The President of the Brazilian Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) and Chair of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), Minister Bruno Dantas, gave an opening speech at the 26th UN/INTOSAI Symposium on the morning of April 16, in Vienna, Austria. Dantas focused his speech on the importance of dealing with climate change, stressing that the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 13 highlights the urgency of combating the causes of these changes and mitigating their impacts.  

In this context, the minister emphasized the importance of the role of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) in assessing public policies designed to combat these effects and in supervising public resources used for this purpose.  

The president stressed the importance of ClimateScanner, a project conceived by the TCU with the support of INTOSAI's Working Group on Environmental Auditing. The initiative will provide SAIs with a tool to conduct a global assessment of government actions against climate change and its consequences.     

The data collected by the tool, explained Dantas, will allow the identification of governments' main challenges and achievements in this field. This national data will be used in a consolidated global web dashboard. 

According to the minister, so far, about 70 audit institutions have committed to using the tool this year - many of them during the technical meeting on ClimateScanner, held at UN headquarters in New York in March. 

"ClimateScanner will generate and communicate clear and relevant information to society. The initial results will be showcased at COP29 in Azerbaijan this November. Let me reiterate the invitation: you can still join the project. Our goal is to have at least 100 countries in this collective effort," said Dantas.

The symposium was also attended by INTOSAI Secretary General, Margit Kraker, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Li Junhua, and Heads of SAIs, among other authorities.

Key takeaways and insights from ClimateScanner 

On April 17, Dantas discussed the topic "Favorable conditions for auditing climate action". During the panel, the minister reaffirmed the importance of the role of audit institutions in assessing public policies for addressing climate change and said that it was a common aspiration of this group that all INTOSAI members achieve institutional and technical conditions to deliver the best results to the population. 

The president listed the lessons TCU learned while designing the ClimateScanner project and shared some insights for the future. 

He stressed that, based on the data collected through a global survey conducted in 2023 on the experience of SAIs in audits related to climate change, just under 50% of respondents (50 out of 104) claimed to have carried out at least one audit focused on the subject in the last five years. 

Dantas reported that the survey revealed that the main challenges for SAIs in conducting climate change audits are: lack of experience in applying specific criteria, insufficient data, difficulty in accessing relevant and reliable data, and lack of indicators to measure the effectiveness of relevant public policies.   

These and other results were the basis for the creation of the ClimateScanner assessment methodology, which consists of 19 components under three key topics: governance, climate finance, and public policies. To improve the methodology, the TCU relied on technical support from external partners such as the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). 

Dantas reported that training workshops are being planned for all regions where INTOSAI operates. The first two workshops will take place, respectively, in Mexico City, for the General Assembly of the Organization of Latin American and Caribbean of Supreme Audit Institutions (OLACEFS), next week, and in Prague, for the European Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (EUROSAI), in June.     

TCU has been working to expand the international presence of SAIs and strengthen INTOSAI's global voice, one of the priorities of Brazil's mandate (2022-2025) in the organization.

INTOSAI's conclusions and recommendations

On April 18, the last day of the meeting, INTOSAI released a statement on the implementation of SDG 13 on climate issues, addressing the role, contribution, and experience of SAIs in this area. 

According to the document, the symposium participants discussed how SAIs conducting independent audits on climate change policies contribute to strengthening climate action.  

The statement also contains 22 recommendations for Supreme Audit Institutions on the subject, including recognition, in UN Resolutions, of the important role of SAIs in promoting greater efficiency, accountability, effectiveness, and transparency in public administration and the use of public funds.

It also recognized that climate change is one of the most urgent and complex issues faced by national governments today, with significant risks to public budgets, and that SAIs play a pivotal role in developing comprehensive sustainability reporting standards in support of cost-effective and impactful national initiatives.