Municipal environmental audit is an environmental management tool designed especially for Baltic Cities.

Municipal environmental audit (MEA) is a tool the UBC Environment and Agenda 21 Secretariat developed to meet the needs of UBC member cities concerning environmental management. Many cities considered ISO and EMAS methods too heavy and expensive for their and hoped for a lighter version of an environmental audit.

MEA is meant to help cities to analyse the status of their environment and the quality of their environmental management. It enables cities to identify their environmental strengths and weaknesses and thus facilitates the process of developing a solid environmental strategy for the future.

MEA can also serve as an inspiration for investments and development projects and help in directing limited resources in the most productive targets.

In practice municipal environmental audit is carried out in co-operation between local and external experts of environmental auditing. They gather and analyze the relevant information and submit a report on their findings. In the following we present different stages of MEA, more detailed information is available in publications “A brief introduction to MEA” and “MEA workbook”.

Usually MEA is conducted by external experts from a twin city and the process starts with identifying a suitable twin city. Information on the audit should be disseminated to municipal officials and public. Other things to consider are the targeting of the audit, choosing the audit team and planning a time-schedule for the audit.

The target of the audit can be divided into environmental review covering the current state of the local environment and review of environmental performance covering environmental policy and administrative structures of the city. Members of the audit team should be familiar with the laws, regulations and permits as well as municipal policies and procedures applicable to municipal environmental issues.

Some of the relevant data is often readily available in municipal reports on the state of the environment that most municipalities compile every year. This material is particularly useful for conducting the environmental review.

Review of environmental performance requires a very different approach. The data do not always exist and it has to be acquired mostly through interviews. This means making contact with the operating units in order to obtain insight into concerning subject areas detected in the environmental review.

When the data has been collected it has to be analysed to expose the strenghts and weaknesses of the environmental management. The analysis should also pay special attention to the reliability of environmental monitoring systems. At this stage of the audit each auditor analyses the material collected from his or her own area of expertice. The results are then compiled into an overall report on the environmental performance of the municipality.

First the audit team prepares a draft report as soon after the audit as possible. This report is commented by the city officials. The audit team then considers if some of the comments are incorporated into the final audit report. The audit report should be clearly state possible shortcomings and contain initiation of corrective actions.

All the findings, suggestions and conclusions from the audit should be published so that both municipal governing bodies and administration and the public are able to familiarize themselves with the results.

After the reporting phase the municipality should produce a statement whose main purpose is to introduce the state of local environment to the public. The statement briefly covers the basis and principles of the audit as well as its main findings.

The last phase of MEA is validation, which means getting the audit evaluated by an external environment organization. This is to ensure that the audit complies with requirements of MEA and adequately covers the relevant issues. An audit cycle should also be set, for most municipalities 3-5 years might be suitable.