The Changing Intersection of Environmental Auditing, Environmental Law and Enforcement Policy

This article examines the changing intersection of environmental auditing, environmental law, and enforcement policy. It will begin by reviewing the concept of environmental auditing and will then discuss sources of existing legal authority to require or encourage audits and their limitations. Next, the article examines EPA\u27s existing audit policies and the rationale behind them. It will consider the relationship between these audit policies, enforcement policy, and voluntary disclosures of environmental violations, which has recently been reviewed by the Department of Justice. The article will then consider two alternative models which might be used to establish the role of environmental auditing in environmental regulation. First, it will consider portions of the Community Right-to-Know legislation adopted by Congress in 1986, which can be considered a limited form of mandatory environmental auditing. Then, environmental auditing will be compared to the financial auditing process developed under the securities laws, which mandates broad financial auditing. The article will conclude by briefly describing recent legislative and U.S. Sentencing Commission proposals to broaden the use of environmental audits

The Changing Intersection of Environmental Auditing, Environmental Law and Enforcement Policy

This article examines the changing intersection of environmental auditing, environmental law, and enforcement policy. It will begin by reviewing the concept of environmental auditing and will then discuss sources of existing legal authority to require or encourage audits and their limitations. Next, the article examines EPA\u27s existing audit policies and the rationale behind them. It will consider the relationship between these audit policies, enforcement policy, and voluntary disclosures of environmental violations, which has recently been reviewed by the Department of Justice. The article will then consider two alternative models which might be used to establish the role of environmental auditing in environmental regulation. First, it will consider portions of the Community Right-to-Know legislation adopted by Congress in 1986, which can be considered a limited form of mandatory environmental auditing. Then, environmental auditing will be compared to the financial auditing process developed under the securities laws, which mandates broad financial auditing. The article will conclude by briefly describing recent legislative and U.S. Sentencing Commission proposals to broaden the use of environmental audits

Impact of environmental auditing on environmental pollution, sustainable development and healthy environment of some organizations in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

The aim of this paper was to examine the impact of environmental auditing on seven (7) organizations companies in Port Harcourt using a randomized questionnaire survey system of 235 employees in these organizations and the results were analyzed by spearman’s rank order coefficient. The data obtained revealed that the environmental auditing wereA:15.4%, B:15.2%, C:14.0%, D:15.1%, E:14.1%, F:13.4%, and G:12.8%; environmental pollution wereA:15.0%, B:14.9%, C:14.2%, D:14.6%, E:14.9%, F:13.3% and G:13.3%, while sustainable development and healthy environment were A:15.1%, B:15.3%, C:13.9%, D:14.7%, E:13.9%,F:14.0%, G:13.8% and A:15.2%, B:15.3%, C:14.2%, D:14.0%, E:13.8%, F:13.8%, G:13.7% respectively. The findings revealed significant relationships between environmental auditing and sustainable development, environmental pollution and healthy environment. To achieve the desired sustainable development through environmental auditing, companies, government and stakeholders could embark on environmental enlightenment and awareness campaign to let citizens know the consequences of environmental neglect and pollution.Keywords: Environmental auditing; sustainable development; environmental pollution; healthy environmen

Environmental Auditing in Management Systems and Public Policy

New international standards for environmental auditing are now being actively promoted by public authorities and adopted by private firms. One important feature of these standards is their emphasis on managerial systems and incentives that support a wiser use of environmental resources. This paper studies such a system, in which incentive compensation may be based in part on the results of an environmental audit. It is found that optimal wages after an environmental audit is performed should have a greater range than wages paid when no audit has occured. It is also shown that the decision to conduct an environmental audit and the size of the expected wage in this case depend crucially on whether the agent's prudence (or precautionary motives) dominates or not his aversion to risk. It is finally found that the insertion of environmental audits within current management systems would certainly induce a manager to care more about the environment; moreover, although this may come at the expense of less concern for other activities, we find plausible circumstances in which properly designed environmental audits overcome such a tradeoff and increase the manager's attention to both environmental and traditional tasks. The public policy maker's role and interest in promoting environmental auditing standards is also discussed briefly. De nouvelles normes pour les audits environnementaux sont actuellement en train d'être élaborées et implantées par les gouvernements et les entreprises. Ces normes mettent principalement l'accent sur les systèmes de gestion et les incitations qui encouragent un meilleur usage des ressources environnementales. Cet article étudie un tel système, où la rémunération pourrait dépendre en partie des conclusions d'un audit environnemental. On trouve que le salaire versé après la tenue d'un audit devrait varier davantage que celui versé lorsqu'il n'y a pas eu d'audit. On montre aussi que la décision d'effectuer un audit environnemental et le niveau du salaire espéré dans ce cas dépendent essentiellement de la relation entre la prudence (ou la précaution) et l'aversion pour le risque du manager. On montre finalement que l'insertion d'audits environnementaux au sein des systèmes managériaux usuels poussera certainement un manager à se préoccuper davantage de l'environnement,0501s la redistribution de l'effort de ce dernier pourrait bien ne pas survenir au détriment de ses activités principales au sein de l'entreprise. On discute enfin brièvement du rôle et de l'intérêt du décideur public dans l'élaboration et la promotion de nouvelles normes pour les audits.Multi Task Principal Agent Analysis, Environmental Auditing, Risk Aversion, Prudence, Analyse principal-agent multi-tâches, Audits environnementaux, Aversion pour le risque, Prudence

La Auditoria Ambiental En La Proteccion Del Bien Publico Ambiental. Nexo Con La Empresa Amigable Con El Ambiente.

The environmental auditing, like appraising tool of the environmental step, part of the scientific conceived problem in: Insufficiencies in the juridical sorting of the environmental auditing in the public sector, incident in his purpose of environmental control in behalf of the friendly company with the environment and the sustainable development. You aim at argumenting the theoretic budgets of theenvironmental auditing as from his historic, doctrinal and exegetic assessment, at the end of the perfecting of his juridical sorting. The utilized methods were the juridical theoretician, the historic logician, the exegetic juridical, the by right compared, the one belonging to analysis and synthesis. As a result principal the theoretic budgets formulate perfecting of the environmental auditing in the public sector and the other forms of step in the cost-reducing social context themselves for the future. His purpose is to achieve the sustainable development with friendly companies' creation with the environment, that they enable the equilibrium between progress and the nature

ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING – AN ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT TOOL

The most types of economic activities affect environment. That’s why, the effects of this connection have amplified in the last years and became a question of major public concern. As a target for the European Union, sustainable development enshrined in its treaties since 1997 but the first strategy was adopted in 2001, revised in 2006 and the last in 2009. Since 2001, the strategy set out measures on how to face the challenges of sustainable development and reaffirming the main aim of a permanent improvement in the life and health of peoples while prosperity, environmental protection and social cohesion are ensuring. Therefore, the Community Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) has been set up at the EU level as a management tool that allows the voluntary participation of organizations carrying out activities with an impact on the environment, in order to further improve environmental performance. This paper presents the role and benefits of conducting environmental auditing in organizations as part of this management system, but also the influence of this community management scheme on the EU policies on sustainable development

Solutions of organizing environmental auditing in the State Audit Office of Vietnam

Nowadays, sustainable development associated with environmental protection has become the hot global concern. In many countries around the world, Supreme Audit Institutions should play an important role in this area, ensuring that natural resources are managed, exploited and used effectively. Environmental auditing has now become a major activity at many SAIs. In Vietnam, environmental auditing is still a new issue in both theory and practice. Recognizing the importance of environmental protection and sustainable development, the SAV considers environmental auditing one of the priority activities in the years to come. Therefore, environmental auditing should be conducted more early, more comprehensively and more fully in the manner of auditing objectives, contents, with more appropriate, effective methods and ways of carrying out audits in Vietnam. It is necessary to study the theory on environmental auditing, analyse and evaluate at the same time the practice of environmental auditing in Vietnam, review generally the situation of environmental auditing conducted in the world, which found shortcomings and limitations of carrying out environmental auditing in the SAV and as a result, draw lessons and propose solutions to implement environmental auditing of the SAV. The thesis introduces a number of researches by Indian and Vietnamese scientists, INTOSAI experts and a number of standard, guidelines in specific fields of environmental auditing that are published and generally accepted by the SAIs in the regional and international community. It is very important that the thesis studies about the system of legal documents, audit reports related to or published by the SAV in Vietnamese language like the State Audit Law, the State Audit Development Strategy to 2020, annual audit reports. An interview with specialized auditor and a secondary servey of the WGEA are also chosen the data for the research. Based on an analysis of the general theories of organizational structure, roles and functions of the SAV, and an evaluation and synthesis of the results of environmental auditing activities of some SAIs in the region and in the world, together with a summary and research regarding the current status of the organizational model, the operational mechanism of the SAV in general and environmental auditing in particular, the thesis shows SAV’s development strategy in the future and suggests some solutions and recommendations to efficiently organize environmental auditing in the SAV. The Government, the State Audit Office and the audited entities are subject to have improvement for organizing environmental auditing in the SAV

The evolution of environmental auditing in Ukraine

Environmental policy shapes the future tendencies and ways of the regulation and govern environmental issues. According to McCormick environmental policy is defined as “any action deliberately taken to manage human activities with a view to prevent, reduce, or mitigate harmful effects on nature and natural resources, and ensure that man-made changed to the environment do not have harmful effects on humans” (McCormick 2001:21). To realize and regulate these activities different instruments of environmental policy have evolved and used around the world. Policy instruments are seen as “a set of techniques used by the executive power of a country to implement its policies” (Ryden and Karlsson 2012). Environmental auditing is one of such tools, which was developed in the 1970s in North America, “as management tool to examine and evaluate the compliance of facilities and operations with (increasingly numerous and complex) environmental laws and regulations” (Hunt and Jonson 1995:70) and then spread to the United Kingdom (UK), continental Europe and around the world. Environmental audit is a flexible tool of environmental policy that includes different stages of planning, risk assessment, testing, evaluating, concluding and reporting stages (Collier 1995). When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3628

Environmental Auditing and Sustainable Development in Nigeria

This study seeks to examine the issues of environmental auditing on sustainable development. The quest for industrialization and sustained development in Nigeria and the attendant improvement in the quality of life of the populace has taken its toll on the environment. The domineering influence of economic sophistication on every aspect of living had negative climatic impacts which sustainability sets out to correct. As sustainability pursues equitable distribution of opportunities between present and future generations through conservative use of resources, economic development promotes uncontrolled consumption of resources to increase material wealth.   Primary data was collected with the use of questionnaire and the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics method, correlation matrix and binary logit. The study hypothesis was also validated. It was revealed that this result is quite distorting, which implies that the more environmental audit carried out the less the effect on sustainable development, environmental engagement and impact assessment. Thus it was concluded that while companies subscribe to the policy of being environmentally friendly, only few engage environmental audit services. This might be a fall out from the voluntary nature of environmental audit. KEYWORDS: Environmental Audit, Sustainable Development and Environmental Impact Assessment

What motivates environmental auditing?: A public sector perspective

Purpose – This paper seeks to discuss the motivation for commencement of environmental auditing within the Fiji Office of the Auditor-General (OAG). It also aims to analyse the actual topics audited between 2005 and 2007 and the standards employed in those audits. Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach is employed, involving document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Findings – Environmental auditing in Fiji’s public sector can be explained in terms of institutional isomorphism: coercive, through pressure from the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) and United Nations (UN); mimetic, in relation to adoption of best practice within INTOSAI; and normative, through communication and professional training provided by INTOSAI. There is also evidence of decoupling; although government has ratified Millennium Development Goal 7 on environmental sustainability, it has failed to allocate adequate resources to the relevant departments. Research limitations/implications – Since audit reports were not publicly available, it was not possible to review audit opinions and the main audit findings. Nor was it possible to conduct follow-up interviews with audit clients. Practical implications – Sufficient financial and human resources must be devoted to environmental management and auditing. Accountants must be involved in the initial development of Environmental Management Systems (EMS). This recognises the particular skills which they possess and facilitates the subsequent audit of systems. Originality/value – The current research examines the adoption of environmental auditing in the public sector and finds that it can be explained using institutional theory. Accounting practices in a small developing country are strongly influenced by global networks. Keywords Costs, Auditing, Communication, Training Paper type Research pape