Environmental audits: a multi-stakeholder perspective

Environmental auditing is an emerging environmental management tool that provides potential benefits to private industry, the public, and regulatory authorities as well as to the environment. It is a rare convergence of private and public interests. Corporations addressing the concerns of their stakeholders increasingly take environmental issues into consideration. The public is demanding more transparency from corporations and environmental audits are a necessary tool for corporations to do this. Voluntary environmental audits, combined with an effective enforcement program to the "command and control" legislation encourages corporations to seek pollution avoidance rather than pollution control. It is the way of the future. Mandatory environmental audits at this time would be short sighted and most probably counter-productive. Incentives and the actual driving forces in the market will continue to make environmental auditing an environmental tool of choice for forward looking corporations.Law, Peter A. Allard School ofGraduat