1 Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 1999) pp. 1–26 © Imperial College Press A SYSTEMIC FRAMEWORK FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING RITA VAN DER VORST, ANNE GRAFÉ-BUCKENS and WILLIAM R SHEATE 1 Centre for Environmental Technology ( ICCET ) TH Huxley School of Environment, Earth Sciences and Engineering Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine University of London 48 Prince’s Gardens, London, SW7 2PE The context of sustainable development poses new challenges for traditional environmental decision-making tools, such as environmental impact assessment, environmental manage- ment systems and life cycle assessment. Today these tools are expected to provide multi- disciplinary information to aid sustainability decisions, not just to inform decisions about environmental effects. This paper brings together the different perspectives of authors from EIA, EMS and clean technology/LCA to examine critically the separate tools in the context of sustainable development, and their inter-relationships, and identifies a “tool-user’s di- lemma”: whether to use a tool as intended, to adapt it or develop something new. The paper examines the similarities of these key tools and recognises both a paradigm shift and a congruence in the way in which they have developed: from being merely tools, through being techniques to approaches. The paper concludes by suggesting an integrated frame- work within which the tools can continue to operate effectively, and one that helps resolve the tool-user’s dilemma. Clean Technology is seen as providing a useful philosophical understanding for the operation of this outline framework. Keywords: environmental impact assessment, environmental management systems, environmental auditing, life cycle assessment, clean technology, sustainable development, environmental decision-making 1 The authors are members of the Environmental Policy and Management Research Group at ICCET. This is a conceptual paper setting the scene for the first issue of JEAPM by raising issues at the heart of the objectives of the journal, and is intended to provide a springboard for further debate and research.