for sustainable development marks the

final phase in journey. Business sustainability have often

defined as managing all form together which involves process

which industries manage their financial, social, environment risk

obligation and regulation. Businesses and societies can find

approaches that will move towards all three goals -

environmental protection, social wellbeing and economic

development all at the same time. These three aspects often

impact the profits, people and the planet as well because

protecting organization’s capital base is widely accepted

business principle nowadays and crucial in pursuit of economic,

environmental & community benefits, we have to consider long-term

interests & needs of stakeholders. To achieve the sustainable

development potential, it must well planned and strategic to meet

the requirement of modern nature.

The main priority is to achieve a win- win situation which

can achieve environmental quality, increase wealth & enhance

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competitive advantage. This can result in new business proposal

with reduced harm impacts, improved financial plan and increased

reputation among worldwide stakeholders. To achieve those

successes, there are seven well-planned strategies should be

implanted to ease the burden of industrialist.

Perform a stakeholder analysis

This analysis helps to set out the issues, concerns and

information needs of the stakeholders. Numerous laws and

regulations have increases their concern on earning the profits

they should. So, identifying these parties is crucial as a

central component for sustainable development and greater

corporate victory.

Set sustainable development policies and objectives

Next step is to communicate the basic standards that the

enterprise expects its

employees to follow with respect to sustainable development, and

to set targets for

operating performance.

Design and execute an implementation plan

Making a plan for the management system changes are needed in

order to achieve sustainable development objectives. Implementing

sustainable development policies into operational terms is a

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major job that will affect the entire organization because it’s

changing the corporate

culture and employee attitudes and defining their new

responsibilities.

Develop a supportive corporate culture

A supportive corporate culture employees not only generates

practical ideas, but also increases

enthusiasm for the sustainability programme itself. Customers and

employees needs to be enjoying being part of an organization that

is committed to operating in a socially responsible manner.

Develop measures and standards of performance

These measures will help evaluate the performance in future which

will be influenced by the

company’s sustainable development objectives, and by standards

that have been recognized by government and other public

agencies.

Preparing meaningful reports

A reporting system that provides a meaningful picture of a

company’s sustainability achievements and strengthening

relationship and accountability among stakeholder groups.

Enhance internal monitoring processes

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Implementing an environmental auditing programme and holding

regular meetings with subordinates to review reports will enhance

the sustainability development

The Relationship Between Stages in Sustainable Development

It is assumed that the concept of sustainable living began

in the 19th century, long before solar panels, geothermal energy,

and renewable energy were even thought. The necessity for a

sustainable development became more obvious as cities began to

grow and resources began to weaken in quantity and value. To

achieve the sustainable living in Malaysia, various stages have

been implemented from the regulatory compliance mode,

environmental risk management and to the last stage, achieving

sustainable living.

In the early phase of the journey, the need of to comply

with environmental regulations drives improvements in

environmental performance by creating a more lawfully and

regulated behaviors of companies and stakeholders towards

beginning the sustainable living in Malaysia. In the next stage,

people and stakeholder began to adopt a more proactive approach

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by assessing environmental risks thus reducing environmental

liabilities and minimize cost of regulation compliance. As final

stage the sustainable business and living, significant number of

companies recognize that the implementation of sustainable

business strategies can lead to new opportunities to Malaysia’s

nature.

Conclusion

As we go through various stages in achieving sustainability

in modern world, environment is just a one of the components

embedded in the concept of sustainability development because we

all know society and economy are equally important too as people

realized a healthy environment only does not pose a prosperous

society or a healthy economy.

But, ensuring environmental protection implies reducing adverse

effects but allowing our future generations to inherit the same

amount of natural, social and economic wealth as their

predecessors.

For example, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and

dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDTs) are harmful substances

that been removed from business process and product in many

countires. This removal proved all these years that journey

towards sustainable living is a hard pain work yet achievable.

Sustainable development provides an approach to making better

decisions on the issues that affect all of our lives. The way we

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approach development affects everyone but the impacts of our

decisions as a society have very real consequences for people's

lives.

References

Grigg, David, Sustainable development goals for people and planet (2013). Macmillan Publisher Limited

Robert W. Kates, Thomas M. Parris, and Anthony A. Leiserowitz,

2005

Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, (Volume 47) Paris

Publications.

Neil Gunningham, BEYOND COMPLIANCE: NEXT GENERATION ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION (Sept 3 2002) Regulatory Institutions Network

Economic and Social Affairs. Indicator of Sustainable Development (October 2007) United Nations.

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Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash 2004. Leveraging the Private Sector: Management-Based Strategies for Improving Environmental Performance [2014, January 21]

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