4^th WGEA Award - Innovative Practices in Environmental Auditing

The INTOSAI WGEA recently awarded three SAIs for their work on Innovative Practices in Environmental Auditing.

The INTOSAI WGEA Awards, initially launched in 2020 was designed to promote a topical idea or innovation related to environmental auditing and further to increase the visibility of environmental auditing globally. The Award is presented biennially, at the INTOSAI WGEA Assembly.  This is the 4th time we have awarded SAIs and this years’ topic was Innovative Practices in Environmental Auditing.  The Jury, which included Kimberley Leach from SAI Canada, Edward Simanjuntak from SAI Indonesia and Tuuli Rasso from SAI Estonia, sought nominations in two categories this year, as follows: 

I.  Innovative Climate Audit
In this category, the Jury considered nominations on audits that portray innovative methodologies and best practices in climate audit. Additionally, the Jury was also looking for attention to audit impact and innovative use of data visualizations. 

II. Emerging Environmental Issue in Audit
The INTOSAI WGEA as a global working group supports SAIs in auditing a wide range of environmental issues. Innovative methodologies are needed to ensure efficient and credible auditing of these issues. In this category, the jury was looking for nominations that best presented their innovations in an audit on an emerging environmental issue.

The jury received xx nominations from SAIs this year and all of the nominations were for outstanding audits. There was a wide variety of audits nominated which well demonstrated the growing breadth and depth of environmental audit around the globe.  Congratulations to all SAIs nominated.

The Jury awarded winners in each category, as follows:

Category 1 – Innovative environmental audit
SAI Philippines 
for their audit on the National Climate Change Action Plan – Pioneering Multi Level Governance Insights and Data Driven Impact.  

Although all of the nominations were for outstanding audits, the jury agreed that this audit was the best representation of innovation in environmental audit for a number of reasons.  

•    For example, the audit examined climate change adaptation and mitigation policies in multiple jurisdictions thereby looking not only at national level plans and policies but also implementation at the local government level. 
•    In addition to the multiple jurisdiction approach, the audit also emphasized on human security. This is an important innovation in looking at the local impact of plans and policies developed at more senior levels of government. And, by emphasizing human security, the audit placed community well-being at the center or focus of climate accountability. 

•    The audit was able to consider impact on vulnerable populations, hot spot locations, and was able to measure, monitor and verify the implementation of policies at the local level.  It considered vertical integration of these policies and policy coherence, governance, social dimensions, etc.

Congratulations to SAI Philippines on their innovations in environmental audit!

Category 2 – Emerging environmental issue
SAI Tanzania 
for their audit on Management of the Carbon Trade

The audit of carbon trade is a complex matter, and this is clearly an area of emerging interest around the globe where audit can help ensure rules are followed and regimes are robust. There were several audits on this topic nominated in this category.  

Tanzania did an excellent job with their first audit in this area and found that only 4 of 56 carbon trading projects had been implemented and that more awareness and institutional reforms were needed.  Tanzanian SAI used satellite imagery, which was overlaid with project locations to verify reforestation and forest conservation efforts, confirming or disputing reported activities. Spatial mapping of data helped demonstrate where emission reductions occurred geographically. The audit also utilised heatmaps to identify hotspots of deforestation, helping to focus future intervention areas.  It is an excellent audit on an emerging issue.  

Congratulations to SAI Tanzania!
 
And finally, the Jury decided to make a special third award, for a project that spans both of the award categories this year, which we called the Inspiration award.

This was awarded to SAI Brazil for their incredible and inspirational work on the Climate Scanner.  

This project is in a class of its own and has inspired more than 100 SAIs to conduct work to assess their governments’ progress on their plans and commitments related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Not only has this contributed to climate accountability around the globe but is has grown the capacity for all SAIs to continue to hold governments accountable for their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. SAI Brazil and their partners have trained 141 SAIs across 7 regions and have inspired related audit work in an unprecedented manner. Recent innovations include the development of an AI tool to enhance SAI assessments. The Jury agreed that SAI Brazil deserves special recognition and our gratitude for their outstanding work, and we know you all agree.    

Congratulations SAI Brazil and keep up the great work! ClimateScanner

That’s it for this year.  Many thanks to the SAIs who submitted nominations and to all of you doing innovative work in environmental auditing!  

Background

The INTOSAI WGEA Award has been designed to promote a topical idea or innovation related to environmental auditing and further to increase the visibility of environmental auditing globally. The Award is presented biennially, at the INTOSAI WGEA Assembly meeting. The first Award handed over at the 20th Assembly, focused on visualisations. The second one at the 21st Assembly rewarded WGEA participants’ own stories on what the WGEA has meant to them under the slogan “Your WGEA Story”. The 3rd Award was on the topic of “Impactful Environmental Audit,” which focused on presenting audit results inspiringly and using innovative methodologies in auditing.