Tools for Environmental Management: A Practical Introduction and Guide (Conscientious Commerce)

Amid the growing commitment to the environment by corporations and governments there is also a frustration with their lack of progress, as highlighted by international protests in Seattle, Genoa, and elsewhere. While the principles and environmental goals we must reach are well understood, if we are to move toward sustainable development, then corporations and governments will need a coherent set of tools with which to manage the behavior of humans and their institutions more effectively.

Tools for Environmental Management answers this need by providing, for the first time, an overview of Environmental Management Systems as a whole, and a set of 22 environmental management tools that can be applied on local, national and international scales. The linked set of tools includes:

Environmental policies, audits, indicators, and site assessments
Accounting practices and economic instruments
Life cycle, product, and technology assessment
Purchasing guidelines and economic instruments
Risk and ecological management.

Each tool is described in terms of its definition, history, legal requirements or standards, and how it is applied. Examples are provided, along with newsletters, journals, references and web sites so that those using the tools can keep up to date.

Marketing Plans:
Advertising in professional environment journals
Review mailing to professional environmental management journals
Direct mail campaign to members of environmental management associations; local, state and federal government environment officials; international agencies
Course adoption campaign

The book is co-authored by 16 specialists who combine academic and professional practice expertise, and who work at entities ranging from Microsoft to resource industries in Kazakhstan. Its overall author is Dixon Thompson, a Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Calgary who has taught environmental science and environmental management at the graduate level for 30 years, is an environmental management consultant to industry, and who has extensive international experience, including in Latin America and Russia.