On 13-16 March 2023 NIK President NIK Marian Banaś took part in the 19th meeting of the Steering Committee of INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing. The meeting was organised by the Court of Auditors of the Kingdom of Morocco. Over 40 individuals from 20 countries representing all delegates to the Steering Committee took part in the event.
The meeting was opened by Sami Yläoutinen, PhD, Auditor General of Finland and Chair of the INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing (WGEA) and Zineb El Adaoui, First President of the Court of Auditors of the Kingdom of Morocco. They both emphasised the vital role of performance audit in the areas of environmental protection and adaptation to climate changes. They said this type of audit may potentially boost societies’ resilience to climate changes or disturbed power supplies.
During the meeting dedicated teams worked on five projects implemented by the INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing. One of them was to increase awareness and understanding for the link between biodiversity and climate changes. Another project was dedicated to the so-called environmental accounting, i.e. a statistical system combining information on the economy and environment. The project was to establish interlinkage between environmental protection, climate changes and economy. The subgroup dealing with this project agreed upon the methodology and the schedule for the manual preparation. Taking into account expectations of individual SAIs the subgroup is going to make a survey. Its results will serve as the basis to create reporting standards on environmental resources and results of the budget outlays. The subgroup on green fiscal policy tools agreed upon initial action plan and the first steps to pursue its objectives by 2025 (trainings and webinars as well as the checklist with audit criteria, audit questions and to-date experiences of SAIs). The two remaining projects dealt with: reporting on sustainable development and the ClimateScanner project aiming to gather information on activities related to climate changes at the global level.
NIK President Marian Banaś is the Chair of EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing. (WGEA). The last meeting of this group was held on 29-30 November 2022 and the meeting outcomes are available on WGEA’s website. This group is to promote the spirit of cooperation based on transparency, open communication and professional development. It is achieved by pursuing main strategic goals: encouraging and supporting professional cooperation and enabling knowledge and experience sharing. Under the charge of NIK, WGEA conducted joint audit on plastic waste management. The joint report was published in April 2022 (Joint Report on Management of Plastic Waste in Europe). The nearest WGEA meeting will deal with actions taken so far to adapt to climate changes.
NIK regularly conducts audits on environmental protection. The most recent one was dedicated to prevention of fires in waste dumps. For 2023 NIK has, among others, scheduled audits on: measures taken by the public administration bodies to prevent waste production and ensure recycling as well efforts to provide good water condition in Poland.
