The Role of Strategic Environmental Auditing in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals An Empirical Study at the General Directorate of Education in Wasit

• Moataz Hisham

  وزارة التربية العراقية

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This study sought to gauge the extent to which strategic environmental auditing is contributing to the implementation of SDGs on the environmental, economic, and social aspects in the General Directorate of Wasit Education and to assess the environmental reality of environmental performance in educational and service-oriented public institutions. The research problem is the lack of strategic environmental auditing mechanisms as a long-term control and planning tool, which results in waste of resources such as energy, paper, and water, and the failure to incorporate environmental dimensions in the policy framework of the directorate.

In order to accomplish these goals, the descriptive-analytical approach was adopted and a validated questionnaire was used as the most important tool to collect field data from administrative leaders and auditing personnel. In total, 99 valid responses were evaluated using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to test hypotheses and extract indicators. The study revealed the statistical significance of the positive correlation and impact of adopting strategic environmental auditing tools with the SDGs, and the coefficient of determination (R^2 = 0.110).

This has made it clear that modern auditing enhances organizational capability to rationalize resource utilization, reduce waste, raise institutional awareness of environmental management and improve occupational health and safety standards. As such, the study suggested integrating strategic environmental auditing into annual inspections, alongside standard financial and administrative audits, making ministerial directives for green initiatives and training auditing staff in the process, and establishing an environmental accounting database with an Environmental Management System (EMS) that connects audit reports to accountability and performance evaluation.

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