6.1.4 Risks and opportunities
Risks and opportunities used to sit inside 6.1.1. They now have a stand-alone clause, and the old 6.1.4 on planning action becomes 6.1.5. PECB describes this as “the revised planning logic for risks and opportunities”.
6.3 Planning of changes
The 2015 edition had no clause on planning changes. PECB calls the new 6.3 “the newly formalized approach to managing change”: a planned change to the environmental management system now has to be thought through before it is made.
Context, interested parties and scope (4.1 to 4.3)
All three are rated significant. PECB points to an “increased focus on broader environmental conditions, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource scarcity, when analyzing the organizational context”.
Environmental aspects and operational control (6.1.2 and 8.1)
PECB highlights “the reinforced life cycle perspective in identifying environmental aspects”, and UKAS rates the revision to 8.1, which already covered outsourced processes and life cycle considerations, significant.
Improvement (Clause 10)
Continual improvement moves from 10.3 to 10.1, and UKAS rates the change significant, unlike the equivalent move in ISO 9001:2026.
