Summary History of EHS regulations

Part of the market reality that we base our solution strategy for Cloud for Sustainable Enterprise is the large, evolving, and somewhat complex mix of confirmed regulations, voluntary reporting frameworks and industry initiatives that companies need to address.

To help everyone assess what is needed going forward, I thought it would be helpful to summarize a specific slice of historical context. As an FYI, below are slide graphics showing the progression of environmental and safety law that is an integral part of the general sustainability topic. It shows [mainly in the developed world] society’s reaction to clear risks and issues becoming apparent stemming from humanity’s activity and the tragedy of the commons. That evolution is still going on, and now the world is confronting a new set of risks that have become apparent.

The slides are taken from the openSAP course written up last year on the basics of the Environment Health and Safety topic, and our SAP EHS portfolio. I wrote them as part of the Week 1 content to provide context on the EHS domain and how it drives our products. The baseline objective of our standard functionality in SAP EHS is to help our customers comply with these laws and make it flexible to handle regulations in the future.

For more detail, please check out the openSAP course for EHS, or reach out to me if you want to learn more about SAP EHS supports compliance. https://open.sap.com/courses/ehs1

Drivers for regulation

History of regulations

Evolution of the EHS profession