Green Audit vis-à-vis Cost Audit and Financial Audit - A CMA's Perspective

This article is aimed at highlighting the views of a Cost & Management Accountant (CMA) about Green Audit vis-à-vis Cost and Financial Audit. The meaning of Green is eco-friendly or not damaging the environment. GREEN can be acronymically called as Global Readiness in Ensuring Ecological Neutrality. Green Audit is an audit of ‘ecological system' of a particular habitat within a given period with an objective of assessing the biodiversity.Eco-system imbalances occur due to uncontrollable occurrences' viz., Earthquakes, Floods, Tsunami, Volcanic Eruptions, Wild-fire, Hurricanes etc and controllable factors viz., changes in economic activities, industrialization, rapid change in science and technology, changes in social and cultural habits of human-beings etc. This in-turn brings undesirable changes in ecological system.As a result of the above, it is important to ensure the sustainable use of components of the biodiversity. Measuring, accounting and auditing the components of the biodiversity are indispensable to ensure sustainability. The audit of ecological system of a particular habitat to ensure sustainable use of components of biodiversity is called Green Audit. Green Audit is a subset of Management Audit. However, the former the former primarily focuses on ‘ecological components' and the later focuses on ‘economic resources'.Green Audit can be treated as a subset of Management Audit; Cost and Management Accountants (CMAs) with their multi-disciplinary and techno-commercial skills are the apt professionals to conduct Green Audit with the help of environmental specialists