Theoretical And Practical Study Of Voluntary Environmental Management

The economic growth of China has been well known all over the world, but it is also an obvious fact that in general, the regional ecological environment of China is getting worse. This paradox has reminded us again that the environmental Kunzites inverted U curve experienced by the western countries is still applicable to China being rapidly industrialized and urbanized.The re-cognizance of essence of environmental issue can be summarized as the possibility of sustainable assessment for the production and consumption modes of human society. The key for carrying out the sustainable development is to coordinate the relation between man and nature and the man-to-man relation in environment right and interest. The articulated point for all conducts is to implement the effective environmental management. It is on this pre-requisition that this article is developing a study in the entirely novel field of voluntary environmental management of the environmental management theory.Based on the reality of Chinese economic and social development, the conventional environmental management has been standing at the viewpoint of government in discussing and controlling enterprises' emission. In China, the development and implementation of environmental management policies is closely related with the governmental role. (1) In view of the contribution of the government and the public to the environmental management, the macro policy control and micro environmental supervision is basically handled directly by the government, with the limited space for the social strength to play a role. (2) In the process of executing the environmental management, the measures adopted by the government is mainly focused on the direct control it can handle, especially deploying administrative measure to a great extent. Even the so-called "economic means" are the management approaches directly handled by the government and can be operated only with certain power injected by the government. In this sense, the economic means is only part of the administrative tool that uses the charges and penalties to control, with the government being always the operator. In development, this model has been exposing more and more of its limitation, which can be reflected in the features of increasing transaction cost required and declining benefits of the system. The theory of sustainable development generated in the 1980s has graduallyobserved a common view of the social public and government in actively seeking for a development in coordination with the earth resources and formed a social non-formal rule that is existing as a new value concept and ideology. Alongside the formal rules, these social informal rules are playing a role to provide a base for the generation and development of competition market-based voluntary environmental management. The sustainable development movement gives the birth to the voluntary environmental management, which in turn becomes the significant tool for carrying out the sustainable development.Since the voluntary environmental management is still in the primary stage of development in China, specific studies are urgently needed theoretically and practically. In combination of various scientific theories like management, environmental management, sustainable development, economics, environmental economics, and system economics, and on the basis of the studies on these theories, this article intends to structure a theoretical framework of voluntary environmental management. Therefore, logically, the article starts from the management theory and then works on the theories of environmental management and implementation measures, and by comparing the strengths and drawbacks of major management measures, analyzes ISO 14001 Environmental Management System Standard, the "matured parent" of voluntary environmental management, and studies on the operation model and improvement mechanism of environmental performance. On this basis, the article introduces and provide relevant analyses of the concept of voluntary environmental management,...