A review of environmental monitoring and auditing in the context of risk: unveiling the extent of a confused relationship
Date
2013Author
Viegas, Cláudia V.
Bond, Alan
Ribeiro, José Luis Duarte
Selig, Paulo Maurício
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Monitoring and auditing are regarded as essential activities for process control and follow up, which
contribute to improving performance in organizations and provide a key role in preventing or reducing
environmental harm. However it is not unusual to find them confused with each other in the academic
literature. This paper provides a detailed literature review of theoretical and review papers in order to
clarify concepts and characteristics of environmental monitoring and auditing; and to suggest ways
forward which can overcome this confusion. It was found that confusions stemmed from considerations
of: similarities, hierarchy, overlaps, scope, risk issues and timeliness. The development of accounting and
auditing over time was found to have led to a flexible understanding of follow up practices, and the
disregard of adaptive management as originally understood in the impact assessment field. It is suggested
that adaptive management, recovered from impact assessment and recent specific literature, can
be applied to improve environmental monitoring and auditing.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/14191http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production/