Does ISO 14001 work in Brazil?

As a result of increasing global awareness about the importance of the environment, depletion of natural resources and legal pressures for companies to manage their processes in a sustainable manner, ISO 14001 systems have been gaining increasingly more importance in the organizational scenario. These elements are even more critical in emerging nations due to less awareness and fewer demands by governments and the population in relation to environmental issues. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to verify the benefits and difficulties of Environmental Management Systems based on ISO 14001 at industries in the state of São Paulo – Brazil (an emerging country) by conducting a survey to subsidize the proposal for actions in the public, academic and private sectors to promote the use of this standard of reference and strengthen its results in Brazil. A questionnaire was sent to 194 companies from the National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality database. 69 answered, representing a return rate of 35.36%. The main benefits identified are related to the development of preventive environmental actions, reduction in the consumption of power, water, gas and fuel oil, and a positive influence on other internal management processes. The main difficulties are related to cost increases from ISO 14001 management systems and the constant changes in environmental legislation in Brazil. Some actions are proposed at the end of the analyses to intensify the use and improve the results of this standard, such as changes in government legislation and its collective development and implementation in industries.     

Sustainability: A Study of the Level of Ecological Behavior of Postgraduate Students in Brazil

The decline in the supply of natural resources is a cause for concern, especially given continued worldwide population growth. New habits and attitudes toward resource use are slowly being introduced into the everyday lives of persons residing in a number of countries. The term “ecological behavior” refers to acting in favor of the environment, whether these actions are voluntarily or not, or learned or not (Pato & Tamayo, 2006 ). The general objective of this study is to identify the environmental behavior—one of several terms used interchangeably with ecological behavior—of graduate students from a Brazilian federal institution of higher education. We chose this particular group because many of them already act, or will act, as professors. Thus, by virtue of their positions, they will function as opinion leaders who will influence the education of future professionals, establishing a chain through which shared values can gradually change the environmental behavior of society.     

Sustainable regeneration: a guiding vision towards low-carbon transition?

While the concept of sustainable development brings together concepts of economic, environmental and social sustainability, much has been said regarding inherent tensions between them. Conflicts between economic and environmental objectives, in particular, have been noted as restraining efforts to instigate transitions to environmental sustainability, with growth ambitions limiting environmental policy to “win–win” cases. This paper argues that they can also play complementary roles in managing transitions by creating inclusive visions for rallying actors and resources. This is explored by looking at a case of sustainable regeneration in Wales, UK. Using as a case study the Arbed scheme, an area-based project established in 2009 to retrofit housing stock for energy efficiency, this paper shows how the scheme explicitly addresses economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability; and, in particular, how sustainable development aims constituted a guiding vision that supported the formation of actor and resource networks necessary for large-scale retrofitting.