1.1. Project Summary
Environmental safety and health auditing developed in the early 1970s, largely among companies operating in environmentally intensive sectors such as oils and chemicals. Since then environmental auditing has spread rapidly with a corresponding development of the approaches and techniques adopted. Several factors have influenced this growth.

? Industrial accidents. It is not sufficient to set corporate policies and standards on environmental health and safety matters without ensuring that they are being implemented. Audits can help reduce the risk of unpleasant surprises.
? Regulatory developments. Since the early 1970s regulations on environmental topics have increased substantially. This has made it steadily more difficult for a company to ascertain whether a specific plant in a particular country is complying with all of the relevant legislation.
? Public awareness. The public has become increasingly aware of, and vocal about, environmental and safety issues. Companies have had to demonstrate to the public that they are managing environmental risks effectively.
? Legislation. The growth of legislation has led to a corresponding explosion of litigation and liability claims, there is growing emphasis on the responsibilities of individual directors and on making information available to the public.


A management tool comprising a systematic, documented periodic and objective evaluation of how well environmental organization, management and equipment are performing, with the aim of helping safeguard the environment by:

(i) Facilitating management control of environmental practices and
(ii) Assessing compliance with company policies which would include meeting regulatory requirements.

In Palestine one of the requirement for licensing any infrastructure or development project is to submit Environmental impact assessment report, the problem is after the implantation of the project no clear procedures and guidelines to check the application of standards of compliances during the operation, It is important to draw the distinction between auditing and techniques such as environmental impact assessment (EIA). The latter assesses the potential environmental effects of a proposed facility. The essential purpose of an environmental audit is the systematic scrutiny of environmental performance throughout an organization?s (company, project ?etc) existing operations. At best, an audit is a comprehensive examination of management systems and facilities; at worst, it is a superficial review.
However the Palestinian Authority and The Civil society organizations are lacking the capacity to carry out the environmental auditing with compliance international standards.

The project aims to achieve the following goals and specific objectives
Goal: to promote the environmental auditing procedures and standards of compliance (The overall objective of environmental auditing is to help safeguard the environment and minimize risks to human health. Clearly, auditing alone will not achieve this goal; it is a management tool. The key objectives of an environmental audit therefore are to:

? Enhancing the capacity of the technical people in environment sector regarding determination how well the environmental management systems and equipment are performing
? Producing Manual of Environmental Audit by verify compliance with the relevant national, local or other laws and regulation