ISO 14000: The Annual Plenary Conference Held June 1998 In San Francisco
Report by Jane Eliason
For the first time, the delegates of environmental non-profit organizations met together under the auspices of ISO/TC207, the technical committee (TC) charged with developing the ISO 14000 standards. Over 40 delegates met to discuss their common concerns regarding ISO 14000.
This first meeting was important for several reasons. First, since an organization's profit vs. non-profit status is not requested during registration, we literally did not know how many of us there were. Second, we were also surprised to discover that we shared a common set of concerns. We were expecting more diversity. Third, we later discovered that our main concerns were shared by the developing countries' delegates who had held their own meeting.
In response to the similar requests for action by the environmental delegates and the developing countries' delegates, TC207 appointed three senior officers to investigate and make recommendations regarding these issues, allowing action to be taken at next year's plenary session in Seoul, Korea.
The main issues center around the following concerns: (1) that although there are many stakeholders and interested parties to ISO 14000, there are barriers to participation (financial, insufficient outreach, and insufficient networking among others), and this skews the "consensus" that is reached; (2) that ISO processes and procedures are not broadly known, nor broadly followed, whereas following them would increase participation and broaden the base for consensus.
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