Business today entails a good deal more than selling your products and services to customers. Increasingly companies and organisations are obliged to show sound business management that includes not only profits and a healthy bottom line, but also concern for their environmental impact.
The ISO14001 family of standards and guidelines was born at the Rio Summit in 1992, where it was recognised that international standards and guidelines were needed to measure the environmental management of business. Since Rio, conformity with ISO 14001 has become a requirement for corporate environmental management systems.
Many managers and interest groups have raised questions about the benefits of certified ISO 14001-based environmental management systems. No one involved in environmental governance, however, can deny the positive changes introduced in a world where, for example, all natural resource-related service providers, industries and distributors develop and implement environmental management systems based on ISO 14001 standards.
For some South African companies, conformity has become a requirement for doing business abroad. Obtaining the third party certificate of conformance can be an expensive business. But it is not only the cost implications that may cause some business leaders to think twice about the merits of certification.
In a recent report, England’s Environmental Data Services reflected on the research findings of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service after it conducted a comprehensive survey of environmental management systems and third party auditors over several months. Results indicated variable levels of confidence in environmental certificates in the UK.
Complaints included the fact that some auditors focus on documented procedures rather than on-site implementation evaluation; that some auditors display a lack of understanding of the businesses they are auditing; that auditors are ‘too soft”; and that they do not challenge instances of suspected non-conformity with standards.
Managers in charge of environmental management systems believe these problems undermine their standing within their organisations and that there is inconsistency in the approaches of different certification bodies, the report says. Some companies indicated that they saw little value in the certification process because of this.
What about South Africa? Critics have questioned whether third party auditors are simply conducting paper-based audits of environmental management systems, with little or no investigation of the practical implementation of the systems.
A successful schedule of ‘plan, do, check and act” is unmistakably the heart of implementing the ISO 14001 standard. If an environmental management system or the audit thereof stops at the stacks of files representing the ‘plan”, ISO 14001 certification becomes as useful as a ship without a sea.
Between 1996 and 2004, ISO 14001 developed requirements that increasingly call for implementation and action. In the light of this, the findings in the UK study are alarming. I suggest that the true state of South Africa’s national ISO 14001 certificates be determined without delay.
Those South African industries that are already committed to ISO 14001 should be applauded. They have the potential to make a difference in this country’s journey towards sustainable environmental and business development, as required inter alia by the King II Report and good corporate governance.
The commitment of companies and organisations to implement sound environmental management systems based on ISO 14001 and of third-party certification bodies to conduct and endorse comprehensive paper-based and on-site implementation audits is essential for the success of the ISO 14001 standard.
Similarly, we need to encourage commitment from those organisations that have not yet complied with improved environmental performance. We need to show them that managing a business the ISO 14001 way makes practical environmental sense on paper as well as at the level of implementation.
Anél du Plessis lectures at the faculty of law, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus. She writes in her personal capacity. She wants to thank Professor Johan Nel of the university’s Centre for Environmental Management and Louis Kotzé at the faculty of law for their input.