ENV-99-179 THE ROLE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT PLAN

Description:

Within the international arena, the Environmental Management Plan (EMP) is an integral and indispensable constituent of the environmental permitting process. As on domestic US projects, the EMP serves as the link between permitting, engineering/construction contracts and operations to define the activities and assign responsibilities for each of the tasks required to document compliance with permit conditions. On international projects, the host country environmental agency frequently requires submittal of an EMP to document that the project has been adequately equipped, staffed and organized to meet its permit conditions. In addition, the major financial institutions are now requiring projects around the world to meet environmental standards that are increasingly comparable to US EPA regulations. Accordingly, the EMP serves as a primary means of convincing both the host country environmental regulators and its financial backers that said project is capable of complying with its environmental requirements. In order to illustrate these crucial relationships, this paper briefly describes a typical international permitting process, reviews the status of global environmental regulations and introduces some of the primary members of the international financial community. This paper then presents a typical outline for an EMP and highlights the critical elements.