The Management Charter Initiative NTO produced the National Occupational Standards for Environmental Managers at Level 4. These standards lay down the competencies to evaluate of existing environmental performance, gain commitment and support for improving environment performance, plan to improve environment performance, develop and maintain an environment policy, audit environment performance, and communicate with interested parties.

If a manager was implementing an environment management system, they should be able to demonstrate competence to these standards. But many people who are involved in environment improvement would not be in a sufficient managerial position to gain the evidence to demonstrate the required competencies.

There are many professional qualifications for would be environmental managers, in particular there are the IEMA courses which can add up to becoming an Associate Member of IEMA.