Implications of Financial Audit in Ensuring the Credibility of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Statements

Abstract

The sustainable development of national and international markets highlights the link between the emissions of greenhouse gases and climate change, a problem that cannot be overlooked during the development of financial audit as a profession, implicitly by the financial auditor’s spectrum of activities. Knowing the role of the financial auditor in providing reasonable or limited assurance on environmental issues, by developing an understanding of the circumstances and specificity of such financial audit engagement opens up a research niche that seeks to answer several questions such as: how the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment can be credibly measured/evaluated? Is it necessary in the assurance engagement for the financial auditors to use the activity of other practitioners/experts? How useful is the result of such an assurance service, within the national and European context? The authors consider that the answers highlight the role of the assurance services in affirming the credibility of the statements regarding greenhouse gases emission. The study addresses issues concerning the assurance engagement on non-financial statements regarding greenhouse gases in the specific situation in Romania, evaluating the perception of the respondents – financial auditors and representatives from the academic environment – on the opportunity of developing the financial audit services market, as well as identifying the need for development and improvement of the legislative framework in connection with the involvement of financial auditors in such assurance engagements.

Keywords

• financial audit; assurance engagements; isae 3410; greenhouse gases; environmental policy
• interdisciplinary teams