Role and auditing standards in the environmental control system

The task of integration into the system of civilized international relations in the sphere of environmental protection, environmental safety, and the increase of substantive requirements to legislation, put the need for the development of a fundamentally new branch in audit activity - environmental audit, which, as world experience shows, is becoming an effective tool for development.

It should be noted that activities related to the conduct of environmental auditing should provide for a wide range of consulting audit services that take into account internal auditing standards. This, as yet quite a new phenomenon, as eco-audit, is, moreover, an important tool for resolving investment issues, because it increases the attractiveness for the enterprises of the real sector, and this, in turn, is a fundamental factor of national security.

The prospects for the development of the eco-audit services market depend to a large extent on the availability of a developed regulatory and legal framework containing national audit standards that are just beginning to form. At present, there is no well-developed scientific and methodological basis for environmental radiolocation and the generally accepted terminology framework that takes into account international rules and standards for the implementation of sound environmental auditing.

From a legal point of view, an obligatory environmental audit should be conducted in any case in the following situations:

- implementation of bankruptcy procedure of the enterprise;

- preparation of investment projects;

- implementation of the environmental insurance procedure;

- execution of instructions from environmental authorities or other public authorities

- implementation of the decision of the state environmental review.

An initiative audit in the field of environmental activities is carried out by the decision of the enterprise itself or of another business entity.

External audit is carried out by a third-party audit firm, and internal audit is performed by employees (staff auditors) of the enterprise.

A real environmental audit is designed to assess the actual state of the enterprise as the nature of the user and as a polluter of the environment.

A forward-looking environmental audit is aimed at developing and providing recommendations in the field of improving the activities of the company being tested in the field of nature management.

Environmental audit can be informative, preventive and punitive, and for each of these types, it is necessary to develop unique audit standards.

Information audit is aimed at collecting and summarizing environmental information and its subsequent transfer to relevant interested users (to state bodies, citizens, investors, creditors) for the purpose of making decisions.

Preventive audit helps to prevent or minimize possible negative consequences, the potential occurrence of which is determined by the failure to perform the necessary conservation works, as well as financial and economic projects that have not undergone technical environmental control.

A punitive audit involves a variety of sanctions, up to the use of coercive measures against violators who are legally recognized as guilty of failing to fulfill their obligations to protect nature and its individual objects.

The main difference of the environmental audit is that in the event of its implementation, significant expenditures of a wide variety of resources are required to collect, analyze and document a large amount of operational information on the activities of enterprises, which is always accompanied by considerable time and effort, since most domestic enterprises can not provide enough Complete, accurate and reliable formation and provision of such environmental information. That is why rules, standards of auditing activity are necessary , as an objective condition for the development of environmental legislation.

A distinctive feature is also the absence of strictly regulated and tested procedures and standards for the implementation of auditing programs.

It should be acknowledged that auditing standards in the field of nature management become a necessary resource for ensuring the ecological well-being of society.