Should environmental protection agencies in developing countries depend solely on the ISO 14000 series for developing environmental policies or should they use mandatory regimes that enforce compliance with local standards?
To my experience as ISO auditor and EMS expert, ISO 14001 did have their set of requirements for any organization to be adhered to. Every country in the world who are member of the ISO TC will have their own Standard Manual and Procedures as stipulated in the ISO TC. You should relate your concern or any grouses to the ISO TC as refer to the website. As for your second question pertaining to the enforcement compliance with local standards, the answer is yes, especially that relates to legal aspects and regulations of that specific country. It could either be in environmental law, safety and health law or factories and machinery laws etc that are being practice in the country but concern with the practice of EMS manual and procedures, which are following with the ISO TC Standard.
ISO 14001 is a just a framework and does not force the implementing organization to comply with a predefined set of targets, but firms can develop these targets and voluntarily comply with.
Compliance agencies from the developing worlds are yet to develop a comprehensive view on the subject, as the countries are mostly laggards in terms of developing compliance framework and also suffer from lack of national policies. As a result, I guess the question is premature. My literature survey of developing countries as that of India, as well as other developing countries tells me that the regulations applied are ad--hoc and policy infrastructure is broken to handle these requirements. But, in theory, should compliance agencies would like to look out for anything like that, the formulation of such a program would be a social process and would involve inputs from ISO 14001, as also from other concerning areas.
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