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Environmental legal compliance audits have established themselves as an essential tool in modern environmental management, being increasingly used by companies and organizations that seek to ensure the adequacy of their activities to environmental standards. The audit process involves a systematic assessment of an organization’s processes, products and activities, verifying whether they comply with the legal requirements applicable by current environmental laws, provisions and standards. There are several types of environmental legal compliance auditing. This article seeks to explore in depth the main aspects related to environmental legal compliance audits, addressing their concepts, objectives, application methods, practical challenges and strategic importance in the current context in relation to legal compliance audit processes relevant to the NBR ABNT standard ISO 14.001:2015, Environmental Due Diligence and CONAMA Resolution 306/2002. Despite it is a powerful control tool, environmental legal compliance auditing faces practical challenges, which can compromise its effectiveness if not properly managed. Although the legal assessment of ISO 14001, environmental Due Diligence and the environmental audit of CONAMA Resolution 306 share the common objective of promoting environmental compliance, each has different focuses and is applicable in different contexts. ISO 14001 focuses on continuous and internal management, while environmental Due Diligence is focused on specific transactions and hidden risks. The CONAMA 306 audit offers a broader view of compliance and environmental performance, focusing on large projects and legal inspection. Thus, each approach presents specific advantages and challenges, being complementary in many business situations, especially when it comes to companies that deal with major environmental impacts.
Manfredini et al. (Thu,) studied this question.