My Publication "Introducing environmental auditing as a tool of environmental governance in Ukraine"
A supervisor is one of the most important persons in your PhD journey as it is a mentor, who is supposed to lead and guide you through all years of your study and provide knowledge and emotional support. It is necessary to choose a good one at the beginning as you will be closely working with this person next 4-5 years. You need to have a good connection and be on the same page with this person.
Universities usually provide lots of opportunities for PhD students and it’s your job to grab as many as possible. You need to pursue your academic career very efficiently and use all opportunities. However, you should keep in mind that whatever you do it should all be beneficial for your PhD study and all your activities should help to build one big PhD puzzle.
Quite often PhD researchers overcomplicate their studies as they are attempt to ‘save the world with their research’. As a result, it takes some years for them to complete PhD degree or not to finish at all. It is important to be realistic and remember that the purpose of PhD is to become an ‘independent researcher’ and not to change the whole world.
This paper intends to describe and analyse the introduction, development and practice of environmental auditing in Ukraine and how it is affected by the EU-Ukraine integration process. Environmental auditing in Ukraine has combined features of both command-and-control and marked-based policy tools, which reflects a complex combination of influences from its Soviet past and international practices adopted as part of its transition to a market economy. Consequently, there are two types of environmental auditing: mandatory and voluntary, which, although based on different normative documents and having different objectives, largely rely on the same practitioners - environmental auditors. Environmental auditing in countries undergoing political and economic transition, like Ukraine, has not been studied before. A theoretical framework was developed for this purpose, consisting of 1) 'shift of policy paradigms' theory, 2) 'collective action' theory and 3) 'community of practice' theory. Several qualitative methods were used for data collection: literature review, semi-structure open-ended interviews, and participant/non-participant observations. The gathered data are summarised in a three-stage development of environmental auditing in Ukraine as preliminary (1991–2004), foundation (2004–2010) and stagnation (2010–2015) stages. Future EU-Ukraine integration will affect environmental auditing in Ukraine as the supremacy of European Law is accepted, mandatory and voluntary environmental auditing practices will follow different paths.