Improving global environmental management with standard corporate reporting

Abstract

Multinational corporations play a prominent role in shaping the environmental trajectory of the planet. The integration of environmental costs and benefits into corporate decision-making has enormous, but as yet unfulfilled, potential to promote sustainable development. To help steer business decisions toward better environmental outcomes, corporate reporting frameworks need to develop scientifically informed standards that consistently consider land use and land conversion, clean air (including greenhouse gas emissions), availability and quality of freshwater, degradation of coastal and marine habitats, and sustainable use of renewable resources such as soil, timber, and fisheries. Standardization by itself will not be enough-also required are advances in ecosystem modeling and in our understanding of critical ecological thresholds. With improving ecosystem science, the opportunity for realizing a major breakthrough in reporting corporate environmental impacts and dependencies has never been greater. Now is the time for ecologists to take advantage of an explosion of sustainability commitments from business leaders and expanding pressure for sustainable practices from shareholders, financial institutions, and consumers.corporate sustainability | ESG reporting | natural capital | ecosystem services | multinational corporations

Trust, tribalism and tweets: has political polarization made science a “wedge issue”?

“…The potential value of these relationships for improving science communication and environmental stewardship cannot be overstated. For instance, in recent years some global environmental NGOs have fostered innovative relationships with major corporations by communicating and valuing the numerous benefits of better environmental stewardship, ultimately benefiting the agendas and sustainability of both [27]. Our analyses revealed that NOAA's National Hurricane Center and FEMA were among the top 10 most highly followed science accounts among Senate Republicans (Table 3).…”

Next-Generation Environmental Regulation: Law, Regulation, and Governance

“…This simple state-backed Toxic Release Inventory strategy had broad ramifications, including empowering community groups to shame bad corporate behavior, enabling markets and shareholders to make more informed judgments, and encouraging internal corporate self-reflection on how things might be done differently. Similar initiatives have been introduced elsewhere (Karkkainen 2001)-the Global Reporting Initiative being the most recent and arguably the most important international initiative of this type (Karevia et al 2015).…”

“…Many informational approaches have tended to present detailed descriptions of processes, such as management and compliance, but neglect to disclose complete environmental impacts. The result can be a pattern of selective disclosure that makes companies look good but rarely links to observed improved performance (Delmas et al 2013, Karevia et al 2015.…”

Ecosystem service information to benefit sustainability standards for commodity supply chains

“…It has been noted that the world's major private‐sector organizations exceed all but the largest governments in financial resources and influence, making their operating decisions, especially for their supply chains, a vital component for achieving global environmental sustainability. Collectively, multinational corporations drive the behavior of whole sectors of production . Individually, given their demand for raw materials alone, many single corporations have the potential to drive significant portions of global production toward more sustainable trajectories.…”

“…Collectively, multinational corporations drive the behavior of whole sectors of production. 2 Individually, given their demand for raw materials alone, many single corporations have the potential to drive significant portions of global production toward more sustainable trajectories. For example, Unilever buys 12% of the world's black tea, 3 and the three largest companies in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil control a combined 11.6% of the global total of crude palm oil production.…”