Technology in Environmental Implementation, Compliance and Enforcement

Technology deployed by both governments and regulated entities to determine ambient environmental conditions, detect permit violations or to track down illegal trade in endangered species has been an important element of environmental compliance and enforcement since at least the 1970s. Still, significant gaps remain in collecting data that is needed to identify violations. The emergence of new technologies that can generate environmental data and new ways of analyzing that data over the past decade has begun to fill some of these monitoring gaps allowing government agencies, communities, advocacy organizations, and citizens to ‘see’ more pollution and detect more violations. This data opens the door for government-initiated compliance and enforcement actions, citizen-based enforcement, and efforts by regulated entities to use the data to take steps to ensure compliance. This chapter will focus first on the history of environmental monitoring technology primarily, but not exclusively, in the United States to provide context for the remainder of the discussion of the gaps that often exist in government monitoring, the development of new monitoring technologies, government use of advanced monitoring technology, and of examples of citizen-based monitoring. It concludes with a brief discussion of the role of advanced technologies in future compliance and enforcement efforts.