INNI Online Update | Issue #1
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INNI - Introduction Letter UPDATES BY
ISSUE AREA HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE Dear Colleague, The International Organization for Standardization -- also known as "ISO" -- began creating technical standards for things like hardware and photo film in the late 1940s. In recent years, however, this little-known organization has been expanding into matters relating to social and environmental policy. Yet ISO's quiet transformation from creating technical engineering standards to developing standards related to public policy has gone virtually unnoticed and unchecked by most environmental and social justice organizations. Like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the rules established by ISO will have a major impact on national and local environmental issues -- from the environmental management standards deployed by major multinational corporations to eco-labeling, water privatization, and global warming. ISO's recent moves to expand its standards-making activities into water management, climate change, corporate social responsibility, and environmental reporting have compelled the Pacific Institute to expand its efforts as well. We believe that ISO's headlong rush into these new areas of standardization can only be addressed by a more informed and coordinated response from members of the environmental and social justice communities. With funding support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Pacific Institute is working to establish an international network of NGOs that will track, and work to influence, the activities of ISO. The goal of the International NGO Network on ISO (INNI), as we are naming it, is to ensure that any ISO-created environmental standards serve the public interest and protect our environment. We aim to do this by providing timely information on the activities of ISO to network organizations so that they can activate their members, provide guidance to decision-makers, and shape public opinion. As part of our effort, the Institute will provide information via the Internet, in print, and through consultation and strategy sessions with top-level NGOs. The Institute will provide quarterly electronic bulletins (this being the first), and will coordinate the updates with detailed ISO-related information on our website. More detailed information on INNI can be found at: www.pacinst.org/inni. For sake of brevity, this first electronic bulletin serves as a status update on various recent developments within ISO that have environmental and social import. In future bulletins, we intend to provide more detailed analysis of the pros and cons of these developments, as well as our suggested strategies for addressing their ramifications. In closing, it is our conviction that environmentalists and social justice advocates cannot continue to ignore ISO; we must get involved in shaping these standards and guiding their implementation. We hope you will join us in this important effort and we look forward to working with you in the future. Sincerely yours, Jason
Morrison UPDATES BY ISSUE AREA ISO and Water Management Standardization In September 2001, ISO made its first foray into the critical area of water resource management with the creation of Technical Committee (TC) 224. Because the WTO explicitly recognizes ISO standards as the world's presumptively "trade-legal" standards, TC 224's standards could limit or undermine domestic regulation of water and wastewater services if and when disputes arise. TC 224 was proposed by the French standards body (AFNOR), which is significant because in France two private sector companies -- Vivendi and Suez -- provide water management services for major portions of the country. Those same corporations also dominate the international water and wastewater sectors with water projects in 120 countries and with each company claiming to provide water to 100 million people. According to local U.S. water agencies, which voted against the French proposal, standardization in this area is the beginning of an unacceptable push toward privatization. The NGO community in America is also extremely concerned about the trade and democratic governance implications of the standards TC 224 will produce, since an ISO committee dominated by these industry giants could create global standards that encourage the privatization and contracting out of these water services. ISO Enters
International Climate Change Arena ISO formally stepped into the international climate change arena in June 2002, when it began to develop a new standard on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). ISO/TC 207 established Working Group 5 (WG5) to create a standard for the "measurement, reporting and verification of entity- and project-level greenhouse gas emissions." The standard is intended to help companies integrate greenhouse gas emissions into their environmental management systems. In addition, depending upon how the standard is written, it may also assist companies in complying with national climate change regulations, participating in voluntary reporting initiatives, or entering emerging greenhouse gas emissions trading markets. WG 5 grew out of a two-year ISO process designed to see whether agreements like the Kyoto Protocol will precipitate the need for international standardization. ISO determined that the Kyoto Protocol and attendant national climate policies will create incentives for companies to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, and that an international standard would facilitate and add consistency to this process. Environmental Communication Standard Being Developed Within ISO 14000 Series In May 2001, Technical Committee 207 approved the development of a new standard on environmental communication and put an end to almost a decade of debate as to whether to include an environmental reporting-related standard within the ISO 14000 series. In June of that year, a new Working Group (WG 4) was established to develop the standard, "Environmental Management-Environmental Communication -- Guidelines and Examples," also known as ISO 14063. As a systems standard, ISO 14063 will provide guidance to organizations regarding "what to consider" when developing an environmental communication program. ISO's move into this area coincides with a growing awareness of the need for organizations to communicate their environmental activities and performance to a variety of stakeholders, including employees, local communities, environmental groups, customers, shareholders, and government. Meanwhile, driven by a rapid growth in the number of corporate environmental reports and by the demand for improved harmonization, various guidelines for environmental reporting have already been developed by NGOs and governments. One of the most widely recognized guidelines is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines, developed through the leadership of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics (CERES) and the United Nations Environmental Programme. How the developers of the new ISO standard on environmental communications will coordinate their efforts with existing standards initiatives like the GRI Guidelines remains an important and unanswered question. ISO Considers
Whether to Develop Corporate Social Responsibility Standards In a parallel and potentially conflicting action to ISO's, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which is the US representative to ISO, has approved an effort by the US Ethics Officers Association to submit a new work item proposal to ISO on the development of a business conduct management system standard. Although both the ISO and ANSI initiatives aim to develop standardized processes for organizations to manage their CSR-related programs, there are some major differences between two initiatives: - The scope
of ANSI's proposal is limited to the conventional boundaries of
ethical practices, such as bribery, corruption, privacy, and worker
rights. ISO's plan will include the wider realm of CSR.
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