Environmental management practices in industries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) from 2011 to 2015

Abstract

Abstract This aimed to identify and analyze the environmental management in the industry carried out in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in the period from 2011 to 2015, with the aid of scientific literature published in the Scopus database. Due to the expansion of the bloc’s development, these countries presented a high potential to impact the environment. Therefore, this is relevant because it identifies trends about the Environment Management Practices that have been followed in industries of BRICS, increasing the theoretical allowance for discussions concerning Environment Management Practices in these countries. Consequently, a survey on environmental management was conducted using the keyword industrial environmental management practices and the name of each country. Besides that, a second quest was added with the term case study to refine the results. We found out that China, India, South Africa and Brazil have been studying solutions for the CO2 emissions by employing different environmental management practices. In addition, in the studies on China, India and Brazil, environmental management recurrently approached topics concerning the supply and water quality, the regulatory standards of environmental management and the practice of Green Supply Chain Management. However, we did not find papers concerning the environmental management in Russia through the employed methodology. We concluded that China, India and Brazil tend to present papers on the issue of environmental management (in English and in the database, from which they were gathered) because these countries show a more sustainable development, thus publishing a higher number of researches in this field, whereas Russia and South Africa do not follow this trend due to a weaker environmental engagement. With regard to that, it is suggested that further studies investigate the environmental management in other developing and developed countries, which would allow to draw a comparison with other groups.