Study on government environmental audit in the context of sustainable development

For a long time, human has created the industrial civilization by costingenvironmental benefits. It has brought human serious threatens for their survival anddevelopment. Currently, to solve the environmental issues is the priority of nationalsustainable development strategy for any country. Environment has the property ofpublic product, which causes more responsibilities for government in environmentalissues. Environment audits conducted by audit institution can approach assurance andassessment of government’s performance on sustainable development. Substantialgovernmental environment audit practices in China began with the Department onAgriculture, Resource and Environment of National Audit Office founded in1998.After years’ efforts, governmental environment audit in China has made a greatprogress; however, there are still some shortages in fields and types compared withwestern countries. Besides, the limitation and influence, which come from law andpolicy, public awareness, foundation of environment management, assessment criteriasystem and human resource, bring it difficulties in our environmental audit practice.Aiming at the difficulties, the writer provides some relevant countermeasures.The paper is a normal study. The fundamental methods of this paper are asfollow: it introduces the basic concept of environment audit and previous researchabout governmental environment audit by documents study; it obtains the differencesbetween China and foreign countries in governmental environment audit, andsummarizes the enlightenment for China by comparative study though cases analysis;it describes the difficulties in China’s governmental environment audit by connectingthe writer’s work practice; and it provides some relevant countermeasures.The paper has constructed a basic assessment criteria system with universal leveland professional level. And it has introduced the concept of environmentalmanagement best practice, which is popular in developed countries but not universalin China; it can be helpful to establish benchmarking management in environmentalmanagement and enrich assessment criteria system for environment audit.