Ability to predict responses of the natural ecosystems gives an opportunity to understand these systems. Numerous development projects are involved in the process of assessment of the environment and hypothesizing about systems’ responses, which, in their turn, are tested in the programmes of monitoring environment.
Environmental impact audit is a comparison of actual impacts with those which are performed systematically; the audit examines disturbances of the ecosystem, its main developments of the resources, using lesser magnitude than those which are used for examination of natural disasters.
Environmental audit provides critical tests of theoretical knowledge in many sciences and disciplines, improving the content of environmental impact assessment. This and many other issues are examined by Buckely (1989), who thoroughly examines them in great details, paying a lot of attention to analysis of predictions and actual data and their comparison.
Such actions are aimed at achievement of many goals, and restore of balance of the environment is one of them. Recently governments of many countries have passed numerous acts both locally and internationally in order to contribute to the balance restoration and maintaining.
The new legislation is aimed at improvement of environmental situation and it promotes such actions as focusing on strategic planning, promotion of sustainable development which is focused on ecology, improvement of credibility, objectivity, and impact of accumulation on the environment and processes of its assessment.
Recent legislation also encourages authorities to develop more projects, involve public into participation in these projects, regular development of new acts, and taking a range of other actions, which are aimed at the improvement of the current environmental situation (The state of planning in NSW, 2010).
However, legislation which is aimed at improvement of environmental situation is not accepted at this particular sphere of jurisdiction only, but it is present at various areas, bringing legislative and administrative arrangements to each one of them.
It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that there are significant differences among pieces of legislation which are aimed at environmental assessment and the acts and norms are related to the planning control, in some cases even depending upon it, as well as on the environmental protection (Clarke, 2011).
All these actions, together with activity of many organizations and institutions were recognized to bring significant positive impact on the environment. However, still the situation requires much better to be desired and more advanced recommendations are constantly developed in order to address the needs of the environment.
These recommendations are implemented by the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and natural resources. However, in some cases the implementation was developed because of the audit projects, which have been already mentioned above.
Still, the progress is significant in terms of improvement of the strategic planning framework, access of stakeholders to information and monitoring of the situation. It is necessary to notice that lesser progress on implementation of the recommendations on the improvement of the internal processes was made, while systems and procedures which deal with the system of assessment an environmental impact turned out to be more effective (Auditor-General’s report, 2000).
References
Auditor-General’s report. Performance …