Italy-UK Partnership

EXPERT POINT OF VIEW | 11 www.italchamind.eu engaged in adaptation, to those choosing to lead the way. The [above] diagram shows the key themes of the standard. Organizations might find themselves moving back and forth between the multiple elements of the standard, depending upon the challenges they face and the lessons they learn from delivery experience. The approach within the document is iterative and supports continual learning and improvement processes aimed at all scales of organization – from local to multinational. It can be used by those in public, private and third sectors and single, small and medium size enterprises. The standard is useful for achieving incremental improvement goals to major, transformative objectives. The structure is however logical, iterative and designed to be applied into the future. THE BENEFITS – FROM REPORTING TO RESILIENCE A primary benefit of the standard will be its impact on organizational resilience, improving risk management of climate impacts. The standard also provides a robust framework within which to execute replicable and comparable adaptation planning. Designed to help organisations develop measures and report on adaptation activity in a verifiable way, BS EN ISO 14090 can demonstrate good practice and help organisations meet their SDG goals on climate actions. BS EN ISO 14090 is not just useful for those implementing climate actions – it is relevant to individuals and organizations across the value chain. It is also useful for decision making in purchasing, investment and insurance decision makers where it’s important to understand an organization’s climate change adaptations (their own organisation or others). The requirements around documentation of activities – from planning to monitoring and evaluation – facilitate a strong reporting framework for organisations who have obligatory or voluntary reporting needs. INTEGRATED INTO BUSINESS PROCESSES This is ISO’s first standard on climate adaptation and is written in such a way as to be integrated into current business practices and priorities. This includes carrying out climate change adaptation activities in parallel with, or integrated with, climate change mitigation activities and other sustainability (for example GHG mitigation) priorities or SDG goals. BS EN ISO 14090 can be used with other management system standards, including BS EN ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems. It asks organizations to assess the impact that the environment is having on the organization, and BS EN ISO 14090 helps with that. There will shortly be an ISO document with guidance on how to do this. Similarly, BS EN ISO 14090 can be used with other management system standards such as BS EN ISO 55001 Asset Management – Management Systems. The thousands of organizations around the world using ISO environmental management standard can give BS EN ISO 14090 some serious consideration. Any why wouldn’t they? Every organization is going to be challenged by the impacts of climate change for the foreseeable future, so it makes sense to at least investigate what can be done in mitigation. · Article courtesy of BSI and available here Diagram reproduced with permission of BSI.