The State Department is offering new guidance to foreign aid offices on how to assess global warming risks, even as it decides whether to seek repeal of the Obama-era executive order directing it to include climate change in its assessments, according to a new federal watchdog report issued Thursday.
The change marks a reversal, as the Government Accountab
ility Office report said the department had stopped providing any mention of climate change in 2017 guidance documents to mission offices.
The GAO is recommending that the State Department provide guidance to its country mission offices on how to assess the risks posed by climate change in its annual country assessments. The GAO report was assessing how agencies track the effects of climate change on migration.
The State Department said it had no issue with the recommendation made in a draft of the GAO report sent to it in December.
In a letter to the GAO, contained in the report, it explained that it would give its foreign mission offices the “option” to include climate change resilience in its risk assessments for countries.
It will begin providing the climate change option to its mission offices in June, the State Department said in its letter to the GAO.
But it may be all for naught.
The agency also said it would decide whether or not to ask President Trump to repeal the Obama-era executive order that directs the State Department to assess climate change, Executive Order 13677.
President Trump had ordered several executive orders related to climate change to be rescinded in 2017, but left the Order 13677 unchecked that governs the State Department.
