♦ Standards 60
♦ Monitoring 62
♦ Surveillance 63
♦ Modelling 64
♦ Environmental auditing, environmental accounting, eco-auditing, assessment, and
evaluation 64
♦ Eco-auditing 66
♦ Environmental management systems 69
♦ Recommended reading 74
chapter are crucial for pursuing those principles. They are vital for meaningful evaluation on which to base forward planning and policy decisions, for law making and enforcement, for effective implementation, co-ordination, and for avoiding unwanted impacts. The establishment of widely applicable scientific standards has been one of the most important achievements of western civilization (‘standards of behaviour’ —ethics—have been discussed earlier, pp. 22–24). Monitoring, modelling, auditing and environmental management systems help ensure ongoing objectives are set and met, check progress and warn of problems and opportunities.
Put crudely, standards are benchmarks and the other things discussed in this chapter are concerned with understanding what is happening, checking and stock-taking, using those benchmarks.
Standards
A standard may be defined as a widely accepted or approved example of something against which others may be measured. They allow meaningful evaluation, exchange and comparison of data, improve objectivity of judgement (so are important to science), aid recognition of crucial thresholds and limits, support negotiation, law making and comparison (between sites, between countries and between years).
Standards have existed from ancient times: the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had units of measurement and coinage, medieval European craft guilds set standards for the quality of goods, and by the nineteenth century Britain, France and some other countries had institutes and observatories which developed, managed and regulated the standard units used to record data.
Unfortunately, national standards often ran in parallel, so that data collected in, say, a French colony would have to be converted to units used in Britain. Conversion may sometimes be easy, but if the indicators used or the means of gathering data differ, even rough comparison may be difficult. A useful standard in a temperate country may be meaningless in the humid tropics (there are still tropical countries which have building standards inherited from temperate colonial powers which specify roofs to cope with snowfall). Without world-wide standards it is difficult to research the structure and function of the environment and to monitor global conditions. Before the late 1950s various international unions had agreed standards for some fields, such as telegraphy and radio, but not so much for the environmental sciences. One achievement of the International Geophysical Year (1957–58) and subsequent global exchanges of hydrological, meteorological, geophysical and biological data was the development of better international environmental standards.
As research into environmental issues progresses, new standards are needed,
for example to assess ‘safe’ levels of chemical pollution or radioactivity. The process is ongoing, involving various national and international institutes and standards organizations (e.g. the British Standards Institution or the International Standards Organization). Advances in medical knowledge, toxicology, ecology, etc., force the revision of some established standards. Ozone-damaging CFCs were considered inert and safe in the late 1930s, and environmental levels of DDT caused little concern before the 1960s. New standards are being developed which take into account factors like the greater vulnerability of children to some pollutants.
There are a number of ways of developing a standard, each with advantages and disadvantages, e.g. a standard for checking that fruit does not exceed ‘safe’
levels of a pesticide might be based on a simple maximum residue level (MRL), or a sort of lump sum, or an acceptable daily intake (ADI) —which assumes consumers all eat a given amount per day. It is consequently important that an environmental manager knows the characteristics of a standard as well as the levels measured by it (and the reliability of the measurements). The methods of data collection as well as the agreed units must be standardized. Taking the same meteorological measurements in the lee of a house and in open countryside or at various times of day gives quite different results, making comparison difficult. Collecting data is often expensive; it is therefore important to avoid poorly focused, encyclopaedic data collection, and it is a good idea to ‘scope’ first (assess what should be measured and how).
Standards often rely upon indicators, things that can be relatively easily measured, and which have specific meaning. Some indicators are precise and reliable, others less so. Sometimes when a broader focus is needed, or the process to be monitored is complex, a composite index may be devised which is the sum of a number of different measurements, e.g. the Human Development Index (OECD, 1991; UNDP, 1991).
Environmental standards may be divided into broad groups: those concerned with ensuring human health and safety; those concerned with maintaining environmental quality; those concerned with the quality of consumer items.
Standards play a crucial part in:
♦ monitoring;
♦ modelling to understand the environment and establish trends;
♦ negotiation;
♦ enforcement of rules;
♦ environmental auditing;
♦ maintaining environmental quality.
The fields of activity which make use of standards include:
♦ pollution control;
♦ health and safety;
♦ public hygiene and health (especially domestic water supplies, sewage and waste disposal);
♦ consumer goods (food standards; electrical safety; electromagnetic radiation safety);
♦ pharmaceutical products;
♦ transport safety and quality;
♦ disclosure of information to the public.
Standards are of little use if they are not effectively enforced. Another difficulty is that standards may sometimes be relaxed, usually for profit or strategic reasons. The expression REGNEG (renegotiation of regulations) has been applied to the situation where a developer succeeds in persuading the authorities to relax or modify regulations in its favour, making it easier to meet standards or avoid assessments.
Monitoring
Monitoring aims to establish a system of continued observation, measurement and evaluation for defined purposes. It may provide information at the start of a development, during implementation or after completion. Without monitoring, it can be difficult or impossible to establish how things are performing. Monitoring is the process of keeping the health of the environment (and with social monitoring, of society) in view (Spellerberg, 1991:xi). If sustainable development is a goal, monitoring is vital.
Monitoring should be operated to agreed schedules with comparable methods.
The focus may be on biology, chemical pollution, air pollution, or any other aspect of the environment. It is seldom possible to obtain a precise, detailed picture of all environmental parameters (let alone social, economic ones, etc.). Monitoring is therefore often undertaken for a specific reason (or reasons), for the systematic measurement of selected variables (Mitchell, 1997:261), to:
♦ improve understanding of environmental, social or economic processes;
♦ provide early warning;
♦ help optimize use of the environment and resources;
♦ assist in regulating environmental and resources usage (e.g. it may provide information for law courts);
♦ assess conditions;
♦ establish baseline data, trends, cumulative effects, etc;
♦ check that required standards are being met, or see whether something of interest has changed;
♦ document sinks, sources, etc;
♦ test models, verify hypotheses or research;
♦ determine the effectiveness of measures or regulations;
♦ provide information for decision-making;
♦ advise the public.
The UNEP promoted global environmental monitoring at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. There has been increasing interest, spurred by transboundary problems, in developing international monitoring systems. These
seek to monitor at the global level and ideally offer wide access to their information (those bodies involved include the UNEP, OECD, EEC; and the International Atomic Energy Commission). The UNEP has established the Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS), which is a co-ordinated programme for gathering data for use in environmental management and for early warning of disasters. An independent international research unit was founded in 1975 to assist international organizations with monitoring—the Monitoring and Assessment Research Centre (MARC). This concentrates on biological and ecological monitoring, particularly pollution. The World Conservation Monitoring Centre was established in 1980 by upgrading an IUCN-run body, to monitor endangered plant and animal species. The US Food and Drugs Administration monitors pharmaceutics and foods. The spread and use of weapons (especially nuclear, chemical and biological) are increasingly monitored by international bodies. In most countries, doctors, vets and other professionals report observed effects to central monitoring bodies.
Monitoring may show how the environment, a society, or economy changes, aiding understanding of structure and function. Monitoring, surveillance and screening (the checking of a specific thing, e.g. a particular disease in a population—not to be confused with impact assessment screening) are valuable development aids but they can generate problems over who should administer, enforce and pay for them.
Surveillance
Surveillance is repetitive measurement of selected variables over a period of time, but with a less clearly defined purpose than monitoring. It is more exploratory and can be undertaken to determine trends, calibrate or validate models, make short-term forecasts, ensure optimal development, warn of the unexpected, etc. Surveillance, like monitoring, can focus on the environment, people or an economy, and may:
♦ check whether statutory regulations are complied with (without monitoring and surveillance the setting of standards and rules is of little value);
♦ provide information for systems control or management;
♦ assess environmental quality to see whether it remains satisfactory;
♦ detect unexpected changes.
Where monitoring seeks to establish the ongoing picture, it may be important to examine past conditions and establish trends to understand the present and permit extrapolation of possible future scenarios. For example, studies of climate changes and ecological responses give clues to possible future conditions.
Environmental, social and economic monitoring have each generated their own practitioners and literature, which may focus at local, regional, national or global level or study ‘pathways’ (e.g. for pollution). Surveillance and monitoring can be done at source (where something is being generated), at selected sample points, at random, along transects, or by sampling some suitable material or organism. For example, pollution might be monitored by checking a smokestack, by a network of
instruments, or by surveying lichen species diversity and growth. Regulatory monitoring checks its findings against set, in-house, national or international standards or stated objectives.
For the last few decades, and at a gathering pace, remote monitoring and surveillance have been possible: at its most extreme, data gathering by unmanned space vehicles; also by orbiting or geo-stationary satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and automatic weather or oceanographic data-gathering stations. The best data are of little use if poorly co-ordinated, so bodies have evolved to support surveillance and monitoring on an international scale and disseminate results to where they are useful.
Modelling
A model is a caricature or simplification of reality: often a set of equations, used to predict the behaviour of a variable or variables. The predictions can be imperfect, but good modelling should cope with change and inadequate data. There are many types of model, developed by various disciplines: computer models, analogue models, conceptual models, role-play exercises, etc. Conceptual models are used to see what needs study and to help formulate and check hypotheses and to organize ideas. Simulation or predictive models can provide EIA with an indication of what may happen in the future, and can help environmental managers see how something is proceeding. Hydrologists may set up a scale model of a river estuary and release flows of water to study tides, currents, flooding, scour and deposition.
Climatologists are developing general circulation models, using powerful computers to try to establish likely future climate change. Input-output models have been used by regional planners and environmental managers for integrated environmental management and strategic environmental management. Futures models or world models were used to produce The Limits to Growth and other futures predictions.
Ecosystem simulation modelling is applied to specific ecosystems; social scientists use social modelling to predict socioeconomic impact, and economists use economic models to try to establish micro- or macro-economic trends and to test ideas for manipulating an economy.