Research On Government Environmental Performance Audit

Environmental problem is bone with the economic activities, but to solve the problem of environment can't depend entirely on the economic subject's action. In this field, as the responsibility of public, the government must shoulder a special responsibility, to strengthen it's position and function in environmental protection, carry out environmental protection and management activities actively. But, in the traditional practices, Chinese government showed inefficiencies, poor management and overemphasize on economic performance etc in environmental management activities. The performance of Government Environmental Performance Audit and the public awareness of environmental protection consciousness and democracy, enhance people not only focus on environmental protection and the use of investment, but also on the environmental protection project performance. These prompted the government to change the wrong idea of one-sided pursuit economic growth to environmental protection work, improve environmental management efficiency and establish a good image of green government urgently. Because Performance Audit is added up in the Government Environmental Performance Audit, the main objective of the Government Environmental Performance Audit is to evaluate the effect of environmental policies and whether environmental policies had promoted the improvement of ecological environment, review whether the implementation of environmental projects really helps prevent and control environmental pollution and whether the investigation of environmental input has achieve the expected effect and target. Therefore, the Government Environmental Performance Audit became the development direction of environment audit.At present, the Government Environmental Performance Audit has become the focus of attention internationally.1995,the environment audit working group (WGEA) belongs to the highest international organization (INTDSAI) began to draw up the Auditing Activities from the Perspective of Environmental Guides.2001,this Guides issued to each member by WGEA, the second part of the Guides stated the content of the Environmental Performance Audit mainly. In many countries, the Government Environmental Performance Audit develops maturely, for example, in 1995, the Supreme Court of Netherlands send the Environmental Auditing Questionnaire which based on 171 countries' supreme state to the 15th meeting of international organization. This paper shows that the investigated country's top usually concern more on the following problems, air pollution, water pollution and hazardous waste etc. In additional, 69 percent of these Environmental Audit are Performance Audit, and in the United States, Britain, South Korea and Australia ect, the government environmental performance auditing has been applicated early.In our country, until 1999, Environmental Audit became the focus of research in theoretical area, In Government Environmental Performance Audit, whether in theory or practice, both lack of research and has not form the theoretical system for Environmental Performance Audit theory, application technology, evaluation standards, What is more, the Government Environmental Performance Audit lack of practice experience. The search and practice in our country are far behind of the western countries. In recent years, our country not only pay more and more attention to the government environmental performance audit, but also established special environment audit institutions responsible for environment problem and it had carried out various Environmental Performance Audit project, for instance, the Chinese government has conducted environmental audit to key environmental protection areas, for example, natural forest resources, important water pollution prevention and qinghai-tibet railway project environmental protection ect. But our Government Environmental Performance Audit also revealed many problems, for example, the theoretical basis is inadequate, the audit scope is narrow, in the type of audit, most of them are financial revenue and expenditure situation audit, Our Government Environmental Performance Audit has not yet included other two aspects and so on.This paper is divided into five parts, the first part is a review of the current research of Environmental Performance Audit, and as the research background. The second part introduces the Environmental Performance Audit theory and elaborate the difference among the Government Environmental Performance Audit, Environmental audit and Environmental Performance Audit, This part explain the Government Environmental Performance Audit from the following areas, definition, characteristics, objectives, practical significance. Next, this part elaborate the government environmental performance audit theory from the sustainable development theory, accountability theory, environmental resources theory and environment management theory, provides the theory basis for the research behind. The third part point out the problems of our Government Environmental Eerformance Audit, for example, short of auditing theory basis and talents. Then explains the reasons of these problems. The fourth part entroduce Government Environmental Performance Audit from the following countries, American, Australia, Korea and British. The fifth part puts forward five measures to perfect our Government Environmental Performance Audit from aspects of system, theory research and the quality of audit personnel.