WGEA Coordinated International Audit on Climate Change
Report ID: 257
In June 2007, the INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Audit embarked on a coordinated audit because of the economic, social, and environmental significance of governments’ work to address climate change challenges. The project involved 14 SAIs—from developed countries, countries with economies in transition, and developing countries—and included Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
For this project, the SAIs cooperated in the design and undertaking of national audits of their respective governments’ climate change programs and performance. Each SAI undertook one or more audits (in some cases, studies and reviews) in the fields of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and/or climate change adaptation to determine whether their governments were doing what they said they would do. During this period, 10 SAIs of the European Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (EUROSAI), a regional working group of INTOSAI, also undertook joint audit work focused on climate change. The findings of the 33 national audits and the EUROSAI audit work are included in Appendix A and Appendix B, respectively.
The report draws on the findings of the 33 audits of national implementation of climate change programs. It summarizes the key findings from this work and aims to:
• report on whether governments are (or are not) doing what they said they would do;
• encourage governments to take, improve, and/ or strengthen proper and effective actions;
• assist legislatures in holding governments to account;
• inspire other SAIs to undertake audits of climate change and coordinated audits and to help them by raising awareness of appropriate audit techniques; raise awareness of the important role that supreme audit institutions play in bringing accountability to governments that are implementing policies and actions related to greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change adaptation.
Source: WGEA website http://www.environmental‐auditing.org.