China's top auditor has pledged to strengthen environmental audits in a bid to achieve sustainable economic and social development.

Environmental audits are crucial to a timely discovery and prevention of problems or risks in environmental protection, said Liu Jiayi, auditor general of China in an interview.

We will explore a tailored path for Chinese environmental audits and protection.

Liu, head of the China National Audit Office (CNAO), made the remarks on the sidelines of the Working Group on Environmental Auditing (WGEA) meeting under the United Nations that ended last Thursday.

A total of 127 auditing professionals from 57 countries and international organizations gathered in Guilin and discussed using auditing to monitor and promote resources and environmental protection.

The CNAO has been carrying out a national audit of energy conservation and emissions reduction since last October

The audit focuses on whether the fiscal fund earmarked by the central government to upgrade productivity is being properly used, and if local governments and high-polluting industries such as electricity, cement or iron ore, have reached their green targets.

Ahead of the Copenhagen summit last year, China pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of GDP by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 levels, which is considered "a very tough mission" by many domestic scholars.

China is trying to transform its economic development mode into one featuring "less input, less consumption, less emission and high efficiency," and pledges to cut the energy consumption used to generate one unit of GDP by 20 percent and major pollutants emissions by 10 percent between 2006 and 2010.

The central budget earmarked 50 billion yuan in 2010 for a special fund to push for energy conservation and emissions reduction. That total is 20 billion more than 2009's total.

China's environmental audits will scrutinize energy consumption and emissions reduction, especially in water and mine resources, said Ding Yan, deputy director general of the Department for Audits of Agriculture, Resources and Environmental Protection, under the CNAO.

"There was no specialized environmental audit organization in China until 1998, but we have made very big progress these last few years," she said.

The most challenging part is that China's huge population and limited resources could easily lead to overexploitation and pollution, she said.

Since 2000, China has launched several large-scale audits to check the collection, management and utilization of funds for resource and environmental protection projects.

Based on fund tracing, auditors evaluate the projects, the effects, and the government policies, then make suggestions for corrections or improvements.

Ding said they have audited projects including the return of farmland to forests, prevention and control of water pollution of major rivers and lakes, and ecological protection along the Qinghai-Tibet railway.

China is making remarkable progress in environmental protection, Ding said. The energy consumption per unit of GDP has reduced by 14.38 percent from that of 2005, and the forest coverage has grown to 20.36 percent from 13.92 percent in the early 1990s.