Industrial Environmental Management Project (IEMP)

The Industrial Environmental Management Project (IEMP) of the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was initiated in 1992 in response to growing concern for environmental protection. IEMP's goal is to encourage sustained economic growth while reducing pollution and improving workers' health. To achieve its goals, IEMP has three components :

IEMP provides assistance to small- and medium-sized Philippine industrial enterprises, in conducting pollution management appraisals (PMAs). PMA is a tool that identifies financially sound opportunities for waste reduction at the source of pollution, rather than end-of-pipe treatment.

Now well into its third year of implementation (the project is to be completed in September 1996), IEMP has conducted over 50 workshops and trained over 1 00 participants from government, the private sector, and NGOs in compliance audits and monitoring, environmental impact assessment, environmental risk assessment, data collection and sampling, and pollution management appraisal.

In addition, IEMP has completed policy studies and action plans on areas including market based instruments (MBI), characterisation and standards for hazardous waste, environmental impact statement system.

IEMP has conducted over 80 of the planned 150 PMAs to be completed by the end of the project in the following targeted industrial subsectors.

It is expected that pollution prevention measures implemented by 50 per cent of the PMA firms will result in a 5 to 10 per cent reduction in production costs (savings), and a similar decrease in pollution.