The task of integrating into the system of civilizedinternational relations in the field of environmental protection, environmental safety, raising substantive requirements for legislation, highlight the need to develop a fundamentally new industry in auditing activities - environmental auditing, which, as world experience shows, is becoming an effective tool for ensuring development.
It should be noted that the activities relatedwith an environmental audit, should provide for the provision of a wide range of consulting audit services, which take into account internal audit standards. This, for the time being, quite a new phenomenon, as an eco-audit, is also an important tool for solving investment issues, because it increases the attractiveness for enterprises of the real sector, and this, in turn, is a fundamental factor in national security.
Prospects for the development of the market for environmental audit services into a large extent depend on the availability of a developed legal framework containing national auditing standards, which is just beginning to take shape. At present, there are no clearly developed scientific and methodological foundations of environmental radiation and the generally accepted conceptual and terminological apparatus that takes into account international rules and standards for the implementation of competent environmental auditing activities.
From a legal point of view, a compulsory environmental audit should be carried out in any case in the following situations:
- implementation of the bankruptcy procedure of the enterprise;
- preparation of investment projects;
- implementation of the procedure of environmental insurance;
- execution of instructions from environmental or other public authorities
- implementation of the decision of the state environmental review.
Initiative audit in the field of environmental activities is carried out by decision of the enterprise itself or another business entity.
External audit is carried out by a third-party audit firm, and internal - by employees (full-time auditors) of the enterprise.
A real environmental audit is intended to assess the actual state of the enterprise as the nature of the user and as a polluter of the environment.
A prospective environmental audit is aimed at developing and providing recommendations in the field of improving the activities of the inspected company in the field of environmental management.
Environmental auditing can be informational, preventive and punitive, and for each of these types it is necessary to develop unique auditing standards.
Information audit is aimed at collecting andcompilation of environmental information and its subsequent transfer to relevant interested users (to state bodies, citizens, investors, creditors) for the purpose of making decisions.
Preventive auditing helps preventor minimize the possible negative consequences, the potential occurrence of which is determined by the failure to carry out the necessary work on environmental protection, as well as financial and economic projects that have not undergone technical environmental monitoring.
Punitive audit is a variety ofsanctions, including the use of coercive measures against violators who are legally found guilty of not fulfilling obligations to protect nature and its individual objects.
The main difference of environmental auditlies in the fact that, if carried out, it requires significant expenditures of a wide variety of resources for collecting, analyzing and documenting a large amount of operational information about the activities of enterprises, which is always accompanied by considerable time and effort, since most domestic enterprises cannot provide sufficiently complete, clear and reliable formation and provision of such environmental information. That is why the necessary rules, standards of auditing, as an objective condition for the development of environmental legislation.
A distinctive feature is also the absence of strictly regulated and worked-out procedures and standards for the implementation of audit programs.
Admittedly, audit standards in the field of environmental management are becoming a necessary resource for ensuring the ecological well-being of society.
