Monitor
Why is this area important to embedding sustainability in my organisation?
It is not enough for an organisation to develop a sustainable development strategy. Delivery of the strategy needs to be implemented and regularly monitored. Monitoring progress towards sustainability objectives, reporting that information openly and evaluating its implications provides a critical feedback process into decision making about an organisation's future activity.
Monitoring will be vastly improved it if is based on clear indicators, and built in to strategies to steer processes, track progress, distil and capture lessons, and signal when a change of direction is necessary.
OECD-DAC 2001: THE DAC Guidelines: strategies for sustainable development
Monitoring will need to cover two aspects - process and outcome.
- Process - is the organisation doing the things that it said that it would to integrate sustainability in to its activities and implementing the initiatives to which it has committed itself?
- Outcome - having implemented initiatives is the organisation achieving the outcomes towards which it is striving?
As discussed in the Targets and Action Plan module monitoring and review mechanisms will need to be put in place to establish the level of progress being made on a periodic basis. Most organisations will have data and statistics systems that they use to monitor various aspects of their economic, social and environmental performance. Progress should be measured over baseline data, and trends should be identified and compared with targets and objectives, to help determine further action. A key step to take is to learn from the information coming forward and to develop approaches and tools to be able to respond and adapt to adverse trends.
Establishing Management Information Systems - including an Environmental Management System
An environmental management system is a method or tool for systematically working with environmental questions within an organisation - for example water use, waste production and energy consumption. An environmental management system includes concrete objectives, plans of action and a clear division of responsibility for environmental questions – these are all adopted as management issues. In the public sector, all central government departments are required to develop an environmental management system based on a recognised standard, such as ISO 14001 or EMAS although they do not necessarily need to receive formal accreditation.
ISO 14001 is a common model for an environmental management system has been formulated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which standardises the elements that an environmental management system should contain. EMAS - the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme - is a voluntary initiative designed to improve organisations’ environmental performance.