Government ‘treading water’ on climate crisis, state comptroller warns
The State Comptroller on Thursday called for “coordinated, reality-changing government action” on climate change, and announced he would issue a second follow-up report this year on a damning document he published in 2021.
Matanyahu Englman told a closed meeting of the President’s Climate Forum that the government’s response to the climate crisis was “treading water” and suffered from “several fundamental weaknesses.”
According to a press readout, he said some climate changes were already being felt in Israel and overseas, in fires, extreme heatwaves, torrential rains and storms, floods, droughts, and other causes of loss of life and property.
State preparation was key to a national strategy for strengthening public resilience and preparing for multi-risk crises, he went on.
Englman, who recently took over as president of EUROSAI – the European Organization of State Auditors, issued his first highly critical report in 2021, just ahead of the UN’s annual climate meet in Glasgow, Scotland.
In July, he published a follow-up report, finding that just one in four policy steps stemming from a government decision to reduce global warming gases and air pollution had been implemented.
Speaking about the latter, he told the meeting, “The follow-up audit report published in 2024 once again revealed a worrying picture. Although some bodies have corrected deficiencies, most of them have not been corrected at all or have not been fully corrected.”
“A coordinated, reality-changing government action is required,” he said, adding that with global warming in Israel proceeding faster than the global average, the country’s economy, society and security were likely to be impacted.
“The State Comptroller’s reports on the climate issue should be seen as another red flag for the government and the prime minister,” he said.
The government faced risk management questions and needed to chart a path to a net-zero carbon economy (where removals from the atmosphere balance emissions), green growth and a transition to green energy, he continued. It also had to prepare well for the risks arising from climate change to humans, infrastructure and nature.
Englman said his office placed “special emphasis” on audits dealing with sustainability, climate and the environment, and was committed to monitoring the state’s handling of the issues.
He added that his office would also be issuing a report on the efforts of local government to prepare for climate change.
At around the same time as Englman published his first report, President Isaac Herzog established his climate forum, chaired by veteran environmental activist and former Hadash MK Dov Khenin.
Herzog told Thursday’s confab, “The idea behind establishing the Climate Forum was to bring together all the parties involved in this field: the government sector, civil society, and economic and industrial actors. The forum produces exceptional outputs with very effective committees. For example, the issue of food security, which is a clear derivative of the climate issue, is gaining significant momentum here.”
He added, “I constantly warn that this coming summer could be a summer of enormous natural disasters because the annual amount of precipitation in most places has not exceeded 50 percent. Yesterday I was in Tiberias (in northern Israel) and for the first time in 100 years the Sea of Galilee fell in the winter, it’s unimaginable.”
“And this is exactly the problem I’m trying to explain to the citizens of Israel. In the end, it concerns them. Elected officials need to understand that it concerns them and their children. The world is undergoing significant ecological changes.”
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