Sustainable development is still seen by authorities as an abstract concept. Local Environmental Auditing will help put it into practice. The book provides a comprehensive guide to monitoring the state of the local environment and establishing the impacts of local actions on global issues, and shows how current local authority policy and practice can be adapted to recognize environmental priorities. The authors provide both a guide to and an assessment of the subject: they link the processes with the issues, with specific information on carrying out the audit (including checklists, case studies and standards) and a detailed discussion of the issues and choices which local authorities may face. Clearly structured and accessible, this will be an essential handbook, both for local government departments and other local organizations, and students in a wide range of subjects, including environmental science and health, town planning, urban and rural studies, social science and politics.

The concept of the environmental audit, though recent, has quickly become established. This book is a short practical overview of the principles and practice of environmental auditing as required by all commercial companies, developers and those seeking to use land for commercial activity. It examines the legal issues and implications for liability and compliance. It describes the auditing process and best practice and covers such subjects as UK and EU environmental legislation, the audit process, reporting and the audit process and site remediation.

This is a complete and concise guide to creating and managing a successful environmental audit program. It provides step-by-step guidance on setting up an audit program for nearly every major component of environmental concern, from air standards to workplace safety, and from effluent discharge to waste handling and disposal.

Environment and sustainable development challenges are a matter of global concern. Trillions of dollars of mostly public money are invested every year in domestic and international policies and programs to address these?challenges. The effectiveness of these policies and programs is critical to environmental sustainability. Performance audits that examine the effectiveness of governmental policies and programs heavily influence their implementation. Despite this, performance auditing in the environment field?has received very little academic attention. This book takes a closer look at performance auditing of public sector environmental policies and programs. It examines trends in global environmental performance auditing; and how it is currently practiced drawing on a global survey and case studies from Canada, India and Australia. In doing so, it identifies issues and challenges faced by Supreme Audit Institutions in undertaking these performance audits. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of sustainable development, environmental auditing and public sector auditing as well as to donor organisations engaged in these areas.