The meeting was held in a hybrid format – some participants attended the meeting in person, others on a remote basis. The conference dealt with environmental protection in turbulent times, audits of funds spent to counteract climate changes and make the economy climate-neutral.
In 2020, NIK took charge of the EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing for 2020-2024. This Group associates over 40 European SAIs.
2022 has been yet another year when the climate change consequences have been more and more noticeable for everyone. No continent has been left unaffected by extreme weather disasters: from floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, drought in Somalia, heat waves in Europe, devastating bush fires in Australia to hurricanes in the United States. Bearing in mind that all of the above-mentioned disasters were caused by the temperature rise by just 1 degree Celsius, we may only expect further deterioration of the weather conditions in future. Poland has also been strongly affected by heats and low water level. In summer this year we had a human-caused ecological disaster – contamination of the Odra River which resulted in the death of 250 tonnes of fish, caused by long-term negligence of many institutions responsible for the management of Polish rivers.
NIK’s Department of Environment audits the way of performing tasks aimed at preventing the contamination of waters with nitrogen compounds from agricultural sources and permanent reduction of the Odra River contamination.
Apart from the performance audit of the Odra River protection, since 2009 NIK has conducted annual audits of financial reports of projects dealing with flood protection in the Odra River basin.
Due to the ecological disaster of the Odra River, this year NIK President invited the SAIs of Czech Republic and Germany to join that audit to make sure guarantee its results are fully credible.
In May this year, the EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing published results of the joint audit of plastic waste management. That was a parallel audit carried out by 12 SAIs in 2020-2021. Joint Report on Management of Plastic Waste in Europe
During the meeting in Warsaw, results of recent audits conducted by European SAIs were discussed. The audits were to answer the question how the transparency of spending affected the counteracting of climate changes and implementation of sustainable development goals, adaptation of the economy, subsidising of various sectors which have an adverse impact on the environment, coastal protection, greenhouse gas reduction and the vision of Europe in 2050. A representative of the European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology strongly highlighted the key role of Supreme Audit Institutions in developing standards of environmental protection and shaping the state policy in that area. Also, the education system needs to be changed to include the current knowledge of the climate condition, water deficit, consequences of the lack of response to global warming.
