Monitoring and auditing: after the decision - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 196

between interested parties. Thus, monitoring of the origins, pathways and destinations of,
for example, dust in an industrial area may clarify where the responsibilities lie.
Monitoring is also essential for successful environmental impact auditing, and can be one
of the most effective guarantees of commitment to undertakings and to mitigation
measures.
As noted by Buckley (1991), the term environmental auditing is currently used in two
main ways. Environmental impact auditing, which is covered in this chapter, involves
comparing the impacts predicted in an EIS with those that actually occur after
implementation, in order to assess whether the impact prediction performs satisfactorily.
The audit can be of both impact predictions (how good were the predictions?) and of
mitigation measures and conditions attached to the development (is the mitigation
effective? are the conditions being honoured?). This approach to auditing contrasts with
environmental management auditing, which focuses on public and private corporate
structures and programmes for environmental management and the associated risks and
liabilities. We discuss this latter approach further in Chapter 11.
In total, monitoring and auditing can make important contributions to the better
planning and EIA of future projects (Figure 7.1). Sadler (1988) writes of the need to
Figure 7.1 Monitoring and auditing
and learning from experience in the
EIA process. (Adapted from Bisset &
Tomlinson 1988, Sadler 1988.)