Socio & Eco-Mapping
Existing international standards for social management (SA 8000, AA 1000), quality management (ISO 9000) and environmental management (ISO 14000, EMAS) have been developed for corporate companies, responding to their needs in terms of global risk management, quality improvement and communication. Consulting services and audit schemes are drawn to meet the complexity of corporate companies. As a consequence, on one hand, they may appear too sophisticated with regard to the management issues of small/medium enterprises. On the other hand, implementation costs of such services are prohibitive for SMEs. However, small/medium enterprises are key actors in the development of local and international economy, in ACP and European Countries.Moreover they have to justify their social, quality and environmental practices to their clients according to the existing international standards.
Needs for an integrated approach
Standards and tools are usually non-integrated: some tools are dealing with social aspects, other with environmental issues. However, steps to develop and implement management system are similar.
Currently ISO 26000, an integrated Corporate Social Responsibility norm combining social and environmental criteria, is under development. It will propose a global solution to companies, but again will only be adapted to large corporate companies.
The project of ECE and Groupe One
ECE has developed tools to assess the environmental impact of small and medium-sized enterprises (Ecomapping) and to implement environmental management system respecting EMAS standards (EMAS easy). Groupe One has developed social monitoring and social reporting tools for small and medium-sized enterprises in Belgium as well as in India. Staff at Groupe One has SA 8000 certification and Groupe One is ISO 17020 certified, in order to conduct social inspections.
Based on their expertise and tools, ECE and Groupe One intend to develop integrated social and environmental tools for impact assessment and management system development. As for EMAS easy, the final objective is to offer a low-cost integrated solution that allows small and medium-sized enterprises to be certified EMAS and SA 8000.
The targets of the project are small and medium-sized manufacturing industries in ACP and small and medium European companies importing manufacturing goods.
In 2006 a pilot will be tested in Vietnam
Link to Groupe One
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