This document takes as its starting point the assumption

that biodiversity conservation is an integral part of

sustainable development, and that oil and gas companies

should integrate biodiversity considerations into

their Environmental Management Systems (EMS)

or integrated Health, Safety and Environmental

Management Systems (HSEMS) at a corporate and/or

project level. Although consideration of biodiversity

should be an integral part of any EMS, actions and

activities to manage and conserve biodiversity should

be based on a valid and transparent risk assessment

process. Therefore, only in those cases where there are

significant biodiversity issues will many of the responses

proposed in this document be necessary.

There are two principal templates for environmental

management within the oil and gas sector, the Guidelines

for the Development and Application of Health, Safety

and Environmental Management Systems published

by the E&P Forum (now named the International Oil

and Gas Producers Association, or OGP) in 1994 and

the International Organization for Standardization’s

Environmental Management Systems – Specification with

Guidance for Use (ISO 14001), published in 1996. The

OGP Guidelines have been developed to integrate

relevant health, safety and environment concerns

into a single approach and guideline, while remaining

sufficiently generic to be readily adapted to different

companies and their organizational cultures. The OGP

Guidelines’ principal difference with respect to the

ISO 14001 EMS standard is the joint consideration and

integration of health and safety and environmental

matters.

The ISO and OGP approaches are presented separately

here to maximize the value of this document to the

broadest possible range of end-users. More generally,

this document should also be applicable to other EMS

templates, which are increasingly based upon, or

linked to, the ISO standards. It is important to note,

however, that irrespective of whether an ISO, OGP or

other environmental management system template

is used, systems actually used by companies are likely

to be modified in some way. Therefore, any company

using this document will need to carefully check the

transposition of its content into their system.

It is the purpose of this document to provide examples of

how biodiversity considerations can be integrated into

EMS. Consequently, it avoids prescriptive activities and

actions, offering suggestionsinstead. Within the overall

structure of an organization’s particular EMS, there may

be a number of ways to achieve the desired outcomes

using formal or informal procedures. The measure of

success should be based on performance rather than

strict adherence to a narrowly defined process. In

both the ISO and OGP templates, the management

of biodiversity issues can, in the majority of cases,

be readily integrated with responses to more general

environmental issues, as long as the environmental

management tools used within the EMS or HSEMS (e.g.

Environmental and Social Impact Assessments) also

properly address biodiversity issues.