Goals and objectives of the audit of enterprises of increased environmental risk

The modern multisectoral economy is characterized by a significant number of enterprises that conduct their economic activities in conditions of creating a potential danger to the environment. In such conditions, a special role is played by ecoaudit. Environmental auditing is understood as independent monitoring and development of appropriate provisions to ensure the activities of enterprises with increased environmental risk.

Ecoaudit is the professional activity of specialists or specialized agencies to perform independent inspections of entities that conduct activities in the areas of increased environmental risk, as well as other services: drafting declarations on the state of the environment and the impact of economic activity on it, advising on environmental legislation; Training and others.

The actual goals and objectives of the audit in the field of ecology ultimately consist in the development by the third party of professional recommendations and proposals for environmentally significant activities and bringing it into line with the legal acts of environmental legislation. Along with the development of environmental management systems conducted by qualified groups of experts, in a strictly established time frame, it can significantly affect the ecological situation in the country, and first of all, in enterprises, production complexes of increased environmental danger.

Taking this into account, the goals and objectives of audit activities in the field of ecology should not concentrate only on the study of the enterprise's environmental reporting, but also include the study of its activities in all aspects:

• Clear development and setting of environmental goals and objectives;
• The development of an environmental program and enterprise policy;
• Monitoring, minimization of possible harm to the environment in the form of emissions and discharges of various kinds of pollutants;
• Rational use of resources, raw materials and their components, including hazardous reagents, first of all;
• Work to ensure the safety of personnel, including the assessment of the risk of occurrence and prevention of accidents;
• Interaction with environmental control institutions, including non-state ones, for public monitoring of environmental management licensing, insurance and certification;
• Environmental awareness, education and training of personnel;
• Reduction of risks of occurrence of risks, and also development of effective and fair measures of authorization of infringements of ecological norms.

The key role that determines the nature, goals and objectives of the audit in the field of nature management belongs to monitoring. Its main tasks are as follows:

• Monitoring the state of the economic activity of the enterprise, which poses a potential danger to the natural environment;
• Assessment and forecast of potential risks arising from this economic activity;
• Development of operational measures to prevent violations of environmental legislation.

The current system of ecomonitoring, the goals and objectives of the audit in this area, still have a number of problems. Among the most important are, first of all, the underdevelopment of monitoring of the main sources of harmful effects on the environment. For example, environmental passports of enterprises contain information on no more than 15-20% of the actual sources of such risks.

The implementation of environmental goals and programs, environmental safety and the effectiveness of decisions taken directly depend on the relationship of different types of eco-activities. For example, in the absence (inadequate) monitoring of the impact on the environment, public (public) environmental control becomes formal and ineffective, which has a negative impact on both the development and justification of decisions, and on their adoption and implementation. The absence or inefficiency of production control, in turn, makes monitoring of sources of risks ineffective.

The lack of a common procedure for assessing the impact on the environment, including state and public environmental expertise, leads to the adoption of ineffective solutions, isolated from other priority environmental problems , both within specific industries and the country as a whole. That is why the goals and objectives of the audit should be holistic and universal, ensuring an effective study of the state of affairs in various sectors of economic and production activities.

In addition, to transform our entire economy into an environmentally safe system, the first thing to do is to conduct an inventory of the environmental status of each enterprise. And international experience convincingly shows and proves that, without having a periodic environmental survey (assessment) of the enterprise, it is practically impossible to take effective measures in the sphere of nature management.