The determinants mostly disclosed by companies that are members of the Carbon Disclosure Project

Concerns about climate change as a result of anthropic actions have led to an increase in the volume of information disclosed about it in the reports of companies that are members of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). In this context, the factors most disclosed remain obscure due to both the complexity of climate change impacts and the stakeholders’ different interests. This study aims to identify which factors are most disclosed in the reports of companies that are members of CDP. For this purpose, it is necessary to investigate if the factors indicated by managers and experts are the main ones disclosed in the reports of Brazilian companies that are members of CDP, as well as to identify which companies stand out in climate change disclosure based on these factors. To this end, 463 reports submitted by 48 companies between 2014 and 2016 were examined and 32 factors were investigated using the NVivo® software. Some companies submitted reports with unified titles, which reduced the sample. The results indicate that certain factors—prevention of pollution, prevention of loss, management of environmental assets, volume of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and climate change strategy—account for 50.03% of the total volume of information disclosed about climate change. The main lesson learned from this research is that climate change mitigation strategy is strongly supported by the evidence of corporate annual reports, and it has relation with the following determinant factors: pollution prevention, loss prevention, environmental asset management, GHG emissions, and the strategy chosen by the companies to deal with climate change. Due to the low volume of research related to loss prevention and pollution prevention, we have identified that little attention has been paid to these items. Based on our results, we recommend that climate change mitigation strategies begin to consider these determinant factors in their structure because both have a strong influence in demonstrating how companies are managing these factors for stakeholders. Therefore, companies can benefit from this data to manage their resources for the maintenance of the social contract (legitimacy) through the factors most disclosed, especially companies with lower scores on the scale of ranking presented. Hence, stakeholders can have access to more information on strategies that mitigate climate change and help companies improve the disclosure of the actions that contribute to reduction of GHG emissions.     

Disclosure of climate risk information by the world’s largest companies

The risks related to global climate change are seen as threats to companies, taking into consideration their impact on the return on investment. In order to mitigate climate risk and introduce new opportunities to financiers, companies need to identify, manage, and report climate risks. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the climate risks disclosed by the 100 largest companies in the world, according to the Bloomberg and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC 2015) classification, and identify some characteristics of these companies that explain the disclosure level of such information. Preliminary results revealed that of the companies investigated, 14% did not disclose any climate risk information in the Carbon Disclosure Program (CDP) report. Also, from the companies that disclosed information according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), 9.9% did not provide information regarding policies, actions, and strategies for mitigating the risks related to climate change. The results shown by the content analysis suggested that, in general, there is still a low level of disclosure about climate risks by these companies. The final results through econometric instruments and statistical tests indicate that the size of the company or the fact that corporations are from developed countries do not necessarily explain the level of information disclosed. However, the activity sector, the continent, and the efficiency of the Board of Directors are factors that strongly explain the level of climate risk disclosure. We conclude that more effort is needed to encourage an engaging attitude from corporations to develop actions, policies, and strategies to mitigate climate change risks and threats. In addition, the world’s largest companies should make a greater investment in climate risk disclosure.     

Determinant factors of corporate environmental information disclosure: an empirical study of Chinese listed companies

In order to help understand the environmental disclosure mechanism from the corporate perspective, this paper identifies the determinant factors affecting the disclosure level of corporate environmental information on the basis of stakeholder theory, and gives an empirical observation on Chinese listed companies. The corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) level appears to be marginal in current Chinese context. Nearly 40% of the sampled companies opened no substantial environmental data to the public as could be seen from the content analysis of disclosed information. The present condition is that the EID strategy of Chinese listed companies is oriented to fill up the government's environmental concerns. The corporate EID effort is significantly relative to its environmental sensitivity (a proxy of the pressure from the government) and its size. The role of other stakeholders, like shareholders and creditors tested in this study in effecting the EID, is found to be still weak. Another interesting finding is that the sampled companies are selectively opening their environmental information. Companies operating in eastern coastal regions, where the economy has been relatively developed, are more likely to disclose emission-related data. The better the company's economic performance, the more information on environmental investment and pollution control cost is disclosed. More concerns of the firm's stakeholders on environmental issues shall be promoted in order to encourage Chinese enterprises to disclose more environmental information and accordingly become more proactive for improving their environmental performance.     

上市公司环境信息披露法律研究——以环保部门的监管为视角

随着环境信息公开制度的建立和公众知情意识的觉醒,人们对环境信息公开的呼声越来越高。不仅政府基于其环境监督管理的职能需要公开环境信息,企业基于对环境产生影响也需要依法公开环境信息。而上市公司作为具有特殊地位的企业,其在环境信息披露中的重要性不可小觑。近年来屡屡发生的上市公司环境污染事件也一再提醒环境监管部门和广大社会公众,亟需对上市公司环境信息披露进行有力监管。本文试从环境保护监管部门的角度论述目前法律法规对上市公司环境信息披露在披露内容和披露方式上的不足和改进建议。期望能引起环境保护部门和上市公司相关部门的注意,从而推动上市公司环境信息披露制度的不断完善。     

适应气候变化是当务之急

地球气候变化既有自然因素又有人为因素,全球变暖主要原因是人类活动温室气体排放过度。因此,在应对气候变化问题上,人们对减排温室气高度重视是理所当然,而长期以来对＂适应气候变化＂却有所忽视。其实,对发展中国家《适应气候变化》才是当务之急。本文在＂发展低碳经济,应对全球变暖＂减排二氧化碳温室气体的基础上,论述适应气候变化的迫切性和基本途径。     

Towards corporate environmental information disclosure: an empirical study in China

High levels of corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) have become pressing issues due to environmental protection around the world. Corporate EID refers to disclose their information on activities related to the natural environment, environmental protection and use of resource. Emerging economies in developing countries seem to face a formidable task for promoting corporate EID. Based on data of corporate EID for 871 listed manufacturing companies in China, this paper examines the status of corporate EID. The significant difference of selectively disclosing their environmental information for the listed companies is investigated. The relations among the level of EID, industrial sector, company size, and company ownership are also explored. Surprisingly, the result reveals the inverse relationship between the marketization level and corporate EID.     

上市公司环境信息公开的双重监管

上市公司是一种特殊的企业形式,法律要求其在设立和生产经营过程中进行信息披露,来保护利益相关者的权益。涉及到环境信息的披露,上市公司受到环境法和证券法的双重监管,由于监管的理念和宗旨存在差异,导致监管的主体、内容和方式也存在着很大的不同。     

Spatial and temporal variability of greenhouse gas emissions from rural development land use operations

Climate change objectives of mitigation and adaptation are being mainstreamed into many policies and strategies around the world. In Europe, this has included the Rural Development Programme, which aims to tackle multiple social, economic and environmental objectives in rural areas, and the integration of climate change objectives adds another strand of complexity to the decision making process. When formulating policies determining the likely effectiveness of any particular measure can be challenging, especially with respect to the spatial and temporal variability of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a challenge faced by all countries and regions around the world. This study uses Europe as an example to explore this issue. It highlights the variability in emissions from land use operations that may be encountered under different conditions and time horizons and considers this in the context of policy formulation. The Optimal Strategies for Climate change Action in Rural Areas software has been adapted to derive net greenhouse gas emissions for rural development operations for all regions in Europe. Operations have been classified into five categories based on their benefit/burden over different time horizons. The analysis shows that it is important to understand the time period over which benefits or burdens are realised and determine how this fits with policy instruments, such as land management agreements and the permanency of actions. It also shows that in some regions an operation can have benefits, but in other regions it has burdens; thus, location can be critical. Finally, in the context of developing operations to meet multiple social, economic and environmental objectives, it is important to acknowledge that seeking options that only reduce emissions may not always be practical or possible. In some instances, we may have to accept an increase in emissions in order to meet other objectives. It is important that we evaluate the net greenhouse gas emissions of all operations, not just those aimed at climate change mitigation. We can then select those with the least burden in the process of developing optimal solutions to meet multiple objectives.     

中国企业环境业绩的披露

随着企业环境业绩越来越受到人们的关注,许多国家都纷纷开始重视对企业环境业绩的披露。中国对企业环境业绩披露的研究还处于探索阶段,关于环境业绩披露的内容、模式和方式等问题都没有达成共识。结合国内外企业环境业绩披露现状以及当前的实际情况,中国应该采用编制独立报告的模式对企业环境政策、环保法规、污染治理和污染物的利用、环境质量、环境财务业绩以及环境审计报告等六部分环境业绩内容采用自愿与强制相结合的方式进行披露。同时,宝钢集团作为国内环境业绩信息披露的领头企业,其在环保法规的执行情况、企业环境财务业绩等方面的披露还需进一步完善。     

Concerns about climate change mitigation projects: summary of findings from case studies in Brazil,India, Mexico and South Africa

The concept of joint implementation as a way to implement climate change mitigation projects in another country has been controversial ever since its inception. Developing countries have raised numerous issues at the project-specific technical level and broader concerns having to do with equity and burden sharing. This paper summarizes the findings of studies for Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa, four countries that have large greenhouse gas emissions and are heavily engaged in the debate on climate change projects under the Kyoto Protocol. The studies examine potential or current projects/programs to determine whether eight technical concerns about joint implementation can be adequately addressed. They conclude that about half the concerns were minor or well managed by project developers, but concerns about additionality of funds, host country institutions and guarantees of performance (including the issues of baselines and possible leakage) need much more effort to be adequately addressed. All the papers agree on the need to develop institutional arrangements for approving and monitoring such projects in each of the countries represented. The case studies illustrate that these projects have the potential to bring new technology, investment, employment and ancillary socioeconomic and environmental benefits to developing countries. These benefits are consistent with the goal of sustainable development in the four study countries. At a policy level, the studies' authors note that in their view, the Annex I countries should consider limits on the use of jointly implemented projects as a way to get credits against their own emissions at home, and stress the importance of industrialized countries developing new technologies that will benefit all countries. The authors also observe that if all countries accepted caps on their emissions (with a longer time period allowed for developing countries to do so) project-based GHG mitigation would be significantly facilitated by the improved private investment climate.     

上市公司环境信息披露的模式研究

分析了由于社会责任、公司声誉、法律与政策压力等,导致越来越多的公司自愿或被迫进行环境信息披露。阐述了环境信息披露必须采用适当的披露模式,披露的模式影响披露的质量,决定了是否满足信息使用者决策的需要。提出定性描述和定量披露模式相结合,强制性与自愿披露模式相结合,公开和秘密模式相结合,由独立环境信息披露向综合环境信息披露模式过渡是环境信息披露发展的道路。     

晋开化工清洁发展机制的探索与实践

全球气候变化以及温室气体减排,既属于环境问题,同时又是一个重大的经济问题。清洁发展机制是《京都议定书》中规定的发达国家与发展中国家之间的温室气体减排合作方式,其核心是允许发达国家通过与发展中国家进行项目级的合作,获得由项目产生的核证的温室气体减排量。晋开化工通过引进日本三菱公司先进的环境技术和节能技术,对硝酸装置进行N2O的减排治理,实现了清洁发展机制,不仅达到减少温室气体的排放、降低硝酸生产成本,为企业创造可观的经济效益,也为世界环境保护做出了贡献。     

Corporate social responsibility in the mining industry: Exploring trends in social and environmental disclosure

In recent years, concerns about the sustainability and social responsibility (CSR) of businesses have become an increasingly high profile issue in many countries and industries, none more so than the mining industry. For mining, one outcome of the CSR agenda is the increasing need for individual companies to justify their existence and document their performance through the disclosure of social and environmental information. This paper explores recent trends in the reporting of such impacts and issues in the global mining industry. It offers a detailed review of the development of the media of social and environmental disclosure in the mining industry, and of the factors that drive the development of such disclosure. A temporal analysis of the recent trends in disclosure using a case study of the world's 10 largest mining companies is presented. Whilst there is evidence of increasing sophistication in the development of social and environmental disclosure, there is considerable variation in the maturity of reporting content and styles of these companies. The paper offers a simple classification of reporting companies, from ‘leaders’ to ‘laggards’. Stronger leadership and co-operation from the top reporting companies is necessary to support the laggards of the industry.     

The prospects for global green car mobility

The quest for green car mobility faces two major challenges: air pollution from exhaust emissions and global climate change from greenhouse gas emissions. Vehicle air pollution emissions are being successfully tackled in many countries by technical solutions such as low-sulphur fuels, unleaded petrol and three-way catalytic converters. Many researchers advocate a similar approach for overcoming transport's climate change impacts. This study argues that finding a technical solution for this problem is not possible. Instead, the world will have to move to an alternative surface transport system involving far lower levels of motorised travel.     

Analysing countries’ contribution to climate change: scientific and policy-related choices

This paper evaluates the influence of different policy-related and scientific choices on the calculated regional contributions to global climate change (the “Brazilian Proposal”). Policy-related choices include the time period of emissions, the mix of greenhouse gases and different indicators of climate change impacts. The scientific choices include historical emissions and model representations of the climate system. We generated and compared results of several simple climate models. We find that the relative contributions of different nations to global climate change—from emissions of greenhouse gases alone—are quite robust, despite the varying model complexity and differences in calculated absolute changes. For the default calculations, the average calculated contributions to the global mean surface temperature increase in 2000 are about 40% from OECD, 14% from Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, 24% from Asia and 22% from Africa and Latin America. Policy-related choices, such as time period of emissions, climate change indicator and gas mix generally have larger influence on the results than scientific choices. More specifically, choosing a later attribution start date (1990 instead of 1890) for historical emissions, decreases the contributions of regions that started emitting early, such as the OECD countries by 6 percentage points, whereas it increases the contribution of late emitters such as Asia by 8 percentage points. However, only including the fossil CO₂ emissions instead of the emissions of all Kyoto gases (fossil and land use change), increases the OECD contributions by 21 percentage points and decreases the contribution of Asia by 14 percentage points.     

土地利用/覆盖变化与气候变化定量关系研究进展

当前,以全球变暖为主要特征的气候变化对人类社会的可持续发展构成了严重威胁,如何有效适应气候变化成为人类面临的共同挑战。研究表明,全球变暖的主要驱动力是人类活动造成的温室气体排放和土地利用方式改变。过去,科学界致力于削减全球温室气体排放,而土地利用与气候变化的关系,以及如何适应气候变化,没有引起足够重视。论文重点阐述土地利用/覆盖变化对区域气候的生物地球物理影响机制,总结土地利用/覆盖与气候变化定量关系的研究进展,得出现阶段研究存在四点不足:①缺乏景观格局与气候过程关系的认识;②较少考虑人类活动对下垫面的影响;③区域气候模式存在局限;④适应气候变化的研究不足。针对上述问题,论文指出基于可持续性的土地系统设计是适应气候变化的有效途径,也是未来气候变化领域的研究重点。     

浅谈参与清洁发展机制的意义

清洁发展机制,是《京都议定书》中引入的三个灵活履约机制之一。由于发达国家减排温室气体的成本是发展中国家的几倍甚至几十倍。发达国家因此通过在发展中国家实施具有温室气体减排效果的项目,把项目所产生的温室气体减少的排放量作为履行《京都议定书》所规定的一部分义务。对清洁生产机制的理论和意义进行了简要的阐述和说明。     

Adaptation and mitigation strategies in agriculture: an analysis of potential synergies

As climate changes due to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, agriculture will be one of the key human activities affected. Projections show that while overall global food production in the coming decades may keep pace with the food requirements of a growing world population, climate change might worsen existing regional disparities because it will reduce crop yields mostly in lands located at lower latitudes where many developing countries are situated. Strategies to enhance local adaptation capacity are therefore needed to minimize climatic impacts and to maintain regional stability of food production. At the same time, agriculture as a sector offers several opportunities to mitigate the portion of global greenhouse gas emissions that are directly dependent upon land use, land-use change, and land-management techniques. This paper reviews issues of agriculture and climate change, with special attention to adaptation and mitigation. Specifically, as adaptation and mitigation strategies in agriculture are implemented to alleviate the potential negative effects of climate change, key synergies need to be identified, as mitigation practices may compete with modifications to local agricultural practices aimed at maintaining production and income. Under future climate and socio-economic pressures, land managers and farmers will be faced with challenges in regard to selecting those mitigation and adaptation strategies that together meet food, fiber and climate policy requirements.     

Does the Swedish consumer's choice of food influence greenhouse gas emissions?

Consumer's choice of food can influence the environment. In Sweden, in common with many other countries, consumers need to be given information so they can make environmentally informed shopping choices. However, what is the most advantageous dietary choice to lower greenhouse emissions? This study investigates the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production for food consumed in Sweden annually. Specifically, this study compares greenhouse gas emissions associated with a nutritionally and environmentally sustainable diet with the average consumption of food in Sweden 1999. The study concludes that the change in energy use and greenhouse gas emission associated with this change of diet is negligible. Lowering greenhouse gas emissions by changing food production processes results in more profound changes than teaching consumers to make environmentally correct choices. There is a basic need for a reduction or a replacement of the use of fossil fuels to produce and distribute our food in order to reach any significant reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases. Swedish agricultural policy does not provide ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In Sweden therefore there is an immediate need to design policy instruments with the primary aim of reducing the greenhouse effect.