diff --git a/tests/doc.md b/tests/doc.md
index 2ee31912..f3e3056b 100644
--- a/tests/doc.md
+++ b/tests/doc.md
@@ -381,6 +381,40 @@ Using the bytes encoding has the following limitations:
   valid `bytes`
 
 
+### Setting and modifying environment variables
+
+The test suite supports setting or modifying environment variables for
+individual test cases. This can be accomplished by adding a member dictionary
+named `env` with the appropriate variable names and keys:
+``` python
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
+
+from system_tests import CaseMeta, path
+
+
+class AnInformativeName(metaclass=CaseMeta):
+
+    env = {
+        "MYVAR": 26,
+        "USER": "foobar"
+    }
+
+    # if you want a pristine environment, consisting only of MYVAR & USER,
+    # uncomment the following line:
+    # inherit_env = False
+
+    # the rest of the test case follows
+```
+
+All commands belonging to this test case will be run with a modified environment
+where the variables `MYVAR` and `USER` will be set to the specified
+values. By default the environment is inherited from the user's environment and
+the specified variables in `env` take precedence over the variables in the
+user's environment (in the above example the variable `$USER` would be
+overridden). If no variables should be inherited set `inherit_env` to `False`
+and your test case will get only the specified environment variables.
+
+
 ### Creating file copies
 
 For tests that modify their input file it is useful to run these with a
diff --git a/tests/system_tests.py b/tests/system_tests.py
index ab5e615b..084f00c6 100644
--- a/tests/system_tests.py
+++ b/tests/system_tests.py
@@ -535,6 +535,7 @@ def test_run(self):
             _cmd_splitter(command),
             stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
             stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
+            env=self._get_env(),
             cwd=self.work_dir,
             shell=_SUBPROCESS_SHELL
         )
@@ -611,6 +612,8 @@ class Case(unittest.TestCase):
     #: the first encoding that does not raise a UnicodeError is used
     encodings = ['utf-8', 'iso-8859-1']
 
+    inherit_env = True
+
     @classmethod
     def setUpClass(cls):
         """
@@ -619,6 +622,27 @@ class Case(unittest.TestCase):
         """
         cls.work_dir = os.path.dirname(inspect.getfile(cls))
 
+    def _get_env(self):
+        """ Return an appropriate env value for subprocess.Popen.
+
+        This function returns either an appropriately populated dictionary or
+        None (the latter if this class has no attribute env). If a dictionary
+        is returned, then it will be either exactly self.env (when inherit_env
+        is False) or a copy of the current environment merged with self.env
+        (the values from self.env take precedence).
+        """
+        if not hasattr(self, "env"):
+            return None
+
+        if not self.inherit_env:
+            return self.env
+
+        env_copy = os.environ.copy()
+        for key in self.env:
+            env_copy[key] = self.env[key]
+
+        return env_copy
+
     def _compare_output(self, i, command, got, expected, msg=None):
         """ Compares the expected and actual output of a test case. """
         if isinstance(got, bytes):