ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING

INTRODUCTION

Waste is the most extensive environmental issue and is a subject of global concern. Today, increasing level of waste is an important threat for public health as well as environment and economy for almost each country and policies on prevention and management of waste can not be still deemed as satisfactory. Waste sector is also a subject of underground (unofficial) economy and consequently of fraud and corruption. Accordingly, SAIs are giving more emphasis on defining the most effective policies and instruments to deal with this threat and report shortcomings and mismanagement practices to the parliaments.

Similar with other developing countries, solid waste management is one of the most problematic environmental areas in Turkey. To evaluate the framework of waste management and the effectiveness of its implementation, Turkish Court of Accounts conducted an audit on waste management and reported the results as, “Waste Management in Turkey: Evaluation of National Strategy and Implementation Results”. The reasons for choosing this issue to audit, strategies and methodologies being applied, main results being achieved and the effects of the audit will be reviewed shortly in this paper.

FACTS AND REASONS FOR THE AUDIT

Waste is one of the most problematic environmental areas in Turkey which demands the highest investment rate among environmental issues. Approximately 52 million tons of waste is generated per year. While half of the waste is recyclable, the recycling rate is too low and landfills are neither appropriate nor environmentally safe. Due to rapid urbanisation, landfill areas are getting part of urban life. As the mass of waste increases, the need for new landfills and the need to rehabilitate old landfills increases.

Waste management is a sensitive area to protect both environment and human life. Waste has significant effects on protection of biodiversity, atmosphere, water, climate change etc. For such reasons, efficient and reliable waste management systems are of great importance to society. The issue has also international aspects due to the EU candidateship of Turkey and other international agreements. Success in waste management has key importance to achieve sustainable development targets as well.

Another reason to audit waste management was rapid changes, uncertainties and weaknesses in the area. In last decade, there have been many changes in organisational and legal framework. Numerous laws and regulations introduce diversified roles and responsibilities in the field of waste management and share them among many authorities. Because of new legislation and weak organisational capacity, despite a considerable improvement in some parts, the current situation was still far from the ideal.

THE OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE OF THE AUDIT

The objective of the audit has been determined as;

“To assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the waste management strategy and its instruments; to assess its implementation by responsible institutions and to evaluate the institutional capacity in place to manage waste issues effectively.”

Since it was the first audit on waste management, it has been decided to mainly focus on national strategy. The audit scope specified as “to evaluate the waste management policies and their success in implementation” and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and the Ankara (Capital City) Metropolitan Municipality (which is the second biggest city of Turkey with serious problems regarding waste management) determined as the main actors to be audited.

Main issues decided to evaluate were;

- Existence of a sound national strategy that covers all aspects of waste management,

- The efficiency of waste management systems in practice,

- Adequacy and effectiveness of prevention, monitoring and sanction mechanisms,

- The quality of coordination and cooperation among related organisations.

The audit aimed in general to assist the managers and strategy makers on terms of developing a sound strategy for waste management and to help responsible organisations to set up an effective and efficient process to deal with waste issues to ensure a sustainable environment, a healthy life and a better future for next generations. As a result, the audit has the aim to eventually lead to the efficient and effective use of public resources.

MAIN QUESTION, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGY FOR THE AUDIT

The main question identified for the audit was; “Is the national strategy on waste management put into practice effectively?” and three main criteria related with this question were;

1: There should be an adequate national strategy regarded waste management.

2: There should be an efficient and effective implementation of the waste strategy.

3: There should be an effective and efficient cooperation and coordination between related organizations.

All criteria have been divided into more specific criteria.

The criteria have been derived mostly from European Union regulations, national environmental law and other legislation, national development plans and environmental strategies, best practices and experiences from other countries and scientific reports.

A range of methods to gather evidences has been applied, including reviewing the strategy documents, examining files in the offices, interview with top managers, key and responsible staff and stakeholders, observing the process in some cases, and reviewing an extensive research and literature on the subject.

Specific techniques used during the audit are;

- Reviewing national policy documents such as legislation, national development plans, EU Adaptation Programme, Outputs of the EU Twinning Project

- Reviewing EU Regulations and international organisations’ documents

- Examination of the files of the Ministry and the Municipality

- Observation on three different landfills, two private hospitals and one medical waste treatment area

- Interviews with key and top person in the Ministry and in the Municipality; interviews with academics and NGOs

- Benchmarking with other countries

- Search and reviews on web, literature and other SAIs reports

- Using a reference partner (Professor U. Yetis from the Middle East Technical University)

- Consultation with an expert from SAI of UK for Twinning Project

MAIN AUDIT FINDINGS

Main findings that have been reported are;

- A wide range of arrangements in line with EU regulations that ensure a strong base for a sound waste management exists, but these have mostly not been reflected in implementation

- Repetitions and gaps in sharing roles and responsibilities among different agencies exist, that affect the effectiveness of application process

- Lack of high quality data to formulate and implement waste policies

- Lack of a specific national strategic plan on waste management

· Weak technical and institutional capacity of municipalities, which are the main actors in the area.

- Monitoring and control activities by the Ministry are very limited.

- Financing system does not take into consideration the polluter–pays principle sufficiently, so economical tools are weak to deter pollution and financial sources are inadequate for investments

- Various projects applied with foreign partners aimed to develop waste management systems, are not efficient (duplications and repetitions in studies, outputs mostly composed of simple situation analysis, feasibility studies and some general recommendations, many of them not finalised or implemented), so, many efforts, long time period and other resources had been wasted.

AUDIT RECOMMENDATIONS

Our main recommendations for elimination the negative effects of these findings and setting an effective waste management system are;

· A comprehensive national strategic plan on waste management should be improved and put into practice to lead the implementation.

· Tools to support local authorities by central government should be improved.

· The Ministry (MoEF) should promote its facilities to guide, control and enforce the local authorities and other actors from both public and private sector.

· To increase the number and capacity of sanitary landfills, a national plan should be prepared and put into practice under a concrete programme.

· Waste hierarchy based recommendations (minimising waste, encouraging relevant technologies, effective implementation of fines etc.)

· To improve recycling, waste sector should be encouraged and recycling facilities should be expanded to all provinces.

· Polluter-pays principle should be put into practise effectively and economical tools to financing the investments should be developed.

THE EFFECTS OF THE AUDIT: PROGRESS IN THE FIELD

In general, the audit report made some strong impacts on reorganisation and rearrangement facilities to ensure a more safely and healthy environment and lead to an efficient and effective use of public resources related to waste management. Following the audit, some credible improvements has been made such as;

· A national waste management strategy has been adopted.

· Regulations on waste management have been revised comprehensively (and for some of them, team members were invited as experts to consult officially).

· Related actors have been registered and control activities have increased (i.e. the number of economic operators registered to the system has increased rapidly, from 350 in 2003 to 15.192 in 2012).

· Private companies have been encouraged to develop recycling sector (for example, the number of licensed recycling and recovery facilities has skyrocketed in the last decade. In 2003, there were 46 recycling and recovery facilities for different recyclable waste types, whereas by 2012 the number of licensed facilities increased to 956).

· A plan has been adopted to recover old landfills and to construct new landfills and it is implemented with a satisfactory success.

· Investments of Municipalities are being supported by the Ministry (% 50 of cost for relevant projects).

· Tools for segregation of waste at source have been developed and Municipalities have been enforced by the Ministry for implementation.

· Awareness of the public and institutions is much higher than before.