EMAS in local authorities: Suitable indicators in adopting environmental management systems

In the context of new tools suitable for making local authorities more pro-active in terms of effectiveness in environmental management, this paper analyzes the case of the application of EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) to local authorities in Italy. EMAS is a European tool that was revised in 2009 with Regulation (EC) N. 1221/2009, named EMAS III. This paper has two goals. The first goal is to analyze how the local authorities, with an environmental management system registered under EMAS, evaluate the environmental aspects related to their activities. The second goal is to propose a set of specific indicators to be monitored, which would fulfill the EMAS III compulsory core-set of indicators. To do this all the EMAS registered public authorities in Italy have been contacted to obtain a copy of their most recent validated environmental statements. Then, for each environmental aspect considered, a matrix has been processed, reporting on related activities, environmental significance, indicators, and environmental targets to improve the performance of the EMS. The analysed environmental statements (75% response rate) deal with a high number of environmental aspects and refer to a wide range of activities carried out by the local authorities. The set of indicators demonstrates that registered local authorities have already enough information for the purpose of complying with the new EMAS III core indicators. On the contrary, EMAS III does not properly cover the several environmental issues and impacts faced by local authorities, so that a different, wider and more specific framework is needed for their environmental performance evaluation. As a result of this study, a set of 13 indicators has been proposed, based on those already in use by local authorities and on those used by the European Environment Agency for environmental assessments. Therefore, this paper can represent a first step towards the definition of sectorial reference guidelines that will be developed at the European level by the European Commission