Toward Environmental Management Systems in Australian Agriculture to Achieve Better Environmental Outcomes at the Catchment Scale

Abstract

Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are being trialed for Australian agricultural industries as society becomes more concerned about agriculture's environmental performance. EMS is a structured approach used by farm businesses to assess, monitor, and improve environmental performance. Use of EMS in conjunction with other policy tools (such as financial incentives and regulation) in agriculture could enhance management of both on-farm and off-farm environmental issues. Based on the international standard ISO14001, EMS was designed to be applied at the individual business level. However, governments in Australia are exploring its potential to be applied at a catchment scale, among other things, for the purpose of linking farm-level actions to catchment targets. In Australia, governments and catchment management bodies are using Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) as the framework to try to achieve environmental targets set out in catchment plans. In this article, we compare aspects of the EMS and ICM frameworks and comment on the potential of using EMS to achieve catchment-scale environmental outcomes. We conclude that EMS could be a useful policy tool to improve farm management and to contribute, in part, to better off-site outcomes at the catchment/landscape scale. Recommendations on the use of EMS at the catchment scale are discussed. These include using an educational approach for EMS delivery, linking the EMS process to catchment targets, and ensuring catchment targets are realistic and achievable.

Rainforest Alliance Certification of Kenyan tea farms: a contribution to sustainability or tokenism?

“…Practice of the RFC programme had the potential to limit its outcomes in some instances, for example, the non-requirement of disclosure to the public, auditing teams not being fully a responsibility of a third party, and difficulty in monitoring implementation. Similarly to ISO 14001, and as reported by Seymour & Ridley (2005), the RFC does not set requirements for environmental performance beyond commitment, compliance, and continual improvement. Therefore, there is no guarantee that acceptable environmental performance is actually occurring.…”

“…Using a combination of policy instruments to further promote RFC (or similar EMS) adoption may be more effective than a single instrument and most incentive approaches are backed by regulations that prevent or limit a particular activity (Seymour & Ridley, 2005). The government therefore, needs to improve on enforcing its regulations.…”

“…The government officials' lack of awareness about the existence of certified tea farms indicated non-commitment by the government in supporting voluntary sustainability standards. Therefore, there is a need for the government to address public-good issues using one or more mechanisms, including regulatory approaches, market-based mechanisms, self regulation, and the provision of information and education (Seymour & Ridley, 2005). Further, success of an EMS requires not only support from the government but also from a variety of stakeholders such as environmental non-government organisations, industry associations and large corporations (Tee et al, 2007).…”

Systematic regional planning for multiple objective natural resource management

“…Hence, implementing the appropriate actions in priority locations as identified in the modelling depends on the co-operation and co-investment of private landholders. Economic drivers such as marketbased instruments need to be identified that lead to a change in land use and on-ground actions for improved natural resource management, especially as many actions will be needed on private lands (Doremus, 2003;Tisdell, 2004;Seymour and Ridley, 2005). When combined with information and complementary incentives to guide the location of actions, such drivers could provide the impetus for private landowners to undertake actions in locations identified as priorities by regional planning studies such as that presented here.…”

“…These objectives include biodiversity, land salinisation, soil erosion, soil health, and water quality and are operationalised in integrated natural resource management policy and planning in Australia through resource condition targets (Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council, 2002;Edvardsson, 2004;Curtis et al, 2005;Seymour and Ridley, 2005). These targets are used to guide on-ground actions such as revegetation for biodiversity, planting of deeprooted perennial vegetation to reduce groundwater recharge, remnant vegetation management, and pest plant and animal control (Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council, 2002).…”