David Bennet is the National Director of Health, Safety and the Environment for the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa. He is a member of the Strategic Steering Committee on the Environment, which advises the Canadian Standards Association on environmental standards matters, including the implementation of ISO 14000 in Canada.

In this Report:

• Why is ISO important?
• Developments in the ISO 14000 Environmental Management Series
• The Case of ISO 14020 Environmental Labelling Standards
• Comparison of ISO 14020 with the Biosafety Protocol
• The Proposed ISO Health and Safety Management Standard: A Defeat for Globalization

1. Why is ISO Important?
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) generates, among other standards, a series of management standards, particularly the ISO 9000 series on Quality Management and the ISO 14000 series on Environmental Management. Like all other ISO standards, these are referred to as "technical standards" though there is really nothing technical about them.

ISO standards are developed by committees and working groups comprised of national standard-writing bodies, which in turn are comprised of business representatives, government personnel and professional management personnel, often again employed by private business. The ISO 14000 series is developed by Technical Committee (TC) 207.

Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement (l994), Members (governments) are obliged to adopt international standards wherever feasible and this includes ISO standards. One consequence is that businesses (including governments as trading parties) can make adherence or certification/registration under ISO standards a term or condition of trade with a foreign business. Thus the intended result is that we will have a globally harmonized management system in which there are no barriers to international trade in the form of national standards diverging from the international norms.

The unofficial business agenda is more important than this official one. ISO standards are known as "voluntary standards" whether or not they are adopted or referenced in national laws and whether or not they are formally adopted by national standard-writing bodies, which are themselves "voluntary" (non-governmental) organizations. The aim of some transnational corporations and trade associations is to have adoption by business of management standards remove the need for national regulations, in the name of "voluntary standards" or voluntary compliance. The WTO Agreement (and NAFTA, l994) puts very severe constraints on the ability of governments to regulate, e.g., environmental protection. The unofficial agenda is thus one of deregulation in which voluntary management standards are the surrogate for national regulations. Provided a business is properly managed, the environment will be taken care of, without regulation.

The role of international voluntary standards is part of a wider business agenda which in theory accords a place for international treaties and Conventions. In practice, international treaties: (a) cover relatively small areas of environmental protection and sustainable development; (b) they are hard to enforce; and (c) they are always liable to succumb to WTO rules, challenges and disputes procedures.

The unofficial agenda of deregulation puts public interest groups in a dilemma. On the face of it, there is very little in the management standards that anyone could quarrel with. It is not the content of the standards but their role in the global political economy which subverts the public interest. This being so, some public interest groups have tried to influence ISO, e.g., by working through national delegations to ISO or by participation at the international level by groups acting in their own right, e.g., The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF International).

The merit of these ventures is dubious. First, ISO accords no place to the public interest in its consultation structures. The balance is tilted strongly against NGOs. Second, paradoxically, the significant strengthening of ISO standards only makes them more convincing as a surrogate for regulation and would thus serve the deregulation agenda, which is the last thing that a real public interest group would want. But, finally, there are structural reasons which, as we will soon see, prevent ISO standards from being strengthened in socially significant ways.

2. Developments in the ISO 14000 Environmental Management Series
The ISO 9000 Quality Management Series is under review. Also under review is the relationship between ISO 9000 and ISO l4000, with a view to joint certification for environmental and quality management. Although ISO 14000 has not quite been finalized, it too is now under review. We should really regard all ISO management standards as under a revolving review: the WTO Agreement legitimizes even draft standards.

The main ISO l4000 standards are in series as follows:
  ISO 14000: guidance and specification
  ISO 140l0: environmental auditing and certification
  ISO 14020: environmental labelling
  ISO 14030: environmental performance
  ISO l4040: life cycle assessment.

Though the review of ISO 14000 may result in some changes, it is unlikely to achieve anything significant. The reason is that the terms of reference of TC 207 preclude ISO 14000 from laying down "performance requirements", i.e., they do not prescribe what must be achieved or implemented as a test of adherence or certification. Many standards, e.g., ISO l403l on environmental performance evaluation, suggest a range of criteria to be considered when assessing performance, but they all stop short of requiring them. In particular, compliance with environmental laws is not a mandatory test in environmental certification exercises, nor are there any mandatory environmental norms, such as Pollution Prevention, energy use reduction, resource conservation, "throughput" reduction per unit of product, or eco-efficiency. The situation will remain as it always has been: a well-managed enterprise but no clue as to whether it meets any environmental standards worth the name.

3. The Case of ISO l4020, Environmental Labelling
The ISO 14020 series is rather different from the rest: it lays down the sort of language which is permitted or prohibited on eco-labels - both self-declared environmental claims and statements by third parties, e.g., eco-logo certification bodies, for all non-food items.

There are numerous business objections to ISO l4020, not all of them coherent and consistent with each other:

1. voluntary standards should have no legal force;
2. voluntary standards should not be prescriptive - to the extent that ISO 14020 rules out certain language from eco-labels it is in a small way prescriptive;
3. eco-labels can contain reference to Process and Production Methods (PPMs) since the environmental impact of a product concerns its origin and method of production as well as its use and disposal; and so
4. ISO l4020 is a potential barrier to trade.

To the objection that ISO standards should have no legal force, they are clearly enshrined in the WTO Agreement and, to that extent, they form part of international trade law. Second, to the objection that ISO standards should not be prescriptive, it can be said that there is no contradiction between a standard that is voluntary but which contains mandatory elements: "if (but only if) you adhere to such-and-such a standard, there are certain things you must do .... ." There is thus confusion between a non-binding standard and what specifics, if any, follow from its adoption. It is quite true that ISO 14020 is prescriptive; whether it contradicts the terms of reference of TC 207 is another matter. As to whether ISO l4020 is a potential barrier to trade, it quite clearly lays down restrictions on all trading parties, but then environmental auditing and certification requirements can do the same - if companies insist on them as terms of trade.

The question of ISO 14020 and PPMs touches a nerve. In the WTO Agreement, no Member can discriminate against traded goods on grounds of PPMs, e.g., products made with child labour or under sweatshop conditions. Member governments must also try to frame their regulations without references to PPMs. ISO 14020 conflicts with the spirit of the WTO Agreement in that it allows references to PPMs on labels. For instance, a producer of genetically modified cotton could claim on the label that no chemical pesticides were used in its production and that (therefore) the product is beneficial to the environment. All that ISO 14020 requires is that such claims be environmentally relevant, specific and verifiable. A more obvious reference to PPMs is "made from recycled materials".

WTO members must still not discriminate against genetically modified cotton but the mere fact that PPMs can appear on eco-labels is a small chink in the armour of the WTO, enabling consumers to make informed choices about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in non-food products.

4. Comparison of ISO 14020 with the Biosafety Protocol
The Cartahena Protocol to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (l992), negotiated in Montreal, Canada in January 2000, regulates trade in items containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Protocol conflicts with the WTO Agreement in several significant ways. Among them: Parties (governments) are allowed to discriminate against GMO items, e.g. they can refuse them entry, on grounds of the PPMs used in the product - despite the claim of the producers that the items are "substantially equivalent" to non-GMO products. Secondly, some traded GMO items must be labelled as such. This goes much further than ISO 14020, which only permits (non-food) GMOs to be labelled, and then only in environmentally relevant ways. Whether the Cartahena Protocol will successfully override the WTO Agreement in practice is an open question. On paper, it is a breakthrough.

5. The Proposed ISO Health and Safety Management Standard; A Defeat for Globalization
Early in l997, ISO decided against beginning work on a workplace health and safety management standard. There was an understanding that the International Labour Organization (ILO) would begin work on a health and safety management system through its tripartite structure, which gives equal representation to labour, business, and member governments. Yet in l999, the British employers, abetted by health and safety professionals in the British Standards Institute, began a move to revive the work of ISO on health and safety management systems.

Thanks to intensive and pervasive organizing efforts by the ICFTU, this move was narrowly defeated in April, 2000. It is true that some national health and safety management standards accord with the principles expressed in ILO Convention No. l55 (l98l) Concerning Occupational Safety and Health. But there was no reason whatsoever to think that this would be true of an international standard emanating from ISO. None of the existing ISO management standards require compliance with legislation; none of them involve workers in decision-making and none of them have seen the health of workers as an essential part of sustainable development. There is every reason to believe that workers would have been written out of workplace governance completely, with health and safety audits, undertaken solely by managers, replacing both worker participation and government inspections.

The ILO Draft Guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (OSH-MS, Draft of l5-04-2000), by contrast, embodies principles that have been part of health and safety for at least a generation. The effect of an ISO standard would have been to eradicate these principles from the practice of health and safety and turn it into a mere line management function, without government intervention, without worker participation and with no place for worker health as a social value standing in the way of profit and free enterprise.

To the extent that ISO has again been kept out of health and safety, this represents a major victory for the public interest. One aim of globalization is to bring every area of economic activity under WTO rules. As in the case of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), this move in health and safety has so far been defeated.

References:
Beware ISO, by Dave Bennett, New Solutions, Vol. 7, No. 3, Spring 1997

ISO 14000: Will It Deter Cleaner Production? by Joel Tickner, New Solutions, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1998