Government Environmental Performance Audit Study

Currently, the environmental situation of earth is worsening, and the living environment of human beings is threatened seriously. The whole world has formed the consensus of environmental protection and sustainable development. Audit institutions, because of their unique professional advantages, can play an important role in environmental protection. The environmental performance audit is a powerful tool for environmental protection. The environmental performance audit has developed so much in western countries, but is still at the initial and exploratory stage in China.The objectives of this paper are to enrich China's theoretical system of environmental performance audit, serve for the audit practice, and contribute to the audit development on the base of foreign experience and research fruits. This paper mainly uses a normative method to study, i.e. comparison, induction, deduction and other methods. This paper analyzes the background, objective basis, basic theory, and evaluation indicators system of environmental performance audit by government, makes a case study with an application example, and lastly proposes how to develop China's environmental performance audit in accordance with current situations.The main points of this paper are as follows:ⅰ) Environmental audit and performance audit mutually integrated, and environmental performance audit was born, which is also a higher stage of environmental audit. Environmental performance audit is an evaluation and supervision of environmental management, which can help improve the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of environmental management.ⅱ) Environmental accountability is the basic driving force of environmental performance audit. The targets of environmental performance audit are divided into fundamental goals and detailed objectives. The fundamental goals are to ensure that environmental accountability is performed effectively, and improve environmental management performance; the detailed objectives include economic objectives, efficiency objectives and effectiveness objectives. The contents of environmental performance audit include evaluation of environmental laws, audit on performance of environmental project, evaluation of environmental impact of other projects, evaluation of environmental management systems and evaluation of environmental decision and plan.iii) Evaluation indicators system of environmental performance audit include funding performance indicators, project-control performance indicators, project output performance indicators, as well as qualitative evaluation indicators. The project output performance indicators include economic indicators, social indicators and eco-environmental indicators,iv) The environmental performance audit in China is still developing, which is lack of sufficient practical experience and theoretical basis. Therefore, it is a shortcut for developing China's environmental performance audit to learn the research fruits and experience of western developed countries. This paper compares China's environmental performance audit with the international advanced level and analyzes the gaps and weaknesses. This paper makes development strategy for China's environmental performance audit, and may contribute to the sustainable development in China.