Shedding light on the diffusion of ISO 14001 across Africa, Asia and Oceania

ISO 14001 certificates have achieved wider diffusion in all regions of the world implementing the Environmental Management System (EMS). However, research on characterizing and forecasting the diffusive process is concentrated in Europe and some countries in the other regions. Thus, Africa, Asia and Oceania are regions that do not have characterization and forecasts for their countries and industrial sectors. This information is important in the decision-making of the stakeholders regarding the expectations of adopting or not the EMS in the countries and sectors that make up the region. As a result, the work characterized the main countries and industrial sectors in these three regions, simulating a diffusive scenario for a period of two years. For this, ISO 14001 certifications data from 1999 to 2017 were obtained from the ISO Survey. Based on these data, the annual relative growth rate (RGR) was calculated, because it permits more equitable comparisons between organisms, once represents this adoption over time in an S-curve pattern is ideal for ISO certification diffusion behavior. In addition, ARIMA models were used to forecast the number of certifications as an alternative to locations where data on the number of companies is not available. Therefore, it was observed an increase in the number of certifications above 90% for all regions. However, this growth is concentrated in a few countries within each region, with highlights for South Africa, China, India and Australia. These countries had high RGR at the beginning of the period with a reduction to close to zero, and negative in some countries, over time. Thus, future scenarios pointed to a growth trend for China and India, while South Africa and Australia would remain stable. These forecasts indicate that the Chinese Construction and Information Technology sector in India is expected to increase EMS adoption by companies. Finally, Africa, Asia and Australia are regions with growth potential for ISO 14001 due to the concentration of certifications in some countries, which allows expansion to others, in addition to maintaining growth in the countries with the highest values.