Climate action changes - How best to evidence this in an audit.

In support of the ISO London Declaration on Climate Change, ISO passed a resolution that will result in two new statements of text being added to a number of existing management systems standards, and will be included in all new standards under development/revision, to address the need to consider the effect of Climate Change on the ability to achieve the intended results of the management system. The changes will be introduced initially as Amendments to these published standards.

The changes (two new statements) will be incorporated into the new text of the Harmonized Structure (Appendix 2 of the Annex SL in the ISO/IEC Directives Part 1 Consolidated ISO Supplement) as follows.

The amendments to the standards were published in February 2024.

4.1 Understanding the organization and its context. The organization shall determine external and internal issues that are relevant to its purpose and that affect its ability to achieve the intended result(s) of its XXX management system.

Added: The organization shall determine whether climate change is a relevant issue.

4.2 Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties. The organization shall determine:

• the interested parties that are relevant to the XXX management system.

• the relevant requirements of these interested parties.

• which of these requirements will be addressed through the XXX management system.

Added: NOTE: Relevant interested parties can have requirements related to climate change.

First lets remind ourselves of the verbal forms e.g. "shall" indicates a requirement Information marked as “Note” is for guidance in understanding or clarifying the associated requirement; in this context, if we focus on 4.1 as it is an explicit requirement.

Typical tools an techniques used to capture 'issues' are SWOT and or PESTEL analysis; if used these should be revisited as an input to risk identification.

Note: Risks then may or may not then be exploited for opportunities.

Work through your risks from a strategic, tactical, then operation level; regardless of size, materiality assessments are a good way of generating objective evidence; anything to do with ESG would also be great as evidence.