How Supreme Audit Institutions can contribute in evaluating environmental policies and objectives through environmental auditing

Presenter: Camilla C. Fredriksen, EUROSAI WGEA Secretariat

The role of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAls) is to conduct independent audits of governments’ activities. These assessments provide the national parliaments with objective information to help them examine their government’s public spending and performance. In the last 20 years there has been an increasing concern that public and private organizations should be held accountable for their actions that affect the environment. In environmental auditing, SAls around the world are holding federal bodies to account for their environmental performance assessing the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the adopted environmental policies.

The EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing (EUROSAI WGEA) is a regional umbrella organization for Supreme Audit Institutions working with environmental auditing. The aim of the working group is to contribute to increasing the SAls’ capacity in auditing governmental environmental policies, to promote cooperation and to exchange knowledge and experiences between SAls in this field.

This presentation addresses the basic aspects of the work ofthe WGEA community. It seeks to introduce the vast array of environmental topics that SAIs can address within their mandates, but also reflects on the limitations they face compared to other evaluators. Further the presentation will reflect on the role that environmental auditors have in the evaluation community, and what the impacts of environmental auditing are and can be. The presentation also addresses the methodology of environmental auditing, touching upon inventive methods used, as well as challenges related to methodology in auditing. It will also cover reoccurring audit findings within the field, related to sustainable development and governance of the environmental policy area.