HANOI: An environmental audit is well established in countries with modern industries, but is new to developing countries like Vietnam.
Along with traditional management tools, an environmental audit is an effective way of providing information to state management agencies for environmental inspection and supervision.
The World Bank believes that an environmental audit is an inspection of an organisation, facility or location to determine how the organisation or facility meets environmental management criteria.
According to the Vietnam Environmental and Marine Sciences Institute, which falls under the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, such an audit aims to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the facility’s environmental management system.
It assesses the facility’s compliance with local, national and international environmental regulations and its impact on people and the environment due to pollution and environmental damage to improve administration.
An environmental audit focuses on ensuring that the facility abides to all legal frameworks and environmental regulations.
As environmental issues have become more and more extensive and complex, the audit has been developed and covered many different forms such as energy, waste, raw materials, impacts and transportation.
In the world, there are currently two types of environmental audits, compliance assessment audits and management system audits.
The compliance assessment audit is the most common type used to review and evaluate the legal compliance of a company, organisation or project.
Japan is the country with the most developed environmental audit programme in Asia.
Experts from the Japan International Cooperation Agency said that in 1997, the Japanese Environment Ministry conducted the first research project on environmental audits. — Viet Nam News/ANN
