ABSTRACT
There is a danger of a short-sighted ‘build it and forget it’ approach to EIA. Yet EIA should be more than an auxiliary to the procedures to obtain a planning permission; rather, it should be a means to obtain good environmental management over the life of the project. This means including monitoring and auditing fully into the EIA process. This is the focus of Chapter 7. EIA should seek to maximize the potential for continuous improvement. The chapter first clarifies some relevant definitions and some of the key questions associated with the topic, especially what is monitored and audited, how, when and by whom. An approach to the better integration of monitoring into the process, drawing in particular on international practice, is then outlined. This is followed by an examination of approaches to environmental impact auditing, including a review of attempts to audit a range of EISs in a number of countries. The chapter concludes with a review of detailed monitoring and auditing studies for two major UK projects: the Sizewell B nuclear power station and the London 2012 Olympics project.
