ABSTRACT

Environmental risk management is finally coming of age. This new field has matured over the past several years through the incorporation of the diverse elements of communications, toxicology, insurance, litigation avoidance, and regulatory compliance. Until now, there has never been a coordinated, holistic approach to environmental risk management — one that integrates these seemingly disparate disciplines into a meaningful structure for senior management to make risk-based decisions. The ISO 14000 series of standards for environmental management presents a uniform approach. ISO 14000 attempts to solve the problems that have made environmental risk management more technical than strategic, more reactive than proactive.