Environmental audit in Ukraine: problems and development prospects

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru

Environmental audit in ukraine: problems and development prospects

Bondar O., State Ecological Academy of Postgraduate Education and Management,

Ryzhenko N., State Ecological Academy of Postgraduate Education and Management, Chernykhivska A., State Ecological Academy of Postgraduate Education and Management)

Introduction

The modern stage of society's development presents humanity with new challenges and provides opportunities for solving them. The most characteristic feature of the new millennium is the systematic vision of problems and the complexity of ways to solve them. Currently, it is impossible to single out purely economic, social, environmental problems and conflicts, they are all interconnected and interdependent.

The growth and excess of anthropogenic and ethnogeny load on the surrounding natural environment signal the search for and the need to implement effective mechanisms of environmental protection [6].

To solve these problems, such an effective environmental management tool as environmental audit has been used for quite a long time, which provides for the transfer to society and the private sector of the economy of part of the powers, responsibilities and risks related to the implementation of environmental projects.

An important direction of Ukraine's development, which is aimed at a balanced solution of socio-economic and environmental problems in the future, is the application of environmental audit as a tool for ensuring a favourable ecological state of the environment. This circumstance is connected with the necessity of Ukraine's integration into the system of world economy and international environmental security.

Presenting main material

Pollution of the environment as a result of the production and economic activities of industrial enterprises, which harms the quality of life and health of the population, is the most urgent social and ecological problem, which has priority socio-economic importance. Increasing the efficiency of enterprises from the point of view of environmental safety and the implementation of measures to prevent negative impact on the environment can be ensured by introducing both mandatory and voluntary environmental audits.

An environmental audit can significantly affect the improvement of the environmental situation, primarily at the level of individual industrial enterprises. During the environmental audit, the degree of conformity of the nature of production activities, products, management system with environmental requirements, in particular, quantitative and qualitative indicators, established by normative legal acts of Ukraine in the field of environmental protection is checked.

At the same time, the types of activities related to:

Environmental protection, its condition at the enterprise;

Environmental management system;

Compliance with environmental legislation and

established environmental requirements;

Financial risks associated with liability for violation of the permissible impact on the natural environment, etc. [7].

Available developments widely cover theoretical and applied aspects of environmental management and auditing.

At the same time, despite numerous theoretical and methodological developments in this field, in our opinion, it is not so much the term "environmental audit" that requires focused attention, but the processes of its development and implementation in modern business practice.

There is an urgent need to increase its "desirability" in society, to stimulate the development of the environmental audit market, and to interest enterprises in conducting it.

It should be noted that the closest Ukrainian terminological equivalents of the definition "ecological audit" can be considered such as "ecological survey", "ecological review" and "ecological assessment".

Therefore, an environmental audit establishes a diagnosis of the "ecological health" of an enterprise or territory, the ability of its "technological organism", production systems to self-clean and not pollute the environment, to produce ecologically clean products and to be attractive for attracting investments.

Scientists distinguish classification approaches to environmental audit, which make it possible to improve and generalize it according to:

An object (enterprise, territory and interdisciplinary group),

Relation to the object (external and internal),

By form (mandatory and voluntary),

Categories of waste, conditions of their disposal and stages of handling them, characteristics of the impact of waste on environmental elements and types of recommendations.

A comparative assessment of the types of environmental audit and its functions gives reason to conclude that it is appropriate to conduct an internal environmental audit in the system of environmental management at the enterprise, and an external one in the system of regional and state management of environmental activities [1].

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) gives the following formulation of the definition of environmental audit: "Environmental audit is a mathematical and documented verification process consisting of objectively obtaining and evaluating information, aimed at establishing whether specific environmental measures meet control criteria, phenomena, regulatory systems or data about them, and in reporting the results of this check to the consumer" [4].

It is for this purpose that Western companies turn to environmental auditors (legal entities or individuals) who can objectively assess the environmental condition of an enterprise or territory, identify existing deviations from the norm, i.e. from the requirements of current environmental legislation or international standards, and propose measures for reconciliation production activity of the enterprise with these requirements.

In the European Union, environmental auditing is most common at the corporate level. Directive No. 761/2001 EMAS "Environmental Management and Audit Systems", which unified them, defined corporate environmental policy as a complex object of environmental audit on many aspects, in particular, planning of new environmentally friendly products, handling waste, energy saving and environmental behaviours of corporations in different market sectors [3].

In this context, we note that according to the definition in modern legislation, an environmental audit is a documented, systematic, independent process of evaluating the object of an environmental audit, which involves the collection and objective evaluation of evidence to establish the compliance of specified types of activities, measures, conditions, management system the natural environment and information on these issues in accordance with the requirements of the legislation of Ukraine on environmental protection and other environmental audit criteria [2].

It should be noted that, in general, approaches to the formation of the system of environmental legislation in Ukraine can be called quite progressive, because the system itself is being created already in the democratic conditions of independence using the experience of world leaders in the field of environmental law.

Ukraine has adopted many laws and codes that regulate all environmental and legal relations in the country.

In particular, on June 24, 2004, the Law "On Environmental Audit" No. 1862-IV (hereinafter - the Law) was adopted in Ukraine. The Law is a key document that defines the main legal and organizational principles of environmental audit and is aimed at increasing the environmental validity and efficiency of business entities [2].

The adopted Law is still a very important and balanced stage of Ukraine's advancement to the European Union. In addition, this document plays an important role as a mechanism for improving environmental management. The Law made it possible for enterprises, institutions and organizations, using the services of environmental auditors and eco-auditing firms, to organize voluntary inspections with the aim of conducting preventive actions and correcting all compliance with environmental legislation, which should definitely lead to savings in environmental costs.

Currently, some provisions of the Law are outdated and do not correspond to the current legislation. In 2021, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine developed and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine a draft law on improving the procedure for conducting environmental audits [5].

The document defines the grounds for conducting a mandatory environmental audit for objects or activities with increased environmental risk and also provides effective mechanisms for conducting an environmental audit.

According to the provisions of the draft law, the customer must inform the subject of the eco-audit about the choice of the executor before concluding the contract and approving the executor of the environmental audit. In addition, the environmental audit must be carried out without obstacles to economic activity.

Today, Ukraine is defending itself from a terrible and cruel war on the part of Russia. The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine proposes to supplement the draft law with provisions on the procedure for carrying out a special environmental audit on objects affected by military operations.

The main proposed additions are [5]:

Definition of the term "special environmental audit";

The possibility of carrying out a special environmental audit on ecosystems and territorial units affected by emergency situations and during martial law;

Increasing the tools for holding the aggressor country accountable for causing damage to the environment;

The ability to take samples, take measurements, photograph, and video, including from aircraft and using space technologies;

Conducting a special environmental audit with the involvement of international experts and organizations on environmental protection issues.

Changes in the procedure for conducting an environmental audit will allow Ukraine to better record evidence of crimes committed by Russia against the environment in order to achieve fair compensation in international courts in the future.

It should be noted that a significant problem of modern environmental and economic audit in Ukraine is the insufficient development of environmental criteria for evaluating the activities of enterprises and displaying information in environmental passports. environmental audit crime

Environmental certification is a specific tool for environmental accounting and control of individual characteristics of various subjects of economic activity for the preparation of management decisions. If the accounting of natural resources takes developed forms in the form of cadastres of natural resources, then the accounting of environmental characteristics of business entities requires adequate information support to fully take into account their impact on such natural resources. The basis of environmental accounting and auditing of economic entities should be the environmental passport of the enterprise.

In terms of content, the environmental certification of objects can be defined as the collection of data by a business entity, summarized according to a specially established methodology, about the environmental criteria and performance indicators of the object, its use of natural resources, and the degree of potential danger to the natural environment.

Let's define the goals of environmental certification in the context of the development of environmental audit:

Definition and recording of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of activities in the field of nature management (use of energy, fuel, raw materials), as well as qualitative and quantitative characteristics of environmental pollution by emissions, runoff, waste and radiation;

Obtaining data and indicators of the enterprise in the field of nature management and environmental pollution, which allow analyzing the technologies and equipment used by the enterprise in comparison with the best domestic and foreign samples, as well as information about the damage caused by the enterprise.

Based on the results of environmental certification of enterprises, specialists must assess the impact of waste pollutants on the natural environment and public health, as well as determine the fee for nature use and the fee for environmental pollution. The results of the environmental audit must be entered in separate sections of the environmental passport to form a historical record of the state of environmental protection and the conduct of business activities in accordance with environmental legislation.

The environmental passport should contribute to the implementation of the principles of environmental safety, implement the thesis "anticipate and prevent". In case of violation of environmental legislation, the history of violations must be recorded in the environmental passport in order to "identify and correct" the situation that has arisen [1, 2].

In our opinion, the implementation of environmental audit procedures based on an environmental passport can contribute to the development of the environmental audit market.

Thus, it can be argued that the environmental audit should be considered as the beginning of the process of greening production, that is, the transition from unsustainable models of production and consumption to ecologically balanced and clean models. At the same time, environmental audit procedures should be a prerequisite for the distribution of responsibility for environmental damage between structural divisions and be implemented in the certification policy of enterprises.

In the coming years, the integration of environmental audit with other types will obviously be important and popular. Guided by the principle of "cost-effectiveness", business entities will try to combine safety, quality and economic audit with environmental audit.

It can be argued that in order to minimize the cost of conducting audits and make the enterprise more efficient, in addition to the environmental management system (ISO 14001 standards), the quality management system (ISO 9000 standards) and the occupational safety and health management system (OHSAS-18000 standards) will be implemented, that is, there will be creation of an integrated management system [4].

At the same time, changes are taking place in the structure of industrial production in Ukraine, "green" business, the market of "green" technologies and ecological goods are being introduced

and developing. Such circumstances indicate the need to use means of control over the implementation of environmental standards and regulations, to increase the level of control and to stimulate environmental protection and resource-saving activities.

For this purpose, it is expedient to form the factors of activation of the development of this process. They are:

Transformation of the legislative and regulatory framework in the direction of supporting the development of the business market;

Formation of the relevant infrastructure of the environmental audit market (certification policy, creation of a network of eco-auditing firms, methodological support, etc.);

Search for sources of investment and activation of state support mechanisms.

An environmental audit is a necessary pre-investment stage of risk assessment by international standards, a mandatory procedure for determining the value of privatized enterprises, marketing research of product competitiveness, and an effective tool for reconciling national and local interests in environmental safety.

The advantages of using an environmental audit as an effective tool for improving the environmental and economic soundness and efficiency of business entities include:

Establishing compliance of the enterprise's activities with the requirements of environmental legislation.

Determining the correctness of the calculation of environmental taxes and rent.

Prevention of fines.

Reduction of costs for waste management, water supply, electricity supply, heat supply and gas supply.

Finding out the availability of reserves of raw materials and energy resources at the enterprise.

Reducing the risk of emergencies related to environmental pollution.

Increasing the investment attractiveness of the enterprise.

Formation of the environmental strategy and policy of the enterprise.

Increasing the competitiveness of the enterprise, brand image and increasing consumer loyalty due to the production of products that meet all environmental and sanitary and hygienic requirements.

Obtaining recommendations on the effective use of resources in the field of nature management and environmental protection.

Stimulation of innovation and rationalization.

Access to the international market and consolidation of the company's position among foreign partners.

Conclusion

Environmental audit as a direction of audit activity plays an important role in increasing the efficiency of management in the field of environmental protection, ensuring environmental safety, assisting in the preparation of objective recommendations for eliminating deficiencies in the organization of environmental protection activities, improving the environmental indicators of enterprises and other economic objects, activities which are related to the impact on the environment and the use of natural resources.

An important role in the activation of the environmental audit market is played by state and territorial authorities, which must stimulate demand and supply factors for environmental audit services.

In order for the demand for environmental audit services to be formed, it is necessary for them to be accepted by the population, management of enterprises and the entire social system. It is in this system that demand factors are formed: the

degree of public awareness of the audit results, the management's desire to improve the environmental situation, the economic capacity of enterprises to conduct an environmental audit, etc.

Environmental audit can be considered as one of the new modern management tools, which allows to effectively regulating ecological and economic relations in compliance with environmental safety requirements by the subject of economic activity in conditions where the technological process involves the use of natural resources.

References

DSTU ISO 19011:2012 Nastanovy shchodo zdiysnennya audytiv system upravlinnya (ISO 19011:2011, IDT) [Guidelines for audits of management systems]. http://document.ua/nastanovi- shodo-zdii snennj a-auditiv-sistemupravlinnja-i so- 1-nor24674. html (accessed 29. 05. 2023)

Pro ekolohichnyy audyt: Zakon Ukrayiny vid 24 chervnya 2004 № 1862-IV iz zminamy ta dopovnennyamy [Environmental audit: Law of Ukraine]. http://zakon.rada.gov.ua/cgibin/laws (accessed 30. 05. 2023)

EU Environmental Policy Handbook A Critical Analysis of EU Environmental Legislation http://etko.com.tr/dosyalar/Belgeler/ environmental-policy-handbook-eu_47089.pdf (accessed 25. 05. 2023)

ISO standards are internationally agreed by experts https://www.iso.org/standards.html (accessed 30. 05. 2023)

Sayt Ministerstva Zakhystu dovkillya ta pryrodnykh resursiv Ukrayiny https://mepr.gov.ua (accessed 25. 05. 2023)

Stratehiia staloho rozvytku Ukrainy na period do 2030 roku (Proekt 2017) [Strategy of sustainable development of Ukraine for the Period to 2030 (Draft 2017)].https://www.undp.org/content/ dam/ukraine/docs/SDGreports/UNDP_Strategy_v06- optimized.pdf. (accessed 23. 05. 2023)

Sadovenko A. (2011) Stalyy rozvytok suspil'stva [Sustainable development of society] Kyiv. (in Ukrainian)

Размещено на Allbest.ru