Business has a significant leadership role “and it is accelerating by virtue of the fact that climate change is itself accelerating,” said Jonathon Porritt, Environmentalist and Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, and a key speaker at 2019’s Internal Audit Conference.

Talking about climate change, Porritt said “these risks are real, they are substantive, they are already impacting on the success and failure of companies and it will get worse.”

In a powerfully positive speech, Porritt told delegates that “we have solutions to all of these climate related problems…but it means an unprecedented set of interventions by governments, investors, businesses and citizens.”

Porritt supports the view advocated by Mark Carney, now UN special envoy on climate action, that directors across all sectors must be “carbon literate” in order to be effective.

He demanded that internal auditors be familiar climate science and informed of the trends, risks (both physical and transitional) and reporting requirements necessitated by climate change.

Sharing his years of passion for climate activism, Porritt provided many linkages into the role and activities of internal audit and challenged delegates to think about their audit scopes.

“You can define them narrowly or much more expansively, to bring in a really serious set of responsibilities around wider societal and environmental risks” said Porritt.…