There is growing recognition that progress toward sustainability and environmental protection in the new millennium requires dynamic systems that build upon the strengths of the existing regulatory system to capture the power of management innovation, community involvement, information technology, and sustainability. Tools that help regulated entities manage their environmental impacts have been simultaneously evolving for decades. Due diligence, quality assurance/control, and pollution prevention programs of the 1980s and ‘90s have grown into more mature efforts to solicit and respond to stakeholder input, forecast environmental impacts, provide information, and design new processes and products which mediate or eliminate threats to humans and ecosystems. National and international organizations are identifying and codifying environmental management protocols as global standards. These standards are being adopted to help companies that see management of their environmental impacts as integral to strong overall management practices. The best-known effort to accomplish this is known as ISO 14000. There is reason to hope that as international environmental management protocols evolve, they can be effectively and efficiently deployed to address persistent problems within and beyond the purview of existing regulatory programs.

It is widely recognized that existing laws and regulations alone cannot move society to the next level of progress in protecting human health and ecological resources. New laws, norms, and mechanisms are needed to continue improving environmental quality. Open, inclusive, information-rich, and incentive-based environmental management systems (EMS) seem particularly promising as ways to address many unmet needs and achieve superior results in a manner that is both more fair and less cumbersome than a new layer of technology-specifying laws and regulations. One new approach calls for greater transparency (allowing the public to monitor accurate facility environmental performance records), increased public participation in decision-making about environmental trade-offs, demonstrable improvement, and some form of effective accountability mechanism. Catalyzing the transition to this new system will require adoption of a system for credible and comparable facility-specific environmental performance measurements. It also will necessitate building awareness of the system’s potential benefits, educating people in the public and private sectors on how it can work, and motivating organizations and individuals to put it into operation.

Adoption of EMS by businesses and other organizations that affect the environment holds great promise as a way to strengthen the existing environmental protection system in a fair and non-cumbersome way. The basic components of an EMS which may be expected to fulfill this promise include:

• a broad policy statement committing the organization to reducing or eliminating harmful ecological outcomes; 
• an analysis of current environmental impacts and legal requirements;
• a statement of measurable environmental goals, objectives, and initiatives;
  
• public reporting on the goals and measurement of progress toward the goals;
  
• active leadership and management to reach the goals;
  
• a corrective action plan or strategy for making progress toward the goals; and 
  
• a thorough management review system.

While the development of EMS has accelerated in recent years, there is still considerable confusion over what they are, how they operate, and what they can achieve. Consultants have been deployed to assist businesses and government agencies to implement these systems, but little of this activity is coordinated, standardized, outcome-based, or data-driven. Pilot EMS projects by the federal government, states and private sector companies are struggling to assess what works and what does not. There is a need to convene and coordinate the work of all involved sectors to create EMS that are most effective and have the greatest shared benefit. Government at the federal, state and local levels can convene and expedite implementation of EMS programs by providing flexible and workable oversight systems. Businesses and other private entities interested in the efficiency and flexibility benefits that EMS offer can help by participating in pilot projects and data collection--including publicly reporting environmental information in a credible and, wherever possible, comparable way and engaging the local community in discussion about the EMS goals and reporting systems. Non-governmental organizations (NGO) can move the process forward by providing input and new ideas that generate real environmental improvements--locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.

Within this increasingly complex multi-sector setting, an integrated research, training and information-sharing program could accelerate environmental progress. Government, business, and NGO recognize that development of such a program cannot occur without their involvement and support. At the same time, no individual sector has the resources or the authority to develop these kinds of essential and broad-based environmental advancements on its own. These recognitions form the basis of the Policy Academy on Environmental Management Tools' concept and mission.