Environmental management
Environmental management identifies the environmental conditions and obligations that can disrupt a core service, and it connects the external context in 5.3 to a practical response.
This annex is informative. Annex A names the discipline and does not define it. A finding cannot rest on the annex alone. The guidance it supports is clause 5.8, and the evidence on this page is our interpretation of what that support looks like in practice.
What Annex A says
Annex A names environmental management as a supporting discipline; the standard does not define it. For clause 5.8, the contribution is twofold. The organization depends on environmental conditions such as water, energy, weather and land, and it has obligations that can change its operating freedom. The discipline records those dependencies and obligations, assesses the risk, and builds them into the continuity and change planning. It is not only a sustainability programme. A flood, a drought, a emissions limit or a community objection can each stop a service.
Why it matters
Environmental risks are often treated as long-term and therefore deferred, while the operational dependence is immediate. A site that cannot operate without water or power has a resilience dependency today, whatever the climate projection says. The discipline also brings the interested party dimension: community and regulator relationships can determine whether the organization can continue an activity. That is context work in 5.3 and risk work in the assessment.
What good looks like
List the environmental dependencies of each core service: water, energy, weather, land, transport routes and community consent. Record the obligations and the regulator. Assess the likelihood and impact of a interruption over the planning horizon. Build the response into continuity and change plans. Review the list when a site, a process or a regulation changes.
Evidence a reviewer asks for
There is no ISO certification or accredited assessment scheme for ISO 22316. The assessor here is your internal auditor, a customer assurance team or a consultant.
An assessor will ask which environmental conditions could stop a core service and what the organization has done about them. A sustainability report alone does not answer the resilience question.
- Environmental dependency list The environmental inputs each core service depends on, with the source
- Obligation register The environmental obligations, the regulator and the current status
- Risk assessment The likelihood and impact of interruption, with the response
- Community and regulator record The relationships and consultations that affect the licence to operate
Where it commonly fails
- Environmental work is a carbon report with no service dependency analysis.
- The organization assumes water and power will always be available.
- Community objections are handled by public relations after the disruption.
What to do before the second edition
Ask the site lead what environmental condition would stop production tomorrow. Then ask what the plan is. The answer is the gap.
Read across
- 5.3 Understanding and influencing context
- 5.7 Availability of resources
- 5.8 Development and coordination of management disciplines