1.1 Objectives of Environmental Standards

Enforcement of environmental standards is a continuous activity since environmental factors keep changing.
Therefore, standards review programmes and activities must be designed to achieve actual changes in conduct of potential polluters.

The main reasons why standards are necessary are to:

(a) protect environmental quality and public health;
(b) build and strengthen the credibility of environmental requirements locally, nationally, and regionally;
(c) to ensure fairness to all developers so as to minimise social conflict; and,
(d) reduce costs and liability by making polluters shoulder the short-term costs to attain long-term benefits ecologically and economically.