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Is Earth recognized as a finite system in corporate responsibility reporting?
Abstract
Companies are increasingly encouraged to frame their sustainability activities and communication around ecological limits, as captured by concepts such as planetary boundaries, climate tipping points or local assimilative capacities. Ecological limits may serve as a scientific basis for defining environmentally sustainable companies and, moreover, inspire companies to align their product portfolios with emerging societal needs related to sustainable transformations. Although corporate environmental reporting is widely researched, little attention has, hitherto, been given to company use of the ecological limits concepts in stakeholder communication.
... Corporate sustainability emerged as a connected but distinct concept to CSR, emphasizing the embeddedness of firms in socioecological systems and the interdependencies that this generates [38,44,45]. As organizations become more systemic and systematic in their perspective, goals are more likely to be derived from a scientific systems understanding [38,45,46], and to align with the goals of larger systems flourishing [45]. However, Meuer et al. [34] indicate the importance of unpacking the scope of these efforts and explicitly defining what is meant by sustainability, as firms are still randomly selecting issues and only connect them to sustainability as an afterthought. ...
... Social lifecycle assessment (Social LCA) methods are one example of the implications of loosely defined social sustainability goals: after nearly 20 years of development, Social LCA still lacks a unifying framework that could allow for the further development of the field and provide more robust decision support for product development organizations [57][58][59][60][61]. Schulte and Hallstedt [62] and Watz and Hallstedt [63] all define sustainable product development as product development that supports society's transition toward sustainability, evidencing that the focus is moving toward positioning also this field in a larger systems perspective and Dyllick and Rost [61] urge to include social concerns alongside the ecological ones in this perspective. There is however little evidence that even on the ecological side companies are setting science-based goals [46], although some progress has been made [64][65][66]. ...
... Since social problems are often highly interrelated, tackling them in isolation may lead to worse social situations in the long run. • Lack of systems and the science-based understanding of social sustainability and goal-setting [38,45,46,[64][65][66][67]69,70]: While this challenge is also pointed out in the ecological sustainability field, it is especially prevalent in the social sustainability field, because systems-based approaches remain rare and even contentious. However, without a systematic understanding of the larger challenge, it is again difficult to claim that we are advancing in the field, and goals remain ad hoc and too narrow, and are rarely strategic. ...
Since the economic crisis in 2008, the world has seen a partly negative shift in social progress, highlighting that current economic models and practices do not guarantee long-lasting societal and human wellbeing. Economic models and business practices are deeply intertwined; thus, businesses play a major role in the advancement of social sustainability, and academic research can offer support in navigating the complexity of this issue. However, social sustainability tends to be under-researched. This article summarizes the discussion in general business management, product development, and supply-chain management, and from this suggest a research agenda to help in guiding systematic change in business organizations towards social sustainability. The article identifies ten main challenges and offers five recommendations to move the field forward, namely, a more explicit engagement with and discussion of social systems-science based ideas, and a more explicit determination as a field to converge on key pieces leading towards a clearer definition of the concept. Lastly, it recommends that research needs to focus on how to overcome fragmented organizational structures, how to achieve true integration into existing processes and tools, and how to support organizations to become more dynamic in working with these issues.
... time." ' machines that look like they did 50 ...
... Product developers, however, have an opportunity to influence the social sustainability performance of a product by focusing their design efforts on the use phase, not in meeting expressed customer needs, but focusing on needs from a societal perspective. According to Bjørn et al. [50], changes in how things are produced must be enhanced by changes in what is being produced. Dyllick and Rost [44] talk about an enhancement of the product life cycle through positive handprints, contributing to public value creation as a result from the primary product purpose. ...
... Dyllick and Rost [44] talk about an enhancement of the product life cycle through positive handprints, contributing to public value creation as a result from the primary product purpose. Because product development organizations should be asking how their products help meet the needs (as opposed to wants) of current and future generations [50], design activities also need to be supported by higher levels of decision-making and aligned business models. ...
Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in supporting society in achieving sustainability, and yet they do not always include full sustainability considerations in PD decisions. The social dimension of sustainability has been largely neglected in the PD field and there is very little empirical evidence of social sustainability implementation in general. The aim of this paper is to investigate how social sustainability is currently included in PD organizations and what their motivations are to do so. Results from a comparative case study approach with three organizations include rich descriptions across four dimensions: The scope of the work and their view of interdependencies with other social systems, their definition of social sustainability and the issues they work with, what guides strategic decisions, and how this internal work is structured. The results reveal that the three product development organizations are heterogenous in their approaches to social sustainability and that the more advanced approach shows a better understanding of the complexity of social sustainability and a broader perspective of its interdependencies, which goes hand-in-hand with a way of organizing that overcomes traditional hierarchies and allows for more collaborative and strategic work in this area. This systems perspective also drives what issues are included in an organization's work; scope and definition of social sustainability become more encompassing and aligned. Finally, our study shows that social sustainability impacts connected to products' lifecycles, when addressed, are done so by functions outside design activities, as opposed to product developers. A greater understanding of how companies currently approach social sustainability and what challenges they might face in integrating it in organizational and design related practices has been called for; our paper contributes to this but acknowledges that more work is needed.
... Several common environmental sustainability assessment methods, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), environmental Environmental Science and Pollution Research impact assessment (EIA), and ecological footprint family (EFs), can quantify the environmental impact of the studied system, provide stakeholders with information on the level of environmental sustainability, and promote sustainable development plans. Scholars combine life cycle assessment, footprint family, and planetary boundaries, and then evaluate the level of absolute sustainability by quantifying the present value (Bjørn et al. , 2017Chandrakumar and McLaren 2018). ...
... Due to factors such as funding and nonresource efficiency, at present, this framework plays a relatively small role in the strategic decision-making of enterprises and departments (Haffar and Searcy 2018). Especially, climate change is the most concerned issue (Bjørn et al. 2017). ...
The planetary boundaries concept has triggered a vast amount of pure and applied scientific research, as well as policy and governance activities globally. Indeed, it has rapidly become a centerpiece of sustainability study. It is crucial to review the scientific state of the planetary boundaries (PB) concept systematically. However, there is a lack of research on drawing a scientific investigation map of planetary boundaries. Therefore, to clarify the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics, research hotspots, and frontiers of planetary boundaries, a scientometric analysis was performed based on 530 academic publications on planetary boundaries from 2009 to 2021. This paper conducted the analysis by visualizing the social network, dual-map overlay, co-cited references, structure variation article, and co-occurrence keywords with CiteSpace. The results show that as a new achievement and paradigm in sustainable development research, the planetary boundaries framework is gradually getting global attention and promotion, which has increasingly become an interdisciplinary hot research topic. The most productive authors and institutions are concentrated in England, the USA, Germany, and Sweden. Relevant articles were mainly published in journals focusing on ecology, earth, marine, veterinary, animal, economics, and politics. In addition, we summarized four predominant research themes by clustering keywords: the calculation of single boundary threshold and present value, the integration with assessment methods such as life cycle assessment and footprint families, the downscaling of planetary boundaries, and the expansion to economic and social domains. For scholars who are interested in this topic, this paper would be a useful reference and guideline.
... More importantly, CSR reports are becoming increasingly important for the scientific community, especially in the study of methodology, definition, and frequency [29][30][31]. Furthermore, in the comparison of the different techniques used by companies from a qualitative perspective [32]. ...
... This discrete distribution generates observations (words in documents) [62]. 31 Tagging a document with a ranked list of semantic topics can be interpreted as the 32 extraction of semantic information. It means, that the grouped documents per topic are 33 semantically similar as they share common semantically related terms over the text corpus 34 of what can be generally called a discrete data collection, where the probabilistic topic 35 model was built on. ...
This paper investigates if Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports published by a selected group of Nordic companies are aligned with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. To achieve this goal, several natural language processing, and text mining techniques were implemented and tested. We extracted strings, corpus, and hybrid semantic similarities from the reports and evaluated the models through the intrinsic assessment methodology. A quantitative ranking score based on index matching was developed to complement the semantic valuation. The final results show that Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Global Vectors for Word Representation (GloVE) are the best methods for our study. Our findings will open the door to the automatic evaluation of sustainability reports which could have a strong impact on the environment.
... For example, the Global Reporting Initiative has encouraged companies to disclose environmental performance in relation to "global limits on resource use and pollution levels" for two decades [7,8]. A few companies followed suit early on [9,10], but widespread adoption appears to have been hampered by a lack of external pressure and operational methods and tools, with some notable exceptions [11][12][13]. Instead, corporate emission targets largely appeared arbitrary, perhaps inspired by competitors' targets, past performance, or what appeared achievable [14][15][16][17], and were often judged to lack ambition [18]. ...
... 7 According to SBTi, corporate net-zero emissions satisfy two criteria: "Reducing scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions to zero or to a residual level that is consistent with reaching net-zero emissions at the global or sector level in eligible 1.5 °C-aligned pathways" and "neutralizing any residual emissions at the net-zero target year and any GHG emissions released into the atmosphere thereafter" [42]. 9 We used the search string "TOPIC: ("science-based target*") AND TOPIC: (climate OR emission OR greenhouse)." This yielded 20 results on May, 25, 2021. ...
Purpose of Review
Companies increasingly set science-based targets (SBTs) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We review literature on SBTs to understand their potential for aligning corporate emissions with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.
Recent Findings
SBT adoption by larger, more visible companies in high-income countries has accelerated. These companies tend to have a good prior reputation for managing climate impacts and most appear on track for meeting their scope 1 and 2 SBTs. More research is needed to distinguish between substantive and symbolic target-setting and understand how companies plan to achieve established SBTs. There is no consensus on whether current target-setting methods appropriately allocate emissions to individual companies or how much freedom companies should have in setting SBTs. Current emission accounting practices, target-setting methods, SBT governance, and insufficient transparency may allow companies to report some emission reductions that are not real and may result in insufficient collective emission reductions. Lower rates of SBT diffusion in low- and middle-income countries, in certain emission-intensive sectors, and by small- and medium-sized enterprises pose potential barriers for mainstreaming SBTs. While voluntary SBTs cannot substitute for more ambitious climate policy, it is unclear whether they delay or encourage policy needed for Paris alignment.
Summary
We find evidence that SBT adoption corresponds to increased climate action. However, there is a need for further research from a diversity of approaches to better understand how SBTs may facilitate or hinder a just transition to low-carbon societies.
... Similar to calling for political risk epistemic cultures to embrace hybrid knowledge, sustainability researchers call for more nuanced views of sustainability that bring together insights from a variety of perspectives (for example, see Seager 2008;Angus-Leppan et al. 2010;Bjorn et al. 2017;Coleman et al. 2018;Gibbons 2020). A growing body of literature focuses on how companies communicate their sustainability activities, what kind of sustainability companies mean in practice and whether they are 'walking the talk' or merely claiming their sustainability initiatives are effective (Whiteman et al. 2013;Pelenc et al. 2015;Bjorn et al. 2017;Landrum 2018). ...
... Similar to calling for political risk epistemic cultures to embrace hybrid knowledge, sustainability researchers call for more nuanced views of sustainability that bring together insights from a variety of perspectives (for example, see Seager 2008;Angus-Leppan et al. 2010;Bjorn et al. 2017;Coleman et al. 2018;Gibbons 2020). A growing body of literature focuses on how companies communicate their sustainability activities, what kind of sustainability companies mean in practice and whether they are 'walking the talk' or merely claiming their sustainability initiatives are effective (Whiteman et al. 2013;Pelenc et al. 2015;Bjorn et al. 2017;Landrum 2018). ...
This exploratory study aims to understand why, and propose remedies for, the treatment of political risk and sustainability as siloed risk areas in risk analyses. I employ an interdisciplinary theoretical approach that focuses on the roles of values and worldviews, stages of sustainability and hybrid knowledge to understand this siloing. The large-N interpretive method used here combines content frequency counts with discourse analysis to examine over 400 corporate communication documents from 37 companies. The study also explores how, through corporate communication, companies that provide political risk analysis convey what is at risk and what counts as sustainability. I argue that the broad shared ‘cultural’ tones of what it means to be in the political risk field pose challenges for integrating political risk and sustainability. The study concludes with several recommendations on how to overcome the current barriers in order to integrate political risk and sustainability in risk analyses.
... These criticisms have prompted a recent move towards context-based approaches to corporate sustainability [6] with the use of absolute environmental sustainability assessment methods [9] and resilience-based targets [10,11]. Such approaches link corporate targets with wider ecological system limits, such as planetary boundaries [12]. One prominent example of such an approach is the science-based targets initiative (SBTi) [13] which seeks to align corporate carbon reduction targets with global decarbonisation objectives. ...
... A key concern is the correlation, or lack of correlation, between the ambition of target setting and emissions performance, with many noting the apparent mismatch between target ambition and scientific requirements for emissions reductions [7,17]. Bjørn et al. [12] suggest that only a minority of companies make any reference to ecological limits in their reporting, and there is a prevailing sense that most corporate targets are in line with climate policy rather than climate science [18]. This renders the lack of evidence on the effectiveness of the SBTi a critical research gap. ...
Companies are increasingly seeking to align their actions with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Over 1000 such companies have committed to the science-based targets initiative which seeks to align corporate carbon reduction targets with global decarbonisation trajectories. These ‘science-based targets’ are developed using a common set of resources and target-setting methodologies, then independently assessed and approved by a technical advisory group. Despite the initiative’s rapid rise to public prominence, it has received little attention to date in the academic literature. This paper discusses development of the initiative based upon a quantitative assessment of progress against each component of the science-based targets set by 81 early adopters, using information gathered from company annual reports, corporate social responsibility websites and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) responses. The analysis reveals a mixed picture of progress. Though the majority of targets assessed were on track and, in some cases, had already been achieved, just under half of the companies assessed were falling behind on one or more of their targets. Progress varied significantly by target scope, with more limited progress against targets focused on Scope 3 emissions. Company reporting practices were highly variable and often of poor quality. This paper concludes with a range of recommendations to improve the transparency, consistency and comparability of targets within this key agenda-setting initiative.
... Concretely, science-based targets (SBTs) have been proposed as a tool for corporates to set emission reduction targets that are in line with a scientifically determined emission budget allowable under a 2°C or 1.5°C warming scenario (Walenta 2020). How SBTs are set depends on the methods and principles used to allocate the overall emissions budget to companies (Bjørn et al. 2017;Haffar and Searcy 2018;Krabbe et al. 2015). The linear emission reductionwhere all companies reduce their absolute emissions at the same rate approach, and the sector-based allocation approachwhere all companies in a given sector set emission targets that consider sectoral differences and sector-specific and abatement potentials are the two most established science-based approaches used by corporations to set climate targets (Faria and Labutong 2019). ...
... Based on this study, we recommend that future political action on green bonds should force issuers to be explicit about how they want to use green bonds in their transition towards carbon neutrality. The literature points to the increasing need for public policy to drive corporate recognition and action on ecological limits (Bjørn et al. 2017). Specifically, this includes a policy framework for the accurate measurement and reporting of GHGs set-up at the European intergovernmental level to clearly signal to the private sector that stringent mandatory GHG emission controls and a global market-based instrument will to be adopted in the future (Hickmann 2017). ...
Green bonds are considered one of the most important innovations in sustainable finance. However, there is a lack of conceptual and empirical understanding of the role of green bonds in corporate transition to carbon neutrality. This study develops and tests a conceptual framework that links green bonds to climate targets in the context of corporate transition risk management and polycentric climate governance. It is based on an analysis of the twenty largest European green bond issuers in 2018. We find that in most cases there is a disconnect between issuers' climate targets and their green bond frameworks; and several shortcomings in issuers' post-issuance reporting. Our results suggest that there is little pressure for green bond issuers to use their proceeds to achieve ambitious science-based targets. Our findings highlight the need for policy action to reduce the risk of greenwashing and to situate the green bond market within planetary boundaries. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Second, while recent articles have examined companies' carbon productivity (Wu and Yao, 2022;Bagchi et al., 2022), these studies have not linked this productivity to practical environmental targets, such as those of the UNPCCC target-setting methods or Science-Based Targets initiative when this is now considered essential for the future of our ecosystem (Bjørn et al., 2017;Bjørn et al., 2021;Bebbington and Rubin, 2022;Bai et al., 2022). They therefore rely on an "ungrounded" environmental efficiency rationale that can lead to companies being classified as "green" when, in fact, they are not. ...
... More than 50% of executives report that sustainability is very or extremely important. While organizations actively adopt sustainability (Threlfall et al., 2020), research shows that they do not adequately define the concept (Bonini et al., 2010), they apply the concept without a strategy (Bjørn et al., 2017;Bromley & Powell, 2012;Hahn et al., 2010), and they demonstrate inadequate planning and conceptual understanding (Kiron et al., 2017). These strategic deficiencies result in "conceptual manipulation" of organizational sustainability, which perpetuates the issues sustainability is meant to solve (Elkington, 2018). ...
While sustainability research is expansive, studies of business-internal practices and resulting sustainability outcomes are largely unexplored. This research fills this gap by assessing the sustainability schemes that organizations internally employ to guide sustainability efforts. Content analysis is applied to 20 environmentally oriented sustainability schemes, through the triangulated lenses of strong sustainability and sen-semaking theories. Each scheme is quantitatively assessed for positioning within the Stages of Sustainability model and rank abundance curves are generated to compare relative sustainability strength among the schemes for potential recommendations in practice or future research. Results show that 100% of the sustainability schemes in this study align with various forms of weak sustainability, although five commendable schemes are more advanced than the others. Given this finding, it is expected that applying the sustainability schemes from our sample in research and practice will perpetuate weak, business-as-usual, sustainability while prolonging the wait for strong ecological sustainability. Novel contributions of this research include empirical evidence to support claims that sustainability schemes are aligned with weak sustainability , and the identification of the sustainability strength of sustainability schemes. Additionally, numerous calls from researchers to consider sustainability strength in research are heeded. Implications for practitioners, scheme developers, and academics relate to the development of schemes, business-internal practices, research, and teaching that aligns with ecological science-oriented, strong sustainability instead of the current approach that aligns with weak sustainability. K E Y W O R D S content analysis, sensemaking theory, strong sustainability theory, sustainability frameworks, sustainability schemes, sustainability standards
... For example, normative justifications are needed for questions such as what economic, environmental, and/or social thresholds firms need to operate in. It is rarely clear where corporate activity intersects with even widely recognized thresholds, like the planetary boundaries (Bjørn et al., 2017;Schaltegger et al., 2018;Whiteman et al., 2013). Firms impact, and are impacted by, different thresholds in different ways. ...
The objective of this editorial is to help authors better understand how to contribute to discourse on corporate sustainability and business ethics. We do this in two ways. First, we clarify our expectations for publication in the “Corporate Sustainability and Business Ethics” section at the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE). As section editors at the journal, we want to make explicit the criteria we apply in our decisions to accept or reject a submission. We argue that authors should explicitly reflect upon what corporate sustainability means in the context of their research. We also stress that publishing in JBE requires an explicit central focus on ethics. We do not take a position on how authors must do either of these two, only that it should be done. In short, there are good business ethics papers that do not add to corporate sustainability theory building or practice, and there are good corporate sustainability papers that are not framed in a business ethics discourse. For the “Corporate Sustainability and Business Ethics” section, we expect authors to strive for both. Second, we provide several illustrations of how corporate sustainability research can be framed from a business ethics perspective around three central sustainability constructs: objective function, carrying capacity, and generational sustainability. These examples are not intended to be comprehensive or to bound the range of acceptable research for JBE’s “Corporate Sustainability and Business Ethics” section. Rather, we aim to provide representative examples of potentially publishable research on business ethics and corporate sustainability to spur innovative thinking and constructive discussion. We hope this editorial will help authors better understand what we expect from submissions to the “Corporate Sustainability and Business Ethics” at JBE.
... TF-IDF is a statistical modeling tool used to assess the worth of a word to a document that belongs in a corpus. The value of a word increases vis-à-vis the frequency of its appearance in a document [29,44]. Simultaneously, it decreases in reverse symmetry to the frequency of its presence in the corpus. ...
As sustainability becomes fundamental to companies, voluntary and mandatory disclosures or corporate sustainability practices have become a key source of information for various stakeholders, including regulatory bodies, environmental watchdogs, nonprofits and NGOs, investors, shareholders, and the public at large. Understanding sustainability practices by analyzing a large volume of disclosures poses major challenges, given that the information is mostly in the form of text. Applying machine learning and text analytic methods, we analyzed approximately 25,428 disclosure reports for the period of 2011 to 2020, extracted from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings and made available at the Ceres website via application programming interfaces (APIs). Our study identified six industry clusters from the K-means and six main topics from the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) method that related to the disclosure of climate-change-related environmental concerns. Both methods produced overlapping results that further reinforce and enhance our understanding of climate-change-related disclosure at various levels, such as sector, industry, and topic. Our analysis shows that companies are concerned primarily with the topics of gas emission, carbon risk, climate change, loss and damage, renewable energy, and financial impact when disclosing climate-change-related issues to the government. The study has implications for corporate sustainability practices, the communication and dissemination of such practices to stakeholders at large and furthering our understanding of sustainability in general.
... A good example of this is the BlackRock Group of companies, who have oriented their corporate as well as investment strategies around the path to net-zero CO 2 emissions. BlackRock and others have joined a widening group of companies [61] that have adopted the Science-Based Targets [62] an approach that provides guidelines and a set of protocols for the voluntary sector [63,64]. ESG has, in part, driven the use of blockchain technology for carbon abatement and environmental restoration, a set of projects and companies that are often referred to as Regenerative Finance (ReFi). ...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide emanating from activities associated with the construction of buildings in the UK contributes approximately 16% of the uk’s total emissions and will need to be reduced significantly to meet international agreements. Against this scenario, this paper presents a novel perspective for carbon accounting and trading that proposes the use of a platform for the uk construction industry as a possible solution. This suggestion assumes that taxation should be synchronised with phases of the entire life cycle of the building and that tax credits (or deficits) should remain an asset of the building itself. In this regard, a strategy is in place in the uk, but with gaps in how it will be implemented. To resolve these gaps, firstly, this paper explores and integrates three socio-technical components (i.e., carbon accounting, trading, and certification) that form an essential set of tools required for the management of taxes directed at property developers and construction companies. Then, it points out the need for a suite of computer-based systems to facilitate the recording of emissions information, the purchase of carbon offsets, and a way to access specialist financial services. As a result, a trading platform is conceptualised that makes use of blockchain technology as a foundation for future research.
... Heck 等 [32] 探讨了基于生物质碳捕获及储存技术对地球不同生物物理过程的影响，发现该 技术虽能减缓气候变化，但也可能致使淡水利用接近其行星边界，土地系统变化、生物 圈完整性和生物地球化学流动甚至超出对应的行星边界。然而，由于地球系统高度的复 杂性，识别临界阈值的早期预警信号、相变与反馈依然十分困难 [24,33] 。今后亟需从生物物 理过程的尺度属性与转化机制、交互作用与时序演变等方面，借助水-能量-碳、水-土壤-废弃物、食物-能量-水等关联 (Nexus) 研究范式 [34][35][36] 以及驱动力-压力-状态 -影响-响应 (DPSIR) 分析框架 [37] ，加强对地球复杂系统内在运行机理的深入研究。 1.2 内涵演进 行星边界框架引起了国际学术界的高度关注，资源环境承载力领域更是出现了久违 的学术争鸣景象。Lewis [38] 指出该框架存在两大缺陷，一是某些参数 (如流入海洋中的 磷) 存在固定极限，称之为边界会对资源使用产生误导；二是对于具有高度空间异质性 的环境问题而言，整合而成的行星边界政策针对性不强。Galaz 等 [39] 回应称，行星边界并 非固定的资源供给极限，其与临界阈值保持安全距离，对于多尺度环境治理具有指导意 义。Running [40] (2) 基于本地视角自下而上整合。该视角下边界值主要由局地资源禀赋和环境容量 决定 [53,56,57] Table 2 Application of the planetary boundaries framework at multiple regional scales 文献来源 Antonini 等 [49] Bjørn 等 [50] Clift 等 [51] Cole 等 [52] Cole 等 [53] Dao 等 [54] Dearing 等 [55] Fang 等 [56] Fanning 等 [57] Hoff 等 [58] Hoornweg 等 [59] Nykvist 等 [60] O'Neill 等 [61] Whiteman 等 [ Therefore, how to assess the carrying capacity in a scientific way receives top priority among sustainability development strategies. The Planetary Boundaries Framework (PBF) that takes into account the Earth system as a whole provides new insights into assessing the carrying capacity of resources and the environment. ...
... As described in Chapter 2, the risk is 'rainbow washing' corporate responsibility, especially if the Sustainable Development Goals are not addressed as a full set of interdependent elements. At the same time, planetary boundaries, and consequently, biophysical limits to economic growth, are still rarely mentioned, let alone addressed with quantifiable targets, in both public and private decision-making (Whiteman et al., 2013;Bjørn et al., 2016;Haffar and Searcy, 2018). While climate change and resource efficiency dominate corporate reporting, biodiversity, which has also been at the centre of the political agenda for decades now, is still poorly acknowledged in terms of measurable outcomes (Addison et al., 2018). ...
... Moreover, organisations rarely report on the environmental and social dimensions with the same quality and seriousness they give the financial dimension (Milne and Gray, 2013). So far, corporate sustainability has largely ignored concepts of ecological limits, carrying capacity, ecological footprints, and equity and social justice (Milne and Gray, 2013;Bjorn et al., 2017;D'Amato et al., 2019). In this sense, there is a significant disconnect between these reports and the scale and urgency of global challenges. ...
... Moreover, organisations rarely report on the environmental and social dimensions with the same quality and seriousness they give the financial dimension (Milne and Gray, 2013). So far, corporate sustainability has largely ignored concepts of ecological limits, carrying capacity, ecological footprints, and equity and social justice (Milne and Gray, 2013;Bjorn et al., 2017;D'Amato et al., 2019). In this sense, there is a significant disconnect between these reports and the scale and urgency of global challenges. ...
... It has been found that industry sector affects the reporting practices adopted by businesses concerning SDGs (Tsalis et al., 2020). Thus, sector-level decisions and sector-specific guidelines for companies have a huge potential to direct the companies towards good practice (Bjørn et al., 2017). ...
... F I G U R E 1 Illustration of the methodological steps to firm-level target setting: (a) the emissions pathway approach, adapted from SBTi (2019), and (b) our proposed carbon budget approach and commitments (Walenta, 2020), particularly with respect to setting emissions-reduction targets that are in line with global climate objectives (Bjørn et al., 2017). To fill this gap, the Science Based Targets Initiative's (SBTi) was founded in 2015 to support organizations in developing sciencebased targets (SBTs), which are targets aligned with limiting global average temperature increase to well-below 2 • C (WB-2 • C) and preferably to 1.5 • C compared to pre-industrial levels, the established temperature goal of the Paris Agreement (IPCC, 2018;SBT, 2020a). ...
With increasing pressure for climate action, commitments to setting scientifically supported emissions targets have become more common among firms. The target‐setting methods currently endorsed by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) use emission pathways that are aligned with 1.5°C and well‐below 2°C long‐term temperature goals to inform near‐term corporate targets. However, most of these scenarios lead to a temperature overshoot, followed by a return to the temperature goal achieved via net‐negative emissions in the second half of this century. When used to inform near‐term (e.g., 2030) corporate targets, the result is a set of targets that are aligned with an overshoot of a temperature target, with no explicit long‐term commitment to using negative emissions technologies to reverse this. To decrease the risk of this misalignment with the long‐term temperature goal, we propose an alternative approach that derives corporate targets directly from the remaining global cumulative carbon budget. We illustrate this approach using global Scope 1 emissions disclosed by public firms in 2019 to estimate corporate carbon budgets and construct idealized emissions‐reduction pathways that are consistent with the remaining global carbon budget for 1.5°C and well‐below 2°C. While firms, or their sectors, may choose varying mitigation pathways aligned with either global temperature limit, consistency with remaining carbon budgets requires that any delayed mitigation action in the near term is followed by more rapid emissions reductions in subsequent years. This study emphasizes the need for a more precautionary and robust approach to corporate target setting.
... Note that there are many other studies, not included in Table 1, focused on CSR content analysis from a sustainability perspective but without considering aspects of the CE. Some examples include Bjørn et al. (2017) , who identified the ecological limits/targets most considered in several CSRs worldwide; Meckenstock et al. (2016), who reviewed 142 CSRs from 12 industries to identify how sustainability evolves along the supply chain; or, in the same line, Comas Martí and Seifert (2013), who focused on examining CSRs to identify the business approaches related to the supply chain environmental strategies. ...
Sustainability reports may play an important role as a supporting tool in the transition of organisations towards more circular economy models, since their content can help to measure, monitor and communicate the organisations’ transition and to establish goals in the short/medium term. The aim of this study is to determine whether it is possible to calculate indicators capable of measuring the transition of organisations towards circularity from the information that they are currently communicating in their Corporate Sustainability Reports (CSRs), and what information would need to be incorporated in these reports to successfully carry out this procedure. To this end, by applying a three-step methodology, 34 indicators grouped into 10 categories were proposed to measure the level of circularity of organisations. This was completed with a detailed proposal of units/metrics to measure the indicators, based on those that organisations commonly use in their CSRs. For this purpose, information from 8 international programmes/frameworks that measure circularity at the territorial level was combined with circularity information that organisations are currently communicating in their CSRs. Finally, the proposed set of indicators and metrics were applied to a Spanish organisation dedicated to the forestry and paper sector with a CSR based on GRI-Standards. The results demonstrated that 25 of the 34 proposed indicators (74%) can be measured directly using the information included in the CSRs.
... Likewise, as environmental impacts have salience for financial risk, reporting may be expected even in the absence of non-financial reporting norms and requirements. The fact that information is provided about selected environmental interactions, however, is not the same as reporting that provides information on how well an organisation might navigate the dynamics of the Anthropocene: for example, Bjørn et al. (2017) note that such reporting largely does not reflect ecological limits. ...
Stewardship is a concept that has historically underpinned the practice of accounting, with a focus on the stewardship of financial resources. As times change, so too do the elements of organisational performance that might be subject to stewardship demands. Critically for this paper, a roadmap for organisational stewardship in the Anthropocene is developed. In brief, the Anthropocene is a term used to describe how human actions drive earth systems functioning, generating effects (for example) on the climate system as well as on the diversity of living creatures. Given these effects, an enlarged understanding of stewardship emerges that focuses on corporate purpose that takes account of wider than financial ambitions and effects as well as on governance processes that can support a broader perspective. The paper also highlights that achieving stewardship for ‘wicked problems’ that emerge from complex adaptive systems (with emergent elements and tipping points) might be best addressed by coalitions of organisations collaborating to achieve systems effects. Such an approach also suggests that accounting data gathering and tracing of organisational impact will require greater spatial capabilities than have previously been the case. Accounting for stewardship in the Anthropocene, therefore, represents a significant advance to current accounting practice. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
... More importantly, CSR reports are becoming increasingly important for the scientific community, especially in the study of methodology, definition, and frequency [29][30][31], as well as in the comparison of the different techniques used by companies from a qualitative perspective [32]. In this paper, we examine the content of CSR reports, focusing on the GRI reports more quantitatively through text-mining techniques. ...
This paper aims to evaluate the degree of affinity that Nordic companies’ reports published under the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) framework have. Several natural language processing and text-mining techniques were implemented and tested to achieve this goal. We extracted strings, corpus, and hybrid semantic similarities from the reports and evaluated the models through the intrinsic assessment methodology. A quantitative ranking score based on index matching was developed to complement the semantic valuation. The final results show that Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Global Vectors for word representation (GloVE) are the best methods for our study. Our findings will open the door to the automatic evaluation of sustainability reports which could have a substantial impact on the environment.
... Due to factors such as funding and non-resource e ciency, at present, this theory plays a relatively small role in the strategic decision-making of enterprises and departments (Haffar & Searcy,2018). Especially, climate change is the most concerned (Bjørn et al., 2017). ...
There are an increasing number of academic researches and sustainable development policies focusing on planetary boundaries. However, no research has been conducted to far on drawing scientific investigation map of planetary boundaries. Therefore, this paper conducted a scientometric analysis of 530 academic publications and their 1784 references on planetary boundaries from 2009 to 2021 by visualizing the social network, dual-map overlay, co-cited references, structure variation article, and co-occurrence keywords with Citespace. The results show that as a new achievement and paradigm in the field of sustainable development research, the planetary boundaries framework is gradually getting global attention and promotion, which increasingly becomes an interdisciplinary hot research topic. The most productive authors and institutions are concentrated in England, the United States, Germany, and Sweden. Relevant articles were mainly published in journals focusing on ecology, earth, marine, veterinary, animal, economics and politics, as represented by the dual-map overlay. In addition, we summarized three predominant research themes by clustering keywords: the calculation of single boundary threshold and present value, the integration with assessment methods such as life cycle assessment and footprint families, the downscaling of planetary boundaries, and the expansion to economic and social domains. For scholars interested in this topic, this paper would be a useful reference and guideline.
... Furthermore, deciding what assessment approaches or indicators to report progress for CE objectives remains the responsibility of the company , therefore, as Pauliuk, (2018) argued, could facilitate greenwashing practices as companies select which CE-related indicators best suits their corporate narrative. Regarding targets for CE, most studies have focussed on promoting the use of targets for limited aspects of CE such as recycling and recovery (e.g., Bjørn et al., 2017;Repo et al., 2018). More recently, Morseletto (2020), utilising the '10 R-strategy' framework from Potting et al. (2017) proposed a new set of targets encompassing a more holistic view of the CE. ...
Circular economy (CE) continues to become an increasingly important topic within disclosure frameworks and taxonomies for sustainable finance, however, early evidence points to CE not readily being included within corporate sustainability reports. Therefore, this research aims to explore how CE is emerging within the sustainability reports of companies listed in sustainability rankings. More specifically, the presence of CE within five corporate sustainability reporting elements has been investigated (when applicable): (i) the Chief Executive Officer's message, (ii) non-financial materiality assessments, (iii) references to the Sustainable Development Goal framework, (iv) targets, and (v) indicators. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis techniques were utilised to review 138 reports published in 2020 from 94 European companies, not restricted by sector. Results showed that nearly all companies are explicitly referencing CE, however, only 7% of them integrate CE within all five sustainability reporting elements. Less than one third of companies were found to include both targets and indicators for CE suggesting that overall, CE content within sustainability reports is largely superficial and inconsistent. This investigation contributes a descriptive overview of current CE reporting trends and shortcomings, as well as detailing implications relevant for academia and practitioners developing sustainability reports and/or CE assessments. The transition towards a CE requires transparency, therefore, further research and engagement is needed to better define the value of CE within external corporate communication.
... International policy and industry sustainability initiatives focus on energy efficiency, GHG emissions reduction, carbon neutrality, etc. Corporate sustainability reports commonly practice relative/efficiency improvements with a minimal mention (∼5% of all corporate reporting) of planetary boundaries and ecological limits (Bjørn et al., 2017a). Efficiency may not assure or yield effective results; effective results may not involve an efficient approach as a necessary condition. ...
Manufacturing organizations continuously improve their energy, environmental, and economic performance at different manufacturing levels (products, processes, enterprise, etc.) using various assessment methodologies for visibility and a competitive market edge. Sustainability assessment has become the focus of the manufacturing performance measurement in the last decade and has triggered numerous methodological developments and adoption in practice. The assessment focus has broadened from process to enterprise-level, single to multiple parameters, fragmented to a holistic point of view, and local businesses to global sustainability and circularity. Increasing global environmental burden, resource scarcity, and human health challenges urge a shift towards effective assessment practices. This article critically reviews sustainability assessment practices in manufacturing from a methodological efficiency-effectiveness perspective. A clear distinction between efficiency and effectiveness practices has been discussed. The requirements and research challenges for effectiveness in the sustainability assessment practice in theory (academia) and practice (industry) is presented.
... The second part of the research focused on predicting financial performance based on ESG data while the last part had the goal of either predicting ratings or creating entirely new ways of measuring ESG performance. Since many firms publish sustainability reports on an annual basis [30], this medium was frequently analyzed by researchers using content analysis or text mining with the aim of identifying topics and trends [6,18,29,30,36,37,57]. A similar methodology was also applied to shareholder resolutions [44]. ...
Over the past years, topics ranging from climate change to human rights have seen increasing importance for investment decisions. Hence, investors (asset managers and asset owners) who wanted to incorporate these issues started to assess companies based on how they handle such topics. For this assessment, investors rely on specialized rating agencies that issue ratings along the environmental, social and governance (ESG) dimensions. Such ratings allow them to make investment decisions in favor of sustainability. However, rating agencies base their analysis on subjective assessment of sustainability reports, not provided by every company. Furthermore, due to human labor involved, rating agencies are currently facing the challenge to scale up the coverage in a timely manner. In order to alleviate these challenges and contribute to the overall goal of supporting sustainability, we propose a heterogeneous ensemble model to predict ESG ratings using fundamental data. This model is based on feedforward neural network, CatBoost and XGBoost ensemble members. Given the public availability of fundamental data, the proposed method would allow cost-efficient and scalable creation of initial ESG ratings (also for companies without sustainability reporting). Using our approach we are able to explain 54% of the variation in ratings R2 using fundamental data and outperform prior work in this area.
... Although there is little acknowledgement of planetary boundaries, some firms have begun to incorporate this concept into their corporate reports (Bjørn et al. 2016;Veldman and Jansson 2020). However, it remains a necessity to include them within the green debt financing (Tuhkanen and Vulturius 2020). ...
Planetary boundaries (PB) is a novel conceptual framework that assesses the state of processes fundamental to the stability of the Earth system. Studies argue a non-linear relationship between economy and environmental degradation, known as the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). We postulate this inverted-U association between PB and economic output in a worldwide sample. This paper, therefore, examines the correlation between changes in environmental conditions and global economic growth, incorporating the growth rate of key control variables (population, financial development, merchandise trade and regulations). Thus, we intend to identify and address the main gaps in these EKC studies and analyse the impacts of worldwide economic growth on global environmental change. PB variables are identified as the more integrated perspective with regard to this change. These planetary boundaries include various proxies: global CO2 concentration as a climate change proxy, threatened species for biodiversity loss, the total ozone for ozone depletion, mean surface ocean hydrogen ion concentration for ocean acidification and global fertiliser consumption for biochemical cycles. Under this integrated perspective, the EKC hypothesis is supported for climate change and ocean acidification panels using a dynamic system generalized method of moments (GMM) approach. Meanwhile, biochemical cycles, ozone depletion and freshwater use, land change and biodiversity loss boundaries do not support the existence of the EKC shape using the same methodology. The results provide an additional and novel view to be factored into the decisions of policymaker and investment institutions to contribute to sustainable development in all countries.
... Considering recent trends, the planetary boundary (PB) framework has received considerable attention as an environmental sustainability reference and has been diffused into policy making (Galaz et al., 2012) and into industrial organizations (Bjørn et al., 2017;Steffen et al., 2015). PB provides a framework for managing environmental resources at the global level and a way to move beyond assessing anthropogenic systems in terms of ecoefficiency in order to assess their impacts in relation to the actual state of the environment. ...
Energy and Carbon Management Systems (ECMS) are a class of green information systems that has the potential to increase environmental sustainability in organizations and across supply chains. Employing a design science research approach, we define the scope of ECMS in the supply chain context, identify requirements, design an expository instantiation, and develop an information systems design theory, including key constructs and design principles. We instantiate this theory in four supply chain contexts to validate and revise the proposed design in two rounds. We identify six system components-data collection, energy monitoring, supply chain coordination, ECMS workflow engine, reporting, and carbon footprint estimator-that integrate and coordinate four types of information flows (transactional, contextual, energy, and product-environmental), and formulate design principles. Our evaluation indicates that the ECMS design theory, if instantiated, supports energy and carbon measurement and environmentally aware decision-making and practicing in supply chains. We also highlight how considering energy information flows in combination with material features that afford environmentally aware decision-making and practicing are key to qualifying information systems as "green." Keywords. Energy and carbon management systems, green information systems, sustainable supply chain management, design science research
... They argue that the sustainability context is missing from both corporate sustainability and SR. Evidence for the lack of context in SR was provided in an extensive study that looked at 40,000 sustainability reports published by 12,000 companies between 2000 and 2014 (Bjørn et al. 2017). The researchers found that just 5% of them made a reference to ecological limits on any given year, and only 31 in total used these ecological limits to define different targets. ...
Reporting non-financial data has become a key element of corporate sustainability. Most public companies now offer regular updates on their progress toward voluntary sustainability commitments, reflecting a growing demand from investors and other stakeholders for greater transparency on sustainability-related issues. This chapter examines the evolution of sustainability reporting (SR), including the development of reporting standards and frameworks (e.g., GRI, SASB, IIRC), and their different approaches to SR. It questions SR’s overall effectiveness in terms of advancing corporate sustainability meaningfully, looking under the hood of SR to study it from a systemic point of view. This inquiry considers three possible explanations for SR’s shortcomings: applying a “mechanical” approach instead of a “biological” one, having little to no context, and adhering to a sustainability-as-usual mindset.
... A survey conducted by Antonini and Larrinaga (2017) shows that few corporations set environmental boundaries, while most reporting entities are subject to financial control rather than environmental sustainability targets. Bjørn et al. (2017) review a number of corporate responsibility reports with reference to ecological limits, finding that the 2°C threshold for climate change is the most frequently used target, whereas the threshold behaviors of local environment are rarely reflected in corporate reports. Another similar convey made by Haffar and Searcy (2018) indicates that none of the targets reported by sustainability-leading companies in Canada is virtually connected to any PB-informed thresholds, and only a small fraction of the targets qualitatively make reference to the biophysical processes of some PBs. ...
The planetary boundaries (PBs) delineating the safe operating space for human activities have been broadly recognized as a well-grounded framework for global sustainability assessment. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the application and methodological extensions of the PBs by linking with multiscale environmental sustainability assessments. We find that the targeted scales, sharing principles and sustainability perspectives jointly determine the downscaling of the PBs—a complex process that needs to take into account the biophysical, socioeconomic, ethical and cultural dimensions. Despite the varying sharing principles, in general both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been employed to define the environmental boundaries at sub-global scales on which the various PBs highly differ in their threshold behaviors. To clarify the responsibility of different stakeholders for sustainable development, the PB-informed sustainability assessment should refer to a specific perspective (i.e., production-, consumption-, or life cycle-based). Furthermore, the methodological extensions of PBs have the potential to monitor the progress and gaps of the globally consensus-based Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To achieve the SDGs within the PBs, there is a great need for a thorough transition of socioeconomic systems towards a prosperous, just and sustainable future.
... Instead, new targets are not yet applied in the economy; they are needed because existing are limited to a few issues (e.g. recycling, efficiency improvement) and only cover limited arrays of CE solutions, such as recycling or, efficiency (Bjørn et al., 2017;Milios, 2018;Ranta et al., 2018). The CirBioeco goes beyond these solutions that involve aspects like closed loops or value retention at higher levels (e.g. ...
This study has attempted to ascertain the linkages between circular bio-economy (CirBioeco) and recycling of electronic (e-)waste by applying microbial activities instead of the smelter and chemical technologies. To build the research hypothesis, the advances on biotechnology-driven recycling processes for metals extraction from e-waste has been analyzed briefly. Thereafter, based on the potential of microbial techniques and research hypothesis, the structural model has been tested for a significance level of 99%, which is supported by the corresponding standardization co-efficient values. A prediction model applied to determine the recycling impact on CirBioeco indicates to re-circulate 51,833 tons of copper and 58 tons of gold by 2030 for the production of virgin metals/raw-materials, while recycling rate of the accumulated e-waste remains to be 20%. This restoration volume of copper and gold through the microbial activities corresponds to mitigate 174 million kg CO2 emissions and 24 million m3 water consumption if compared with the primary production activities. The study potentially opens a new window for environmentally-friendly biotechnological recycling of e-waste under the umbrella concept of CirBioeco.
... Mais recentemente, por meio da chamada Agenda 2030, a Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) renovou esse chamado de atenção para questões de sustentabilidade, envolvendo, é claro, as organizações empresariais (BORGERT et al., 2018). Todavia, chama-se a atenção para o fato de o conceito de "desenvolvimento sustentável" possuir controvérsias, especialmente devido à natureza subjetiva das necessidades humanas e à complexa tarefa de identificar as condições necessárias para atendê-las (BJØRN et al., 2017). ...
Considerando a crescente adesão de empresas ao redor do mundo pelo modelo de reporte da Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) para a produção de relatórios de sustentabilidade, o objetivo deste artigo é identificar pontos positivos e negativos desse modelo. Para tanto, procedeu-se à uma revisão da literatura, buscando-se artigos nacionais e internacionais em bases de dados constantes no Portal de Periódicos da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior. Foram selecionados 55 artigos que traziam pontos positivos e/ou negativos dos relatórios de sustentabilidade no modelo de reporte da GRI. Observou-se que o periódico “Journal of Cleaner Production” se sobressaiu em relação ao número de publicações sobre o assunto, com 25 artigos do total. Os pontos positivos destacados na pesquisa foram agrupados nos seguintes tópicos: “Responsabilidade, transparência e legitimidade organizacional”; “Padronização e comparabilidade”; “Popularidade e credibilidade”; e “Abrangência”. Já os pontos negativos destacados, em tópicos, foram: “Incompletude”; “Padronização pouco rígida e dificuldade em estabelecer comparações”, “Greenwashing”; “Diferentes expectativas dos stakeholders”; “Alto custo de desenvolvimento do relatório”; e “Falta de integração entre indicadores”. Buscou-se contribuir preenchendo uma lacuna na literatura sobre estudos desse tipo, que reunissem os pontos fortes e fracos do modelo GRI, observando-se ainda certos pontos de controvérsias entre autores. Como sugestão para pesquisas futuras, recomenda-se um aprofundamento em relação ao princípio da materialidade, considerado ponto crítico por alguns autores presentes nesta revisão e pouco abordado na literatura.
... Clarkson et al. (2008) highlight that voluntary sustainability reporting by businesses is limited by resource availability (information production costs) and vulnerability caused by potentially negative disclosures (proprietary costs). In other sectors, reporting on (environmental) sustainability issues remains very rare, estimated at about 5% of all companies (Bjørn et al., 2017). It is also disputed if sustainability disclosures actually translates into better actual performance or simply reframe existing operations or minor internal adjustments (Clarkson et al., 2008). ...
The agricultural sector faces serious environmental, social and economic challenges. In response, there has been a proliferation of labels and certifications aiming to ensure minimum farm sustainability performance. Organic agriculture (OA) a prominent example, having received substantial research attention relating to agronomic and environmental performance. While international OA movements are evolving to include broader sustainability aspirations, limited research exists on the social and economic performance of OA. To address this, we conducted a representative farm-based assessment of the Swiss organic sector to evaluate its contribution to sustainability across a wide range of themes based on the FAO Sustainability of Agriculture and Food Assessment (SAFA) Guidelines. We assessed 185 farms using the Sustainability Assessment and Monitoring RouTine (SMART) Farm Tool, chosen through stratified random sampling by farm type and agricultural zone. The results indicate that the Swiss organic sector makes a substantially positive contribution to sustainability, with average scores for theme goal achievement of 62% (Good Governance), 77% (Environmental Integrity), 70% (Economic Resilience), and 87% (Social Well-being). A set of 45 influential indicators (28 for plant production/mix farms and 30 for livestock farms) were selected based on the ability to explain variance (using Principal Component Analysis) and importance for goal achievement. The indicator sets explained a large amount of variation (ca. 70% for both farm types) and revealed a snapshot of management topics relevant to sustainability performance across the sector. These covered socio-political engagement, emissions to air and water, biodiversity, animal welfare, profitability, vulnerability, product quality, local economy, capacity building, and workplace risks. The spread of results across the sample, and comparisons to secondary data (literature and official statistics), revealed the importance of both well-studied issues (e.g., wide spread of energy consumption, variable yield levels/stability, local value chain dynamics) and more novel insights Curran et al. Sustainability of Swiss Organic Farms (e.g., strong political engagement, variable price premiums, lacking social security of farming families, insecure land tenure). We propose these topics as a basis for deeper analysis, designing improvement measures and conducting comparative research. This would bring much-needed breadth into the typically narrow debate surrounding the relative merits of OA.
... It is estimated by its developers to cover more than 90% of all reporting companies, and it is updated daily (Corporate Register, 2017b). A search engine is available on the website for conducting specific report content searches as previously undertaken by Bjørn, Bey, Georg, Røpke, and Hauschild (2017). ...
Large companies now commonly release corporate sustainability (CS) reports in which they describe their approach to handle sustainability challenges. To guide environmental sustainability efforts in the industry, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been recognized as an important tool by researchers and policy makers. But to what extent has the LCA methodology been present in companies' narratives through their CS reports up to now? To answer this question, we map references to the LCA methodology in CS reports over the past two decades at geographical, sectoral, and company levels through keyword searching within an extensive database (~45,000 CS reports), analyze trends, and highlight challenges, opportunities, and recommendations to strengthen the presence of LCA in CS reports. The results show that LCA generally remains weakly present in CS reporting, with some geographical and sectoral variations. Recommendations to strengthen LCA presence in CS reports are derived for method developers, policy makers, and companies.
... While more than 900 companies have adopted science-based targets for mitigating climate change, Bjørn et al. [8] have shown more broadly that the uptake of such approaches has been relatively limited to date. This may be because methods for disaggregation are in their infancy, given the challenge of linking drivers to responsibility around our interconnected planet. ...
The term “science-based targets” has gained recent popularity. It is used to refer both to overall science-based targets (established through intergovernmental treaties), and to their disaggregation into specific science-based targets (determining contributions of individual actors). Biophysical achievability, measurability, and underpinning rationale are requirements for considering a target to be “science-based”.
... Although the reported literature clearly states the importance of planning in implementing sustainability into manufacturing, the main focus of the studies has hitherto been on the relative improvement with a triple-bottom line improvement. Analysing more than 40,000 corporate sustainability reports from the period 2000À2014, Bjørn and colleagues found that only around 5% of the companies related to absolute targets (mainly for climate impacts) in their reporting [16]. To operationalise absolute sustainability, it is crucial for manufacturing organisations to have a strategic plan towards achieving the reductions in environmental impact that is needed to stay within the space allocated to their organisations [128]. ...
The global society faces huge challenges to meet the expanding needs of a growing population within the constraints posed by a climate crisis and a strongly accelerated loss of biodiversity. For sustainability, the total environmental impact of our activities must respect the planetary boundaries that define what is a safe operating space for our civilization. Engineering must change the current focus on eco-efficiency to a search for solutions that are effective in terms of operating within the share of the total pollution space that they can claim. Engineering for environmental sustainability must be life cycle engineering, and the paper positions it relative to the constraints given by the boundaries of the ecosystems, the targets of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals and the strategies for a circular economy. This top-down perspective is combined with a bottom-up perspective from the life cycle of the product and technology. For each stage of the life cycle, the contents of the toolbox for life cycle engineering are reviewed, and a perspective is given on how absolute environmental sustainability requirements can be incorporated in a target-driven life cycle engineering.
... For example, normative justifications are needed for questions such as what economic, environmental, and/or social thresholds firms need to operate in. It is rarely clear where corporate activity intersects with even widely recognized thresholds, like the planetary boundaries (Bjørn et al., 2017;Schaltegger et al., 2018;Whiteman et al., 2013). Firms impact, and are impacted by, different thresholds in different ways. ...
Sustainable development is a subject of intense discussion, mainly due to climate change, pollution, and increased waste, among other factors. The governments of various countries worldwide have been setting environmental targets for emissions and consumption to combat climate change and improve the state of our planet. Therefore, it is necessary to have an environmental policy with stakeholder engagement. The literature review method, bibliometric analysis, and visual mappings were applied to understand how these sustainable targets are formulated and used by companies to comply with the limits proposed by governments. The Web of Science platform allowed data collection about Lean and Green, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), and Science-Based Targets (SBT). The carried analyses identified the most relevant papers using the PRISMA method, including their authors, their temporal distribution, and a correlation map using the VOSviewer tool. Hence, mapping the current state of the art concerning the SBT topic. Furthermore, a novel conceptual model is proposed to integrate lean and green and create new KPI applied to the definition of SBT to give companies a path and tools to achieve the climate targets efficiently. Future research should focus on the implementation of the conceptual model in several companies to understand its impact to correct and improve the conceptual model proposed.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to problematize the need for debate in operationalizing the planetary boundaries framework when accounting for the Anthropocene.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper’s aim is achieved through a literature review focusing on the assumptions around the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries and organizations. The author conducted an integrated review of 91 documents discussing the operationalization of the planetary boundaries framework and the need for debate.
Findings
This paper develops two major findings. First, the author identifies the four main dimensions of the planetary boundaries that need to be debated: social, normative, narrative and control aspects. Second, the author exposes proposals in the literature that have the potential to fuel the debate, but which are themselves a source of debate.
Practical implications
This paper argues that, while being scientifically informed, the planetary boundaries framework leaves decision-makers with critical choices and decisions that need to be openly debated. This paper identifies some relevant proposals for doing so.
Social implications
This paper underlines the need to open forums of debate for scientists and other stakeholders to raise the democratic legitimacy of the planetary boundaries framework.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the very first papers to investigate dimensions of the planetary boundaries that need to be debated to respond to the challenge of its operationalization.
Being integral to the fossil-based energy order and as a key driver of multiple and intersecting ecological crises, the petrochemical industry faces increasing pressures to transform. This paper examines how major petrochemical companies navigate these pressures. Drawing from literatures on discursive power, narratives, and neoGramscian political economy, we introduce the concept of narrative realignment as a nuanced iteration of corporate discursive power that reframes problems of and solutions to green transitions. Specifically, we identify and explore common transition-related narratives, analysing climate and sustainability communications from the largest producers in the petrochemical sector. We argue that these strategic narratives portray the petrochemical industry as key to a successful transition and fend off criticisms by reducing them to misunderstandings. This framing works to reduce pressures for deep mitigation while repositioning the industry as part of the solution. Building on these findings, we demonstrate how petrochemical transition narratives relate to but also diverge from the position of fossil fuel extractors. Despite relying on fossil feedstock and being solidly placed in the fossil economy, petrochemical majors increasingly focus on repositioning themselves proactively as transition enablers. The argument illustrates the work of downstream actors to legitimize the existing energy order.
In this conceptual paper, we examine current theories of natural capital approach implementation and identify areas where further research is needed to help humanity live within planetary boundaries. Natural capital and ecosystem service approaches offer an advanced understanding of Earth's life‐support systems and their interaction with human well‐being at multiple scales, particularly organizations. The insights they offer are present in conservation and accounting literature but are not yet reflected in corporate environmental sustainability literature, a gap this paper seeks to bridge. Without considering scale, it is difficult to understand how micro (individual) and meso (organizational or national) actions contribute to global goals (planetary boundaries). We suggest a multi‐level natural capital implementation framework for corporate environmental sustainability and explain how it can advance natural capital implementation by including scoping and monitoring phases and increasing awareness of natural resource dependencies and how it advances multi‐level environmental management theory.
Plastic pollution is a pervasive and escalating global environmental problem, named among the most serious environmental issues globally, after climate change. A large percentage of the global plastic waste leakage is estimated to come from Asia, and most of this is from food and drink packaging. As a major user of single-use packaging, the food and beverage sector plays an important role in addressing plastic pollution, yet investigation of the uptake and transition to sustainable packaging by this industry sector remains limited. To contribute to filling this gap, a systematic review of 68 corporate sustainability reports was conducted to examine how major multinational companies in the food and beverage sector are addressing plastic pollution. This study focuses on how these companies address plastic pollution and packaging in their corporate sustainability reports, what sustainable packaging strategies they present, and how the companies address producer responsibility. The results show that the transition to sustainable packaging in the food and beverage sector is slow and inconsistent. Most corporate sustainability reports fail to address plastic pollution. There is a tendency for companies to report on collection and recycling, rather than sustainable packaging solutions aimed at systemic change. Producer responsibility concerning packaging is growing, however, most companies are doing very little to reduce plastic waste especially in regions lacking waste management infrastructure, such as those in emerging economies.
This chapter introduces the theoretical background. First, the concept of environmental sustainability and the research field of life cycle engineering are introduced. Next, a general overview on the technical aspects of EVs and traction batteries is presented. This section in particular intends to describe the operating principles of EVs and traction batteries, and to give an overview of their components, materials and manufacturing processes. Finally, the most relevant aspects of electromobility from a life cycle engineering perspective are summarized.
Pakistan is a resource-constrained country, poor in municipal and healthcare facilities. Existing healthcare structures in the country are often overcrowded, and an effective monitoring and assessment of their sustainability is therefore crucial. In this study, a systemic approach is outlined to evaluate the environmental sustainability of the largest and sole public hospital in the major city of Gujranwala, in the Punjab region of Pakistan. The Emergy (spelled with “m”) Accounting (EMA) method is applied. Its operationalization
allows to keep track of the amount of energy that was consumed in direct and indirect transformations to make a product or service. Relevant data include the hospital requirements in terms of energy, water, products, labor, and services. The EMA results offer a supply-side geobiosphereoriented perspective. Emergy indicators show that the hospital is indirectly responsible for a significant stress on the environment, that might be decreased
by an increased efficiency in the resource use. On the other hand, a hospital is a complex system, depending on skilled laborforce as well as on several fine imported medical products and related services, making it dependent on external socio-economic systems. The presented results address the geography dependent characteristics of the hospital, and can be used for benchmarking and future evaluation of similar hospitals within and across
the region.
This study examines the sustainability reports (SRs)of 200 firms in both developed and emerging economies in order to identify the words most frequently used in disclosing sustainability practices within the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach to reporting (which emphasizes economic, environmental, and social dimensions). Its aim is to evaluate these sustainability reports under the umbrella of the GRI framework. It adopts a semi-automated Text-Mining (TM) technique to evaluate the corporate SRs of select firms from the top ten economies by GDP at current prices. Based on the GRI Standards guidelines, a total of 208 keywords were identified for analysis. The disclosures were then awarded points based on the appearance of these keywords so that the appearance of one resulted in the awarding of a score of one; if a keyword did not appear then the report was scored a zero for that word. Furthermore, a wordcloud was also generated in order to better understand the inclination of reporting language towards various TBL reporting categories. This analysis of the SRs of 200 firms from the top ten economies of the world sheds light on the differences in reporting practices and priorities as they relate to various aspects of the GRI Standards guidelines. The results indicate that SR practices have grown rapidly in the last half decade of the period selected for study (2013-2017) as compared to the first half (2008-2012). Canada ranked highest for its disclosure practices in this analysis followed by the UK, Germany, US, Japan, France, Italy, Brazil, India, and China. This study found that all included countries improved their sustainability performance over the period 2008-2017.
While large companies routinely announce greenhouse gas emissions targets, few have derived targets based on global climate goals. This changed in 2015 with the creation of the science based targets (SBTs) initiative, which provides guidelines for setting emission targets in line with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. SBTs have now been set by more than 500 companies. Methods for setting such targets are not presented in a comparable way in target-setting guidelines and concerns that certain methods may lead to overshoot of the temperature goal have not been investigated. Here, we systematically characterize and compare all seven broadly applicable target-setting methods and quantify the balance between collective corporate SBTs and global allowable emissions for individual methods and different method mixes. We use a simplified global production scenario composed of eight archetypical companies to evaluate target-setting methods across a range of company characteristics and global emission scenarios. The methods vary greatly with respect to emission allocation principles, required company variables and embedded global emission scenarios. Some methods treat companies largely the same, while others differentiate between company types based on geography, economic sector, projected growth rate or baseline emission intensity. The application of individual target-setting methods as well as different mixes of methods tend to result in an imbalance between time-integrated aggregated SBTs and global allowable emissions. The sign and size of this imbalance is in some cases sensitive to the shape of the global emission pathway and the distribution of variables between the company archetypes. We recommend that the SBT initiative (a) use our SBT method characterisation to present methods in a systematic way, (b) consider our emission imbalance analysis in its method recommendations, (c) disclose underlying reasons for its method recommendations, and (d) require transparency from companies on the calculation of established SBTs.
This paper offers a critique of sustainability reporting and, in particular, a critique of the modern disconnect between the practice of sustainability reporting and what we consider to be the urgent issue of our era: sustaining the life-supporting ecological systems on which humanity and other species depend. Tracing the history of such reporting developments, we identify and isolate the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) as a core and dominant idea that continues to pervade business reporting, and business engagement with sustainability. Incorporating an entity’s economic, environmental and social performance indicators into its management and reporting processes, we argue, has become synonymous with corporate sustainability; in the process, concern for ecology has become sidelined. Moreover, this process has become reinforced and institutionalised through SustainAbility’s biennial benchmarking reports, KPMG’s triennial surveys of practice, initiatives by the accountancy profession and, particularly, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s sustainability reporting guidelines. We argue that the TBL and the GRI are insufficient conditions for organizations contributing to the sustaining of the Earth’s ecology. Paradoxically, they may reinforce business-as-usual and greater levels of un-sustainability.
The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes
that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus
on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and on more general scientific
advances over the past 5 years. Several of the boundaries now have a two-tier approach, reflecting the importance of cross-scale
interactions and the regional-level heterogeneity of the processes that underpin the boundaries. Two core boundaries—climate
change and biosphere integrity—have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth system
into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.
The ever tighter coupling of our food, water and energy systems, in the context of a changing climate is leading to increasing turbulence in the world. As a consequence, it becomes ever more crucial to develop cities, regions, and economies with resilience in mind. Because of their global reach, substantial resources, and information-driven leadership structures, multinational corporations can play a major, constructive role in improving our understanding and design of resilient systems.
This volume is the product of the Resilience Action Initiative, a collaboration among Dow, DuPont, IBM, McKinsey, Shell, Siemens, Swiss Re, Unilever, and Yara designed to explore possible corporate contributions to global resilience, especially at the nexus of water, food and energy. Aggressively forward-thinking, and consistent with an enlightened self-interest, the ideas considered here represent a corporate perspective on the broad collaborations required for a more resilient world.
In recent years, a new, literalist approach to managing the sustainability performance of organizations has emerged, the makeup of which stands in stark contrast to the prevailing, incrementalist approach. Unlike the incrementalist approach, which is predicated on the view that progress in sustainability occurs whenever marginal improvements in the social and environmental impacts of organizations are made, the literalist approach takes a more rigorous stand. Under the literalist doctrine (also known as context-based sustainability, or CBS), an organization’s sustainability performance is a function of what its social and environmental impacts are relative to specific norms, standards, or thresholds for what its impacts must be in order to be sustainable. Here the literalist doctrine relies on the principle of sustainability context, or the general idea that sustainability performance assessments must be made in light of social and ecological limits, and always with reference to them.
Notwithstanding its intellectual pedigree, however, and its prominence in leading standards for measurement and reporting (e.g., the Global Reporting Initiative), actual implementations of sustainability context in practice are rare at best, and almost always inconsistent if not completely at odds with one another. Guidelines for how to apply sustainability context in practice are, themselves, rare as well.
In response, this paper takes up the question of what the research and development needs and opportunities in the field of CBS are that must be addressed if moving sustainability context from the realm of theory into practice is to have any chance of succeeding. The authors begin by defining CBS, explaining the logic and epistemology behind it, and then go on to identify and discuss specific issues of interest requiring further research and development in the social and environmental accounting domains. The breadth and depth of research needs and opportunities here are extensive.
With growing water needs for food production, it is necessary to improve
the quantification of "Environmental Flow Requirements (EFRs)" to secure
enough water for the freshwater ecosystems. In this study, five methods
for calculating EFRs were compared to 11 case studies of
locally-calculated EFRs. Three of the methods already existed (Smakhtin,
Tennant and Tessmann) and two were developed in this study (the Variable
Monthly Flow method and the Q90_Q50 method). The
Variable Monthly Flow (VFM) method mimics for the first time the natural
flow regimes while being "validated" at global and local scales. The VFM
uses algorithms to classify flow regime into high, intermediate and
low-flow months to take into account intra-annual variability by
allocating EFRs with a percentage of mean monthly flow (MMF). The
Q90_Q50 method allocates annual flow quantiles
(Q50 and Q90) depending on the flow season. The
results showed that, over all methods, 37% of annual discharge was
allocated to "Nature" with a higher pressure on low flow requirements
(LFR = 46% to 71% of average low flows) than on high flow requirements
(HFR = 17% to 45% of average high flows). Environmental flow methods
using fixed annual thresholds such as Tennant,
Q90_Q50 and Smakhtin seemed to overestimate EFRs
of stable flow regimes and underestimate EFRs of variable flow regimes.
VFM and Tessmann methods showed the highest correlation with the
locally-calculated EFRs (R2 = 0.91). The main difference
between the Tessmann and VFM methods is that Tessmann method does not
allow any water withdrawals during the low-flow season. Those five
methods were tested within the global vegetation and hydrological model
LPJml. The calculated global annual EFRs for "fair" ecological
conditions represent between 25 to 46% of mean annual flow (MAF).
Variable flow regimes such as the Nile have lower EFRs (ranging from 12
to 48% of MAF) than stable tropical regimes such as the Amazon (EFRs
ranging from 30 to 67% of MAF).
Water footprints have been proposed as sustainability indicators, relating
the consumption of goods like food to the amount of water necessary for
their production and the impacts of that water use in the source regions. We
further developed the existing water footprint methodology, by globally
resolving virtual water flows from production to consumption regions for
major food crops at 5 arcmin spatial resolution. We distinguished
domestic and international flows, and assessed local impacts of export
production. Applying this method to three exemplary cities, Berlin, Delhi
and Lagos, we find major differences in amounts, composition, and origin of
green and blue virtual water imports, due to differences in diets, trade
integration and crop water productivities in the source regions. While
almost all of Delhi's and Lagos' virtual water imports are of domestic
origin, Berlin on average imports from more than 4000 km distance, in
particular soy (livestock feed), coffee and cocoa. While 42% of Delhi's
virtual water imports are blue water based, the fractions for Berlin and
Lagos are 2 and 0.5%, respectively, roughly equal to the water
volumes abstracted in these two cities for domestic water use. Some of the
external source regions of Berlin's virtual water imports appear to be
critically water scarce and/or food insecure. However, for deriving
recommendations on sustainable consumption and trade, further analysis of
context-specific costs and benefits associated with export production will
be required.
Water footprints have been proposed as sustainability indicators,
relating the consumption of goods like food to the amount of water
necessary for their production and the impacts of that water use in the
source regions. We have further developed the existing water footprint
methodology by globally resolving virtual water flows and import and
source regions at 5 arc minutes spatial resolution, and by assessing
local impacts of export production. Applying this method to three
exemplary cities, Berlin, Delhi and Lagos, we find major differences in
amounts, composition, and origin of green and blue virtual water
imports, due to differences in diets, trade integration and crop water
productivities in the source regions. While almost all of Delhi's and
Lagos' virtual water imports are of domestic origin, Berlin on average
imports from more than 4000 km distance, in particular soy (livestock
feed), coffee and cocoa. While 42% of Delhi's virtual water imports are
blue water based, the fractions for Berlin and Lagos are 2% and 0.5%,
respectively, roughly equal to local drinking water abstractions of
these cities. Some of the external source regions of Berlin's virtual
water imports appear to be critically water scarce and/or food insecure.
However for deriving recommendations on sustainable consumption and
trade, further analysis of context-specific costs and benefits
associated with export production will be required.
How much must I reduce my greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions if I want to do my fair share to contribute towards the global effort to keep global warming below a 2 °C rise in average temperature over preindustrial times? This paper suggests an answer for nations and corporations that want to move ahead of legislation on a voluntary basis.If all nations reduce their “GHG emissions per unit of GDP” by 5% per year, global GHG emissions will be 50% lower in 2050 than in 2010 as long as the global economy continues to grow at its historical rate of 3.5% per year. The suggested 5% per year decline can be translated into a corporate resolution to reduce corporate “GHG emissions per unit of value added” (GEVA) by 5% per year.If all corporations cut their GEVA by 5% per year, the same global result will be achieved. The suggested 5% per year decline can be used as a guideline for responsible action on a voluntary basis. The guideline is unlikely to be made mandatory soon, but compulsory publication of the necessary emissions and productivity data by nations and corporations could help civil society highlight top performers.
The concept of sustainable development from 1980 to the present has evolved into definitions of the three pillars of sustainability (social, economic and environmental). The recent economic and financial crisis has helped to newly define economic sustainability. It has brought into focus the economic pillar and cast a question mark over the sustainability of development based on economic progress. This means fully addressing the economic issues on their own merits with no apparent connection to the environmental aspects. Environmental sustainability is correctly defined by focusing on its biogeophysical aspects. This means maintaining or improving the integrity of the Earth's life supporting systems. The concept of sustainable development and its three pillars has evolved from a rather vague and mostly qualitative notion to more precise specifications defined many times over in quantitative terms. Hence the need for a wide array of indicators is very clear. The paper analyses the different approaches and types of indicators developed which are used for the assessment of environmental sustainability. One important aspect here is setting targets and then “measuring” the distance to a target to get the appropriate information on the current state or trend.
The report is describing the general principles and default methodology of the EPS system. The system principles and methodology is based on earlier versions of the EPS system, in particular the version 1996. The present version has been given the number 2000. In comparison with the 1996 version the basic principles are the same, but the description is more detailed and the ISO standard language is adopted.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas are increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. These increased concentrations cause additional energy to be retained in Earths climate system, thus increasing Earths temperature. Various methods have been proposed to prevent this temperature increase either by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or by reflecting sunlight to space that would otherwise warm the Earth. Such intentional alteration of planetary scale processes has been called geoengineering. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) raises issues related primarily to scale, cost, effectiveness, and local environmental consequences. It is likely that the scale of CDR deployment will depend primarily on cost. In contrast, solar geoengineering (also Solar Radiation Management, SRM) raise novel global-scale governance and environmental issues. Some SRM approaches are thought to be low in cost, thus it is likely that the scale of SRM deployment will depend primarily on consid...
European critical loads and novel dynamic modelling data have been compiled under the LRTAP Convention by the Coordination Centre for Effects. In 2000 9.8% of the pan-European and 20.8% of the EU25 ecosystem area were at risk of acidification. For eutrophication (nutrient N) the areas at risk were 30.1 and 71.2%, respectively. Dynamic modelling results reveal that 95% of the area at risk of acidification could recover by 2030 provided acid deposition is reduced according to present legislation. Insight into the timing of effects
of exceedances of critical loads for nutrient N necessitates the further development of dynamic models.
The paper reviews how the concept of sustainable development has played out in industrialized countries since 1987. It examines the theory and practice of sustainable development in the context of three criticisms (it is vague, attracts hypocrites and fosters delusions), and argues for an approach to sustainability that is integrative, is action-oriented, goes beyond technical fixes, incorporates a recognition of the social construction of sustainable development, and engages local communities in new ways. The paper concludes with a description of an approach to sustainability that attempts to incorporate these characteristics.
Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. We have identified nine planetary boundaries and, drawing upon current scientific understanding, we propose quantifications for seven of them. These seven are climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere
Efficient library searches for research evidence are critical to practitioners who wish to engage in evidence-based practice (EBP) as well as researchers who seek to develop systematic reviews.
This review will propose the benefits of the search technique 'Pearl Growing' ('Traditional Pearl Growing') as well as an adaptation of this technique ('Comprehensive Pearl Growing'), until now ignored by the literature on EBP and systematic reviews, to aid in the retrieval of research evidence. These search techniques are illustrated with examples from the field of augmentative and alternative communication. MAIN CONTRIBUTIONS: Traditional Pearl Growing is proposed as an important addition to the arsenal of EBP search strategies for practitioners. The literature on Traditional Pearl Growing is extended in that EBP presents a newly identified purpose for this technique and the benefits in identifying appropriate quality filter goes beyond its previously exclusive focus on keywords. Comprehensive Pearl Growing is projected as a new strategy for researchers searching for studies to be included in systematic reviews. Not only does it provide data-based guidance in selecting effective keywords and quality filters, but also it provides appropriate databases.
Although the techniques Traditional Pearl Growing and Comprehensive Pearl Growing are believed to be useful for locating research evidence in any field, it may be particularly important for interdisciplinary topics where the use of effective controlled vocabulary plays a greater role in bringing together evidence that may be scattered across databases.
Environmental monitoring indicates that progress towards the goal of environmental sustainability in many cases is slow, non-existing or negative. Indicators that use environmental carrying capacity references to evaluate whether anthropogenic systems are, or will potentially be, environmentally sustainable are therefore increasingly important. Such absolute indicators exist, but suffer from shortcomings such as incomplete coverage of environmental issues, varying data quality and varying or insufficient spatial resolution. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that life cycle assessment (LCA) can potentially reduce or eliminate these shortcomings.
Corporate climate action is increasingly considered important in driving the transition towards a low-carbon economy. For this, it is critical to ensure translation of global goals to greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets at company level. At the moment, however, there is a lack of clear methods to derive consistent corporate target setting that keeps cumulative corporate GHG emissions within a specific carbon budget (for example, 550-1,300GtCO2 between 2011 and 2050 for the 2°C target). Here we propose a method for corporate emissions target setting that derives carbon intensity pathways for companies based on sectoral pathways from existing mitigation scenarios: the Sectoral Decarbonization Approach (SDA). These company targets take activity growth and initial performance into account. Next to target setting on company level, the SDA can be used by companies, policymakers, investors or other stakeholders as a benchmark for tracking corporate climate performance and actions, providing a mechanism for corporate accountability.
Purpose
There is currently a weak or no link between the indicator scores quantified in life cycle assessment (LCA) and the carrying capacity of the affected ecosystems. Such a link must be established if LCA is to support assessments of environmental sustainability and it may be done by developing carrying capacity-based normalisation references. The purpose of this article is to present a framework for normalisation against carrying capacity-based references and to develop average normalisation references (NR) for Europe and the world for all those midpoint impact categories commonly included in LCA that link to the natural environment area of protection.
Methods
Carrying capacity was in this context defined as the maximum sustained environmental intervention a natural system can withstand without experiencing negative changes in structure or functioning that are difficult or impossible to revert. A literature review was carried out to identify scientifically sound thresholds for each impact category. Carrying capacities were then calculated from these thresholds and expressed in metrics identical to midpoint indicators giving priority to those recommended by ILCD. NR was expressed as the carrying capacity of a reference region divided by its population and thus describes the annual personal share of the carrying capacity.
Results and discussion
The developed references can be applied to indicator results obtained using commonly applied characterisation models in LCIA. The European NR are generally lower than the global NR, mainly due to a relatively high population density in Europe. The NR were compared to conventional normalisation references (NR′) which represent the aggregated interventions for Europe or the world in a recent reference year. For both scales, the aggregated intervention for climate change, photochemical ozone formation and soil quality were found to exceed carrying capacities several times.
Conclusions
The developed carrying capacity-based normalisation references offer relevant supplementary reference information to the currently applied references based on society’s background interventions by supporting an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of product systems on an absolute scale.
Recommendations
Challenges remain with respect to spatial variations to increase the relevance of the normalisation references for impact categories that function at the local or regional scale. The sensitivity of NR to different choices, e.g. threshold value, should be quantified with the aim of understanding and managing uncertainties of NR. For complete coverage of the midpoint impact categories, normalisation references based on sustainability preconditions should be developed for those categories that link to the areas of protection human health and natural resources.
The US Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards regulate the fleet fuel economy of automakers that manufacture and sell automobiles in the US. CAFE standards will increase by 24% (for the passenger car fleet) - 35% (for the light-truck fleet) over the period 2011-2025 leading to a renewed interest in the role that advanced technologies will play in enabling CAFE compliance. This study compares the effects of 2 designs of plug in hybrid electric (PHEV) to estimate the cost of CAFE compliance with PHEVs as a component of the domestic passenger car fleet and as a component of the domestic light truck fleet. Results show that for many of the US automakers and for a variety of incremental cost scenarios, the introduction of PHEVs into the vehicle fleet reduces the costs of CAFE compliance relative to baseline scenarios. Over-all, results show that PHEVs can contribute to a reduction in the costs of CAFE compliance for domestic automakers and should be more thoroughly considered in near-term regulatory and industrial analyses of CAFE compliance strategies.
The increasing importance of Corporate social responsibility to entrepreneurial policies has made it a leading topic in the literature. The strategic integration of Corporate social responsibility in the business core implies the communication between a company and its stakeholders. Sustainability reports are recognized worldwide as a tool that companies use to communicate their socially responsible behavior. The way companies communicate through their reports indicates their level of commitment to Corporate social responsibility. The objective of this paper is to analyze companies' behavior towards Corporate social responsibility based on their disclosure practices. We define four possible types of behavior: Novice, Cautious, Chattering and Leading. These types are the result of the combination of two variables that measure the disclosure and credibility of Corporate social responsibility information. Our results indicate that companies listed in the stock market disclose more Corporate social responsibility information than private ones but with less credibility. European countries are leading the rankings in Corporate social responsibility information and tend to have a Cautious or Leading attitude. Finally, we report differences among industries.
Crisp numbers make it to the headlines. However, it is unlikely that a single crisp number can capture a complex issue, such as the analysis of the sustainability of human progress both at the local and the global scale. This paper tackles this standard epistemological predicament in relation to a media-friendly model of man's impact on Nature: the Ecological Footprint (EF). The claim made by the proponents of this analytical tool is that EF makes it possible to check "how much is taken" by the economic process versus "how much could be taken" according to ecological processes. In this paper we argue that the ecological footprint assessment - purportedly useful as an argument against the idea of perpetual growth - is fraught with internal contradictions. Our critical appraisal is based on the lack of correspondence between the semantics - the claim about what the EF accounting does - and the syntax - the EF protocol of accounting that should deliver the purported output. We critically examine the various assumptions used in the approach, showing that the EF is in contradiction with its stated purposes and would lead to paradoxes if its prescriptions were used for policy making. We also contend that the laboriousness of EF computation protocols contrasts with its ultimate fragility. In fact the estimate of carbon footprint due to energy production is what determines the assessment of the planet's deficit of virtual land. We show that this estimate cannot be defended in light of the assumptions and simplifications used for its construction. Our conclusion is that the EF does not serve a meaningful discussion on the modeling of sustainability, and that the same media-friendly narrative about the Earth Overshot day is in the end reassuring and complacent when considering other aspects on man's pressure on the planet and its ecosystems.
Sustainability is widely recognized as one of the most important challenges facing the world today. Companies publish sustainability reports that present their efforts and achievements in meeting sustainability goals and targets. In this paper, text mining is used to identify sustainability trends and practices in the process industries. Four main sectors of the industry are studied: oil/petrochemicals, bulk/specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products. Our study reveals that the top sustainability focuses of the four sectors are very similar: health and safety, human rights, reducing GHG, conserving energy/energy efficiency, and community investment. Sector-specific sustainability issues have also been identified, for example oil spill prevention in the oil/petrochemicals sector and access to medicine in the pharmaceuticals sector. Environment is identified to be the predominant sustainability aspect in the process industries. The text mining methodology, results, and findings are detailed in the paper.
In 1992, one unambiguous result of the UNCED conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns, with affluent countries taking the lead. 20 years later, at the 2012 UNCSD, little is left over and instead the “green economy” has been the theme pursued by the OECD, the EU and other countries. So the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago, or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished.
Sustainable development is still a convincing concept, if the original definition is taken, avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept. Focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits, it can still guide strong sustainable consumption. Green economy/green growth, on the other hand, is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation. It is indeed overdue, but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the Brundtland sustainability criteria. A factor analysis based on the I = P*A*T formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept. Consequently, the authors pledge for a pragmatic, risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy. This requires ‘strong sustainable consumption’ (including production as resource consumption), which in turn requires a change of the societies' institutional settings (formal and informal, mechanisms and orientations).
Finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out, with special emphasis on the role of non-governmental organisations NGOs. Through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom-up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption.
The multi-level perspective (MLP) has emerged as a fruitful middle-range framework for analysing socio-technical transitions to sustainability. The MLP also received constructive criticisms. This paper summarises seven criticisms, formulates responses to them, and translates these into suggestions for future research. The criticisms relate to: (1) lack of agency, (2) operationalization of regimes, (3) bias towards bottom-up change models, (4) epistemology and explanatory style, (5) methodology, (6) socio-technical landscape as residual category, and (7) flat ontologies versus hierarchical levels.
In order for environmental strategies to come into effect in industry practice, they need to be implemented and applied in daily business routines. Based on a dedicated comprehensive international survey in product developing and manufacturing companies, this paper identifies major current drivers for implementing product life cycle oriented environmental strategies but also barriers and obstacles that need to be addressed. On this basis it provides a number of recommendations for manufacturing companies as well as policy makers to consider for a successful implementation of strategic environmental goals in manufacturing industry.
The cradle‐to‐cradle (C2C) concept has emerged as an alternative to the more established eco‐efficiency concept based on life cycle assessment (LCA). The two concepts differ fundamentally in that eco‐efficiency aims to reduce the negative environmental footprint of human activities while C2C attempts to increase the positive footprint. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each concept and suggests how they may learn from each other. The eco‐efficiency concept involves no long‐term vision or strategy, the links between resource consumption and waste emissions are not well related to the sustainability state, and increases in eco‐efficiency may lead to increases in consumption levels and hence overall impact. The C2C concept's disregard for energy efficiency means that many current C2C products will likely not perform well in an LCA. Inherent drawbacks are restrictions on the development of new materials posed by the ambition of continuous loop recycling, the perception that human interactions with nature can benefit all parts of all ecosystems, and the hinted compatibility with continued economic growth. Practitioners of eco‐efficiency can benefit from the visions of C2C to avoid a narrow‐minded focus on the eco‐efficiency of products that are inherently unsustainable. Moreover, resource efficiency and positive environmental effects could be included more strongly in LCA. Practitioners of C2C on the other hand should recognize the value of LCA in addressing trade‐offs between resource conservation and energy use. Also, when designing a “healthy emission” it should be recognized that it will often have an adverse effect on parts of the exposed ecosystem.
Management studies on corporate sustainability practices have grown considerably. The field now has significant knowledge of sustainability issues that are firm and industry focused. However, complex ecological problems are increasing, not decreasing. In this paper, we argue that it is time for corporate sustainability scholars to reconsider the ecological and systemic foundations for sustainability, and to integrate our work more closely with the natural sciences. To address this, our paper introduces a new development in the natural sciences – the delineation of nine ‘Planetary Boundaries’ which govern life as we know it – including a call for more systemic research that measures the impact of companies on boundary processes that are at, or possibly beyond, three threshold points – climate change, the global nitrogen cycle (N), and rate of biodiversity loss – and closing in on others. We also discuss practical implications of the Planetary Boundaries framework for corporate sustainability, including governance and institutional challenges.
Human demand on ecosystem services continues to increase, and evidence suggests that this demand is
outpacing the regenerative and absorptive capacity of the biosphere. As a result, the productivity of natural
capital may increasingly become a limiting factor for the human endeavor. Metrics tracking human
demand on, and availability of, regenerative and waste absorptive capacity within the biosphere are
therefore needed. Ecological Footprint analysis is such a metric; it measures human appropriation (Ecological
Footprint) and the biosphere’s supply (biocapacity) of ecosystem products and services in terms
of the amount of bioproductive land and sea area (ecological assets) needed to supply these products and
services.
This paper documents the latest method for estimating the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity of
nations, using the National Footprint Accounts (NFA) applied to more than 200 countries and for the world
overall. Results are also compared with those obtained from previous editions of the NFA. According to
the 2011 Edition of the National Footprint Accounts, humanity demanded the resources and services of
1.5 planets in 2008; this human demand was 0.7 planets in 1961.
Situations in which total demand for ecological goods and services exceed the available supply for
a given location, are called ‘overshoot’. ‘Global overshoot’ indicates that stocks of ecological capital are
depleting and/or that waste is accumulating. As the methodology keeps being improved, each new edition
of the NFA supports the findings of a global overshoot.
Western industrialized societies are inherently unsustainable in their present form because they depend almost exclusively on a finite supply of nonrenewable minerals and fossil fuels. In addition, the resulting wastes cause various environmental problems ranging from widespread ecosystem disruptions to global warming. The most common response to these problems has been to promote technological improvements in eco-efficiency, which Welford defined as “adding maximum value with minimum resource use and minimum pollution.” Although constructive, improvements in eco-efficiency alone will not guarantee sustainability of industrialized societies because the limited supplies of nonrenewable minerals cannot be extended indefinitely by recycling and substitution, and a transition to renewable and nuclear energy sources would result in significant negative environmental impacts, particularly if deployed on a large scale. In addition, according to the second law of thermodynamics, industrial production technologies have inherently unavoidable environmental impacts. Finally, any hard-won improvements in eco-efficiency will soon be negated if growth in population and consumption is allowed to continue. Consequently, long-term industrial sustainability can be achieved only through a transition to a steady-state economy where the total throughput of matter–energy is kept at a constant and sustainable level. This requires not only improvements in eco-efficiency but also a reassessment of fundamental societal values that erroneously equate material consumption and economic growth with well-being and happiness. © 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2004
