Essential Environmental Impact Variables for Improved Corporate Sustainability Reporting
At a time of both large-scale corporate environmental impact and ambitiously set goals to reduce and reverse degradation, there is a need to urgently understand, monitor, and assess the impacts of economic activities. While there is a growing recognition of the need to account for corporate environmental impacts, currently proposed frameworks to do so do not depart from acknowledgement of the causal dynamics of environmental impacts. This paper brings the field of environmental monitoring and Essential Variables into dialogue with rapidly evolving efforts to standardise corporate sustainability reporting, to propose a set of Essential Environmental Impact Variables (EEIVs). These suggested reporting variables are grounded in scientific review and evidence and encompass a tentative minimum set of variables needed to capture corporate impacts on ten environmental dimensions (including the nine planetary boundaries). Variables are derived through 1) a combination of scientific review and expert elicitation that summarize how corporate activities in seven primary sector industries impact the environment; and 2) a translation of the resulting generalized systems map of corporate impact into 5 general and 10 industry-specific EEIVs that can help standardise and improve corporate sustainability reporting. By asking for corporate disclosure of the underlying environmental impact data, EEIVs would make possible both third party evaluation of progress against publicly set corporate environmental targets, but also the aggregate assessment of impact within and across economic sectors. EEIVs should be seen as a starting point for deliberations aiming to incorporate both accounting and sustainability science into sustainability reporting standardisation efforts
Year of publication: |
2023
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Authors: | Wassénius, Emmy ; Crona, Beatrice ; Quahe, Sasha |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (56 p) |
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Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments February 17, 2023 erstellt |
Other identifiers: | 10.2139/ssrn.4362266 [DOI] |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014260715
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