Financial auditors and environmental auditing in New Zealand

Despite the many international claims that accountants and auditors are positioned to play a pivotal role in the design and conduct of environmental audits, empirical studies have indicated that in the early 1990s few, if any, accounting professionals in New Zealand were actively involved in the conduct of independent external environmental audits. As the extent of environmental management practices adopted by organisations can be expected to have increased substantially since this time, there is reason to anticipate that the engagement of financial auditors with environmental audits may also have changed over the last decade. In order to examine the nature and extent of such potential changes, this article reviews the involvement of financial auditors in the conduct of environmental audits in New Zealand in 2001.