Greenlines Newsletter

Fourth meeting in Estonia

Mrs. Saskia J. Stuiveling has set the date of the fourth meeting of the INTOSAI Working Group for the 8th and 9th of September 1997. On the invitation of Mr. Hindrek Meri, Auditor General of the SAI of Estonia, the meeting will be held in Estonia. After consultating Mr. Martin Matthews and Mr. Johan Henry Norvalls, coordinators of respectively a booklet on guidelines, methods and techniques and a booklet on co-ordinated/joint audits, Mrs. Stuiveling decided that a meeting in September would be more convenient than in June.

SAI Colombia reports on Natural resources

Dr. David Turbay Turbay has sent us a report on natural resources by the Contraloria General de la Republica of Colombia, dated July 20th, 1996. The title of this report is "Informe 1995, El Estado de los recursos naturales y del ambiente". The report gives an analysis of the national environmental policy of Columbia and the calculation of environmental values in financial terms by this SAI and is illustrated with several case studies. Ali van der Tempel and Nuria Ringe Jonkhoff will use the report in the preliminary study which they are doing on natural resource accounting.

Audit Standards Egypt

Mr. Salah El Deen Fahmy Abdel informed us that on the 20th of September 1996 the SAI of Egypt issued new Accounting Standards, which were added to the Standardized Accounting System of 1967. The new accounting standards touch indirectly upon environmental issues and were published in Arabic. An English translation will be available in due course.

Booklet on coordinated/joint audits of international treaties

Mr. Wayne Cluskey, Mr. Johan Henry Norvalls and Mr. John Magne Birkeland have met in Canada to discuss the progress of the booklet on co-ordinated or joint audits. Issues which were addressed were definitions, advantages and disadvantages of the different types of audit and roles and responsibilities of SAIs in this matter. In August 1997 a draft version of the booklet will be sent to the Members of the Working Group.

Homepage Working Group

On January 17th we celebrated with green cocktails and a well attended reception, the opening of our own homepage. You can visit the homepage of the Working Group on Environmental Auditing on the INTERNET at <http://www.rekenkamer.nl/ea>. The homepage supplies information on the Working Group in general, the activities of the Working Group, latest news, environmental treaties and relevant general information on environmental auditing . It also contains links to interesting Web sites. Please visit the homepage and give us your comments and additional information.

Database environmental treaties

On the INTERNET you can find a database on environmental treaties. With this database it is possible to make a selection of treaties per country, to get a list of countries which signed a particular treaty, a summary or the full text of the treaties, and much more. This database can be used to the select treaties for auditing or to find audit partners. The address of this website is <http://sedac.ciesin.org/pidb/>. You can also find it via the homepage of the Working Group on Environmental Auditing <http://www.rekenkamer.nl/ea> under the item International Environmental Treaties.

Green Lines by e-mail

Please let us know if you have received this second number of the Green Lines by e-mail and whether you received it in good condition. On the distribution of the first number of the Green Lines by e-mail we received four reactions: two attempts to e-mail were not successful and two messages were received . We would like to receive more reactions.

Deadline extended

The deadline for responding to the questionnaire on environmental auditing has been extended until March 1st 1997. Mrs Sylvia van Leeuwen and Mrs. Nuria Ringe Jonkhoff are processing the data and will soon start analysing them. We are still receiving questionnaires.

Do you have news for the green lines ?

If you encounter information on environmental auditing, which might be interesting to the Working Group members, please inform us and we will include it in the Green Lines.

E-mail addresses

The new or corrected e-mail addresses are marked with an *.

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