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ISO 14000 — English
The internationally accepted environmental management standards and best practice environmental benchmarks that guide all environmental management, decision-making and environmentally sustainable development actions. All developed states and many developing ones have some standards body or other. All national standards bodies, however, defer to the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and in many cases simply use the ISO’s standards. As far as environmental management standards in the current globalised world are concerned, the ISO’s standards are universally used. The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) is a highly acclaimed institution that has independently set numerous standards over many decades, but when it comes to standards for environmental decision-making, it – too – simply applies the ISO’s standards. The ISO’s environmental standards series is the ISO 14000 programme which is underpinned by the somewhat older ISO 9000 series for best-practice. Since the entire world uses the ISO 14000 (and the newer ISO 14001) series for environmental decision-making, it simplifies international co-operation, cross-border activities or trans-boundary developments to a great extent. Had this not been the case, the proliferating trans-boundary natural wilderness areas and game reserves that are fast becoming true money-spinners for the world-wide tourism industry, would hardly have been a feasible option.
