A review of environmental monitoring and auditing in the context of risk: unveiling the extent of a confused relationship

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.