Environmental monitoring establishes a credible baseline for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which allows for the objective comparison of actual and expected project impacts. Furthermore, monitoring fosters rapid intervention to prevent penalties related to regulatory non-compliance, identifying areas for continuous improvement, and analysis of overall environmental changes that occur through a project life cycle.
Environmental monitoring is a unique type of activity that requires for a very large amount of data to be captured and managed in order to facilitate the management of alerts and specific reporting activities.
Environmental Monitoring is essential to operations on any extractive industry project as it is a key aspect of maintaining legal and social licenses to operate. It allows projects to manage their environment impact. Managing and minimizing environment impact is often a key focus for regulatory and government bodies along with international lenders. If the requirements set out by these groups are not met projects face the risk of fines and project closure. Additionally environmental impact is a key concern for many project stakeholder groups.