MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS SUSTAINABILITY
ISO-BASED ACTION PLAN “2006-2015”

Objective
MED-ISOLAE delivers procedures and a pilot, assisting Mediterranean islands to implementing step-bystep EN ISO 9001:2000 & EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) based sustainable management plans for their development and environment sectors, including technology for their GIS and Spatial Database Infrastructure (SDI) as well as the development of an SDI-COMPONENT..

Sustainability & EN ISO 9001:2000 - EMAS
The issue of "sustainability" is expressed by the international community as the "policy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs". In real terms, the definition implies a balance among the various indicators of the 4X4X4X4 Sustainability Matrix depicted in Figure 1 (see text), as originating from the Epsilon-NUTSIII/IST/EC
project (www.sustainability4europe.org). The planning and maintenance of sustainability is not an easy task. There are no true methodologies on how to achieve sustainability and the related indicators of the sustainability (e.g., pillars, themes, sub-themes and parameters). The state-of-approach is to keep the indicators of the sustainability matrix in balance via standardized procedures and methods, whilst safeguarding optimal endeavours and policies. Such procedures must have a standardized EN ISO 9001:2000 rationale, so that planners can have a manual or a tool-kit to follow. The Med-Isolae EN ISO 9001:2000 implementation is supported by a Spatial Database Infrastructure (SDI).