Dear colleagues,

When we enter a new year we always tend to reflect on certain more or less fundamental issues for ourselves, for our families, but also about our work and other things we try to achieve. Now we are on the brink of not only a new year, a new century, but also a new millennium. The past century has seen an accumulation of environmental problems, but recently at the end of the century also of the awareness that something has to be done and can be done to reverse the trend.

For us as members of the INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing, we should reflect on how to make a contribution to further reversing the trend now that we enter the new millennium. It seems to me that the best thing we can do is to stimulate that as many other SAIs as possible become interested in environmental auditing, and to show how it can be done. In 1998, in Peru and Uruguay the strategy of regionalisation was adopted. The implementation of this strategy began in 1999. Almost all INTOSAI-regions started up a regional working group on environmental auditing, which is already a monumental achievement. Now, at the start of the new year the time has come to further encourage this process. Within the regions we have to investigate what steps can be taken in order to stimulate other SAIs to engage in environmental auditing. Our meeting in Cape Town, april 2000, will be a very good opportunity indeed to exchange ideas and views on this subject.

I wish you all the very best, good health and a sparkling future!!

Saskia J. Stuiveling

The Sixth meeting of the Intosai Working Group on Environmental Auditing, from 10 to 12 April 2000, will be held in Cape Town, South Africa. At this stage only a preliminary program is ready. We have enclosed this program here to give you an idea of what can be expected.

As said, the programme is preliminary. Possible topics for the working sessions on the agenda are:

- The Minutes of the Fifth Meeting of the Working Group (Peru);

- Discussion on the structure of the Working Group after the INCOSAI meeting in Seoul in 2001;

- Organisational aspects of regionalisation strategy per region;

- 'Poster'- session state of the art in Environmental Auditing;

- Report 'Guidelines on conducting audits with an environmental perspective';

- Draft report 'Sustainable development';

- International Environmental Accords

- Third Questionnaire

- Homepage and Green Lines.

In order to the prepare the substantive part of the programme, the Chair has initiated a number of activities by sending you some documents, accompanied by a number of questions. If you haven't responded to one of the items you see listed below, we kindly ask you to do so as soon as possible.

* The ASOSAI regional working group on environmental auditing is formed. A start-up team was created, with the SAI of the Republic of South Korea as coordinator, and the SAIs of Japan and India as members. A first meeting has taken place in Seoul, December 6-7, 1999.

* A New Subco-ordinators meeting is planned to take place in Bukarest, Romania, february 2000

The SAI of Poland acts as the co-ordinator in forming a Eurosai Working Group on Environmental Auditing. A meeting with the European subco-ordinators will be held to gear the strategy and activities in Europe in the same direction. Also preparations will be made for the Working Group meeting in Cape Town.

* The SAI of Poland has initiated a concurrent compliance audit of the Helsinki Convention. All Baltic States and the Czech Republic will participate.

* The Law on organization and functioning of the Romanian Court of Audit has been amended, permitting control on "formation, utilization and administration of the financial resources regarding the environment protection, improvement of quality of living and working conditions". As a result, a first audit on "Compliance with the Convention on coorperation for the protection and sustainable development of the Danube" has been planned.

In mid-October 1999, the first draft of the third INTOSAI questionnaire on environmental auditing was sent out for comments to the Working Group members. Seventeen SAIs reacted. All reactions were positive and some additional questions and small changes were proposed. Suggestions were incorporated in the final version as much as possible. The information that will be gathered, will provide a good base for an interesting survey. The longitudinal data will allow us to track the evolution of environmental auditing by SAIs over a period of 9 years.

Looking to the evolution of the questionnaire itself, it is interesting to see the growing influence of INTERNET and email: notice the contents of the questionnaire and the growing use of email during the preparations. At the moment the questionnaire is finalised and the translation is nearly finished. We are grateful to the SAIs of Canada, Peru, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for their support in this respect. Within a few weeks the questionnaire will be sent to all INTOSAI members. Of course Working Group members will receive a copy at the same time. We hope for a high response.

This website provides detailed information on what you can expect in The Hague, an overview of how the Vision process has developed and useful information on how to register for the Forum yourself. You can also contact the Project Secretariat of the second world water forum & ministerial conference: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DML/PS Postbus 20061, 2500 EB The Hague, The Netherlands

New on the homepage <www.rekenkamer.nl/ea > is:

- This new Green Lines

- The Austrian Rechnungshof has nominated Dr. Heinrich Lang as a deputy for Dr. Helmut Berger, who is the member of the Intosai Working Group;

- The field of Environmental Auditing in the European Court of Auditors was handed over to a new section. The responsible member of the Court is Mr. Francois Collin. The activities of Mr. Klaus Werner will be taken over by Mr. Henrik Fehr. Mr. Werner would like to take this opportunity to thank all the colleagues in the working group for the fruitful and successful collaboration in the last years.

- The email address of the Contraloria General de la Republica del Paraguay is: cgr@pla.net.py

- Mr. Marek Mroczkowski, assistant to Vice President Mr. Wesolowski of the Supreme Audit Institution of Poland was nominated by the Polish Prime Minister to the post of Director General of the Chief Inspection for Environment Protection of the Republic of Poland.

- the SAI of Costa Rica can best be reached via the following email address: inforcgr@cgr.go.cr

Mr. J. Augusting Torres can also be reached at his personal email: jtorres@inforcgr.go.cr

The secretariat of the Chair of the working group had some communication problems with certain SAIs. Sometimes the email address does not work, in other cases the fax address seems to have changed. For certain SAIs we do not have a working email address or fax address at all. We would like to ask those SAI's who receive this Green Lines NOT by email or fax, but only by normal mail, to let us know their correct email and/or fax address. This will enable us to speed up communication with those SAIs considerably.

Furthermore, the secratariat has the following request to all representatives: We would like to ask you to communicate to us as much as possible in English. English is the official language of the Working Group.

Email addresses representatives

Please let us know if the list is incorrect or incomplete.

Note: new members: please let us know your e-mail address; we will include it in the next number of the Green Lines.