Audit snapshot
What we reviewed and why
Climate change is a known risk that could have catastrophic economic and social consequences and could impact the SA Government’s ability to meet its objectives.
We reviewed six public authorities (agencies) to form a view on the effectiveness of arrangements in place across the SA Government for managing climate change risk. We also reviewed the central coordination of climate change risk management across the SA Government.
Effective climate change risk management practices are essential to ensuring the SA Government has the best understanding of the State’s exposure to climate change risks and their consequences, and can help it to:
- build climate resilience
- prioritise appropriate responses to risks and optimise the use of resources
- reduce the costs of maintaining and upgrading key infrastructure assets.
What we concluded
Government agencies recognise the importance of managing climate change risk and act on climate change impacts across a broad range of their operations. Various initiatives to respond to climate change are in place or planned by both individual agencies and at the whole-of-government level.
As government agencies are mostly in the early stages of adopting climate change risk management practices, key elements of good practice were either still being developed or not yet implemented. Because of this, we concluded that there is still much to do before the SA Government can demonstrate effective climate change risk management.
Effective central coordination and monitoring is critical to establishing sound climate change risk management arrangements. The SA Government needs to resolve which central agencies will have this role.
Key facts
