Section 3: Lessons Learned

LESSON ABOUT THE PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

1. The approach an NGO can select to influence environmental management development (and environmental decision-making process in general) in countries in transition needs to be open, flexible and highly professional. This leads to trust and respect of all stakeholders involved (such as other NGOs, business circles, authorities) and forms the necessary conditions for active participation in national policy development.
2. There are no hopeless situations, they just seem to be this way (as in the case of the Putin Administration's re-structuring of the Federal environmental agencies right at the beginning of our project). If an important niche becomes empty for a while (for example, the Department for Research we intended to work with simply disappeared) make sure you find bodies playing similar roles.
3. Never stop looking for the new opportunities and approaches. For example, working meetings with NGOs that were not planned during the project proposal preparation appeared to be a very useful instrument to assess intermediate results and to reach the most difficult target groups.
4. Keep patiently providing information to all stakeholders you consider to be important if even they show very little interest. Adequate, timely, concise, transparent information provided to the project target groups is in the end the most effective tool.

LESSONS LEARNED IN REGARD TO THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF EMS IN THE RF

1. The development of the environmental management and auditing as instruments of economic growth compatible with the goals of sustainable development needs attention and support from the government and its agencies, competent authorities, domestic and foreign experts, business circles, public of the Russian Federation and international organisations.
2. Support of the development and implementation of Environmental Management Systems in the Russian Federation should provide for a system of preferences, incentives and motivation for enterprises. It is necessary to consider opportunities for building an incentive system based upon international, national and regional experience.
3. GOST R ISO 14000 standards series adopted so far by the Russian Federation provide a base for activities aimed at the development of the environmental management systems. At the same time, current standards need some further work in regard to the harmonisation of terminology taking into account the recently developed Russian-English Environmental Management Glossary and terminology of the GOST R ISO 9000:2000 standard.
4. In the Russian Federation all the conditions present to build a national program for the accreditation of certifying bodies which is recognised by the international community. Establishing such a system would allow for a Russian based system of EMS auditors and registrars and less dependence on foreign certifying companies.
5. The process of establishing the accrediting body of the system should involve all major stakeholders, including the State Committee for Standardisation, the Ministry for Natural Resources, the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade, the Ministry for Industry, Science and Technology and the Ministry for Education, as well as business associations and non-governmental organisations working in the field. Procedures of the accrediting body should strictly comply with the ISO/IEC Guide 66.
6. To build the national system of voluntary EMS certification and accreditation of the certifying bodies, support from international donors is needed. This support would be primarily focused on the following activities: formation of the bodies of conformity assessment (certification), establishment of training and methodological centres for experts, accreditation of both centres and experts.
7. The system of professional formation and training of the experts (environmental auditors) should be in line with nature of the environmental management systems. At present, the consulting market has a somewhat excessive amount of the environmental auditors, trained primarily to conduct compliance auditing. What is needed are auditors that are also trained to conduct EMS audits and other kinds of environmental auditing.
8. Experience of those regions, where serious efforts to facilitate development of environmental management and auditing have been made for several years (such as Tomsk), is worth replicating in other areas of the Russian Federation.