Report on the work of ASOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing

By

(for the 5th EA Seminar and 4th Working Meeting of ASOSAI WGEA

April 15, 2014 Hanoi, Viet Nam)

 

Distinguished delegates

Ladies and gentlemen,

    Good morning!

It is a great honor for me to report the work of ASOSAI WGEA we have achieved since the last meeting in September 2012.

I. Prepared the 2014-2016 work plan of ASOSAI WGEA

The plan covers three aspects:

First, development of ASOSAI WGEA and its routine work.

----Expand the membership by invitinging SAIs interested in environmental auditing;

----Establish a well-structured operational norm to facilitate the operation of WGEA in a smooth way;

----Build partnerships with ASOSAI, INTOSAI WGEA and other Regional WGEAs through effective communication, etc.

Second, enhance the dissemination and exchange of information and experience on environmental auditing, that is to serve as an effective platform for the members to communicate on environmental auditing. The main initiatives include:  

----Organize two seminars on environmental auditing and working meetings of ASOSAI WGEA in 2014 and 2016 respectively,

----Undertake the 6th survey on environmental auditing in 2015, and

----Compiling and releasing the cases of Asian environmental auditing and updating website, etc.

Third, encourage the conduct of environmental audit through cooperation and collaboration among SAIs in various ways in order to draw their attention to topics of common interest in the field of environment, and facilitate their efforts for better solutions to international environmental issues or challenges. The initiatives include identifying the needs of members, undertaking cooperative audit and researches on environmental auditing, etc. The Secretariat will select and determine cooperation themes, organize and carry out parallel audit and experience exchange based on the survey.

II. Carried out two surveys on environmental auditing

To further acknowledge the practices of environmental auditing and the willingness of carrying out cooperative audit within ASOSAI community, the Secretariat conducted two surveys on environmental auditing in 2013, which were participated by 18 SAIs. The results of the two surveys show as following:

1 Environmental audits have been conducted by most SAIs.

From 2012 to 2013, nearly all SAIs responded to the survey carried out environmental auditing, reaching 94%, compared to 83% for the 3rd survey in 2011. Among the 94 environmental audits conducted by responded SAIs during this period, most audits focused on water issues, 27 audits accounting for 28.7%, followed by 14 audits on solid waste accounting for 14.9%, and 10 on biological diversity, accounting for 10.6%. Compared to the previous survey, the types of audit are much more diverse with increased attention on solid waste and biological diversity, and reduced focus on atmospheric environment.

2 Some SAIs have carried out, or plan to carry out cooperative environmental audits.

The INTOSAI WGEA has been concerned about and advocated to conduct cooperative environmental audit in recent years. Asian SAIs have responded positively to the call and participated in a number of cooperative environmental audits. Of the 18 responded SAIs, 6 SAIs (accounting for 33%) have carried out environmental auditing from 2012 to 2013; 7 SAIs (accounting for 39%) plan to carry it out from 2014 to 2016, 5 of them have initially determined the partner and project types, involving in climate change, water environment, desertification cotroland others.

3Main challenges in environmental auditing are lack of environmental data and professional skills, and training is still the most important solution recognized by various countries.

77% of the respondent SAIs select “lack of environmental data” as major challenge faced in environmental auditing, higher than that in the survey conducted by INTOSAI WGEA during the period of 2009-2011(66%), which indicates that lack of environmental data is still the significant barrier for Asian SAIs. In addition, lacking of professional skills is also the challenges that more than half of the SAIs (62%) are facing.

In terms of tackling the challenges, it appears that majority of SAIs (77%) marked training SAI staff. Participating in the seminars and meetings organized by INTOSAI WGEA and regional working groups is  most welcomed for the training on environmental auditing..

4 The SAIs focus on improving the effects of environment auditing, tracking implementation of audit recommendations, and communicate the results of environmental audits through various methods.

The responded SAIs pay significant attention to improving the effect of environmental auditing, and 85% consider that releasing environmental auditing results, cooperating with Environment Protection Department and tracing audit rectification are conductive to improve the effect of environmental auditing. More than half of the SAIs noted Follow-up audit (62%) and Follow-up survey (54%) in tracking the implementation of audit recommendations. As for the disseminating the results of EA, 85% of the respondents distribute a printed version of audit report, which is much higher than the proportion (46%) of publishing auditing report online.

 

III. Cooperative environmental audit on Mekong River Basin  successfully completed

Cooperative environmental audit of the Mekong River Basin Management, which is under the cooperation framework of ASOSAI and GIZ, aims to improve the capacity of Southeast Asian SAIs in carrying out environmental auditing, in particular water environmental auditing. The SAIs of five Southeast Asian countries, namely, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Myanmar and Cambodia, collaborated in the auditing, with SAIs of Indonesia and Malaysia as observers and SAI of China sending subject matter expert to provide technical guidance. In March 2013, the workshop held the third meeting to summarize the outcomes of cooperative auditing projects.

 

IV. Further the cooperation between INTOSAI WGEA and other regional WGEAs 

In June 2013, CNAO , representing ASOSAI WGEA attended the 15th INTOSAI WGEA Meeting held in Talin Estonia and reported developments and activities of ASOSAI WGEA to the meeting. An ASOSAI WGEA regional meeting was also held in the course of the INTOSAI WGEA Meeting. Eerlier this month, two representatvies of ASOSAI WGEA participated in the 13th Meeting of the Steering Committee of INTOSAI WGEA held in Indonesia. They also delivered a presentation about ASOSAI WGEA. And the ASOSAI WGEA Secretariat values its communication with other regional WGEAs and invited them to ASOSAI WGEA activities and seminars.

At this meeting today, we are pleased to have with us participants from Indonesia representing INTOSAI WGEA and participants from Cameroon representing AFROSAI WGEA. I now ask you to join me to extend a welcome to these participants with a warm applause.

 

V. Steps forward

1Implement the 2014-2016 work plan of ASOSAI WGEA, encourage Asian SAIs to pursue the practice and research on environmental auditing, to carry out survey and practice on relative fields of environmental auditing, and establish effective contact mechanism inside the working group.

2Continue to strengthen the communication and cooperation with INTOSAI WGEA and regional working group on environmental auditing, enhance the efforts in information exchanging and sharing on environmental auditing, conducting cooperative environmental auditing and training, to facilitate the development of environmental auditing in Asia.

Thank you!