PROTECTED NATURAL AREAS:
The application guideline of the ISO 14001 standard to develop the Environmental Management System in a protected area: summary of the application model (*)
(*) Source: ENEA
Without the help of a guideline that allows safeguarding the guiding principles of the norm, guaranteeing to really achieve the improvement of the environmental quality, one could have various types of interpretation which, however, would lead to very different final results.
Applying the Environmental Management System solely to the "Park Organization", as if it were any company, in order to reduce only the impact of its activities on the environment (hypothesis 1 of the following figure) is a bad interpretation of the law.
In this hypothesis, considering that a Park Authority manages very few activities that have a direct impact on the environment, the added value of an Environmental Management System would be lower than that of a company.
Moreover, without the adoption of tools that involve the other subjects responsible for the various types of impact, it would be difficult to obtain the true improvement of the environmental quality of a territorial area.
The rule provides that significant environmental aspects are identified under the direct control of the organization, but also those produced by third parties over which the organization can exert an influence. For a Park Authority these are certainly the most significant and relevant.
One could think of applying the Environmental Management System to the Park Authority and promoting the development of a system for all the subjects present in the territory, for the purposes of certification or EMAS registration.
However, this approach is extremely limiting and not very feasible in most Italian parks. In fact, if the adoption of a management system can be feasible for some companies, it will be very difficult to involve all the local companies in a control of production processes, which, instead, can do a lot to improve the environmental quality.
Not only that, it is important to emphasize that the improvement of the environmental quality of a territory must be the improvement of the conditions of habitats and ecosystems, to give greater possibility of life to animal and plant species, increase biological diversity, both at species level and at environments (habitats) and so on.
These are improvements that can be obtained in various ways, without necessarily affecting the production processes or the functioning mechanisms of the subjects to be involved.
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