Gestión ambiental empresarial

Pasado, presente y futuro de las normas e instituciones ambientales en Colombia.

Abstract

The responsibility and social opportunity that a Business Administrator has to improve the quality of the environment from a corporate position is imminent. In the 1950’s in Colombia, the first environmental norms and Environmental Territorial Authorities (ATA – Spanish acronym) were enacted. The limited amount of public information available as to environmental urban problems and their risk and social impact influenced the focus of the Environmental Territorial Authorities’ environmental efforts which were almost all focused to rural areas. The legal and institutional framework at the time did not give the country the capacity to confront urban environmental problems caused by quick industrialization, urbanization, and economic and demographic growth in Colombia during the second half of the XX century. It is in the 90’s, that globally, international norms and standards are adopted to protect against and prevent environmental contamination. The propensity is to assume environmental management concepts to be the Cleanest Production (CP), Design for the Environment (DFE), and Industrial Ecology (IE), which aim to reach Sustainable Development in urban ecosystems to guarantee use of the natural and cultural heritage to future generations. Therefore, the business administrator should be a proactive employee in taking decisions related to corporate environmental management and should not allow him/herself to be contaminated by slowness in the country’s normative and institutional evolution in environmental matters.