Green audit involves recording of biodiversity, energy consumption, waste management, toxic effluent management etc. It requires expertise and spending money for. Does it worth expensing amount on the said GREEN AUDIT?
Dear Mr. Khot,
do you refer with the term "green audit" to an audit of an environmental management system (EMS) ? If this is the case the international standard for the audit is ISO 19011 (which I attached). The audit is done for an implemented EMS (usually am EMS according to ISO 14001). As you described, the considered environmental factors are waste, water etc., and the scope is to find out the resource efficiency potentials and the options for environmental improvement. There is also a reference to wildlife and biodiversity in the ISO 14001 norm, even this subject is not supported with details. Regarding the cost, our experience is that the implementation cost of the EMS is much higher than of it's audit. Also this depends from the fact if you intend an internal or an external audit. Usually an internal audit takes "only" cost in regard of working time, while for external audit needs to be paid an external auditor. In practice I didn't see very often in an EMS a reference to biodiversity. And if biodiversity is the "key environmental factor" from our experience is not "worth" in the economic sense in the EMS (of course is worth in the environmental sense). This is due to the fact that the resource potentials which can be assumed for waste and water with an EMS usually result in a relevant reduction of operation cost for the company, that is financial benefit, and for that reason the company implements the EMS. For biodiversity usually one can not save cost (even they have a value in terms of ecosystem services), but for that reason in practice usually nobody pays for such a management system. If you are further interested I can provide you also some details on the EMS implementation and the audit cost (but for Germany).
Best regards,
Petra