A strategic approach to Environmental Management Systems (EMS): An assessment of Sustainability in EMS to move toward Sustainability

With many other management tools, Environmental Management Systems (EMS) is becoming very popular in several industries and corporate sectors in all over the world. The drastic use of EMS is expected to revise in its environmental management services in order to fulfill the actual technical and environmental objectives in the company. Research shows, why environmental management systems are failed to prescribe technical and environmental objectives and to satisfy those needs how it might be more successful in terms of sustainability. Hence the current study is saying that environmental management systems are not strategic; while they tend to reactively fix issues contingent upon their occurrence and may miss opportunities to avoid problems before they occur. Further, environmental management itself is seen in isolation of a socioecological context, which makes environmental management lose ground and operate in a virtual vacuum. The current study shows about the way of sustainability integration into environmental management systems directed by those possibilities. In the current analysis of the study, a framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) and other methods integrating “backcasting from principles of sustainability”– has been used. The use of tools not only exemplifies modern sustainability gaps but also gives a tangible set of directions to integrate sustainability in the existing environmental management systems.