ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

AFROSAI WGEA that we represent this day is honored by the invitation that was sent by the President of ASOSAI WGEA to take part in the 5th ASOSAI WGEA’s Seminar on environmental auditing.

Also, let us convey the thanks of AFROSAI WGEA’s President, who is also Head of Cameroon’s SAI, Mr. Henri EYEBE AYISSI, towards ASOSAI WGEA for this mark of friendship and the spirit of cooperation between the two Working Groups whose common aim is to develop environmental auditing in Africa and Asia. 

AFROSAI WGEA’s Delegation is also thankful to the SAI of Vietnam for its hospitality and for all the attention we enjoy since our arrival here in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam.

Having said so, we are also honored that for this forum, which involves the exchange of experiences and good practices in environmental auditing, AFROSAI WGEA was asked to make a presentation on environmental auditing practices and experience in Africa. 

To this end, our discussion will focus on four major elements: 
a brief presentation of AFROSAI WGEA; African experience in environmental auditing; good practices developed by African SAIs in this area and finally prospects for environmental auditing in Africa.

1. PRESENTATION OF AFROSAI WGEA

 
Established in 2000, AFROSAI WGEA is responsible for the development and improvement of tools and techniques of environmental auditing on behalf of Supreme Audit Institutions of in Africa.

AFROSAI WGEA has eighteen (18) SAIs as members from the three (03) Language Subgroups of AFROSAI that are: AFROSAI-F or CREFIAF (Francophone), AFROSAI-E (Anglophone) and AFROSAI-A (Arabic). If several African SAIs are already interested in environmental auditing, the vast majority still do not seem not practice environmental auditing.

The Working Group serves as a framework that facilitates and federates the reflection of African SAIs on all environmental audit issues in order to provide sustainable, adequate, relevant and efficient solutions, as well as high impact on environmental auditing.

Since June 2013, in the wake of the second annual meeting of AFROSAI-WGEA and the 15th Annual Meeting of INTOSAI WGEA, the SAI of Cameroon holds the Presidency of the Working Group for a three (03) year renewable term, taking office from the SAI of Tanzania. 

For the current period, AFROSAI WGEA has developed a vision that will guide the implementation of its current work plan (from 2014 to 2016) and that should lead it to become a Working Group that: 

§ meets the expectations of its members and delivers them relevant and useful products;

§ contributes substantially to increase the interest of SAIs to activities and issues related to environmental auditing;

§ promotes and facilitates knowledge sharing and the fruitful practice and experiences sharing among member SAIs ;

§ is managed according to procedures and regulations aimed at increasing its effectiveness.

To this end, the planned projects or activities of the current work plan are grouped into three main priorities:

§ training;

§ research projects and cooperative audits;

§ communication.

2. AFRICAN EXPERIENCE IN RELATION TO ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING

In the last decade, environmental auditing has made remarkable progress in Africa. First adopted by SAIs of the Anglophone Subgroup (AFROSAI-E), environmental auditing is becoming more established within the continent.

Several SAIs have developed new tools and improved existing audit tools, to increase the competence of their auditors and allow African SAIs deliver relevant products, in line with the African context. We can mention in this domain:

§ the development of Guidelines for the audit of medical waste in 2002 in AFROSAI-E;

§ the consolidation of Guidelines on regularity audits on an environmental object 2009 within AFROSAI-E;

§ the development of the Guidelines on Performance Audit of Government responses to environmental problems;

§ the development of Guidelines for the audit of environmental impact assessments in 2013,

§ the ongoing development of Guidelines on the audit of the management of electronic waste;

§ the ongoing development of Guidelines on the management of landfills sites.

 
Furthermore, African SAIs are conducting, whether individually or cooperatively, more environmental audits on a variety of topics that are of concern to populations or that have high environmental risks. Individually, the following audits may be cited :

§ Botswana has led an audit of the implementation of the UN Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, given the vulnerability of the country to the impact of those changes;

§ Libya has also conducted an audit on the environmental effects of the production of oil on water in the South-eastern region of Libya ;

§ Zambia conducted an environmental audit on the management of biodiversity in relation to tourism because tourism is the cornerstone of the economy of this country.

Cooperative audits are also popular within African SAIs in recent years. The relevant cases include:

§ the environmental audit of waste in five African countries, with the support of the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) ;

§ joint environmental audit of fisheries in Lake Victoria, which involved three SAIs : Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in 2010;

§ joint audit of the drying up of Lake Chad, currently being finalized. This audit involves four (04) participating SAIs (Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria), assisted by mentors who are environmental audit experts from the SAIs of Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, Belgium and the Canadian Comprehensive Audit Foundation. 

In addition to audits and tools, African SAIs have regularly participated in the INTOSAI WGEA’s surveys to share the African experience with the whole community on environmental audit issues.  

From what has been said, it appears clearly that African experience in environmental auditing is in growing progressively and inspires optimism, especially when one considers the lessons learned or the good practices developed.

3. SOME MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT PRACTICES IN AFRICAN SAIs 

By conducting regular environmental audits, African SAIs have developed practices that can be share or inspire others:

 
3.1. The practice of cooperative audits

 
The most critical environmental issues affecting Africa generally cover more than a single Country or involve the use by several Countries of a unique natural resource. As such several SAIs face the same audit challenges at the same time. In addition, African SAIs are more conscious of their needs in environmental auditing. So they look for any relevant opportunity to ensure capacity building. So for them, cooperative audits are more advantageous in that they can both ensure the training of auditors, implementation of acquired knowledge through audit works and the sharing of experiences and practices between SAIs.

 

3.2. The exchange of experiences through mentoring

 
It is an approach to sharing experiences and best practices between SAIs whereby an SAI that has an established practice of environmental auditing assists and monitor the audit works of new comer in this domain. The mentor serves both as a trainer and an auditor, to the extent that he helps to ensure the quality of audit results by monitoring audit works. In Africa, this practice is also greatly appreciated by SAIs because of its efficient nature. 

The case of the joint audit on the drying up of Lake Chad serves as an example for what has been said.

 

3.3. Case of the audit of Lake Chad

 
The motivation of this audit lies in the fact that Lake Chad, one of the single freshwater lake in Sahelian and arid zones, is consistently drying up. Covering an area of ​​25,000 km2 in 1970, around which a population of seven million people lived, it is now barely 2,500 km2 while nourishing a population of over 35 million people in 2013. At this rate, its death is certain if nothing is done. Furthermore it is expected that, if this trend continues, economic, social and political consequences, in this unstable and poverty rife area, will deteriorate. These reasons coupled with the risk analysis drawn from the management choices and practices in relation to this natural resource, which involves national agencies of each riparian country and an international transboundary basin body agency (the Lake Chad Basin Commission), motivated the conduct of this audit assignment. 
 
The objective of the audit is to verify that the partner States have actually implemented the practices and systems of monitoring and control to ensure the sustainable use / management of water resources in the Lake Chad basin.  Four lines of inquiry were chosen:

§ the existence and implementation of measures to control waters level of the Lake Chad basin;

§ the establishment of systems to enable effective monitoring of water users

§ the application of regulations pertaining to the management of water in the Lake Chad basin;

§ the performance of the basin organism  regarding the sustainable management of water resources of the Lake Chad basin.

The joint audit is limited to inquiries on human activities, and don’t include climate change effects.  In addition, all aspects relating to the quantities of water are examined, but pollution and other water quality issues are excluded. 

The audit methodology was common to all participating SAIs. At the administrative level of each SAI, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the SAIs to allow the exchange of information. Participating SAIs have been selected auditors to conduct the audit, according to their national procedures. After their selection, these auditors constituted both an audit team at national levels for investigations to be carried out in each Country, and a consolidated team, regardless of the participating SAIs, under the coordination of the SAI of Chad.

 
The joint team planned all the audit work during meetings coupled with training and capacity building sessions on issues affecting the environmental audit or management of transboundary water resources.

 
The collection and analysis of data and evidence were conducted in each country by its own auditors, under the guidance of a national Scientist whose role was to support, through his/her scientific expertise, investigations carried out by the auditors, without replacing them in any way in the actual performing of the audit assignment.

 
After data collection and analysis, results were examined by the entire joint team, which also jointly conducted audit works at the Lake Chad Basin Commission’s headquarters. The drafting of national reports and the Joint Report are still ongoing. 

Throughout the process, the auditors of each SAI benefited from the technical and methodological assistance of an expert in environment audit, a mentor. The mentor also had the role of ensuring the quality of audit products, through the review of audit works and documents. Mentors came from the SAIs of Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco and Belgium, and the Canadian Comprehensive Audit Foundation. 

This audit project equally has logistical and financial support of the German cooperation through GIZ.

In summary, the joint audit of Lake Chad is both:

§ a framework for auditor’s training in environmental auditing, on the model of "learning and doing immediately";

§ a forum to exchange experiences and good auditing practices among African, European and American SAIs;

§ an example of the use of scientific experts in environmental auditing; 

§ an inclusive work experience involving auditors of different nationalities, languages, practices and audit approaches.

4. PROSPECTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING IN AFRICA
Prospects for environmental auditing in Africa are contained in the AFROSAI WGEA’s Work Plan, which has focused its action over the next three years (2014-2016) on three (03) main axes: 

§ training and continuous sensitization of SAIs in environmental auditing, in order to capture their  interest to the practice of environmental auditing and enhance the capabilities of auditors in this domain;

§ execution of project studies and cooperative audits whose purpose is to promote the practice of environmental audits by SAIs, the exchange of experiences and best practices between SAIs that have more experience and those that are beginners in the domain. The projected cooperative audits are : the audit of the Congo Basin forest and the audit of the River Nile;

§ dynamic communication among AFROSAI WGEA members and to all other partners, in order to improve the dissemination and visibility of African environmental auditing products.

This is, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, the experience and practices in environmental auditing African SAIs can share with you. 
Thank you for your kind attention!