The adoption of the materiality concept in social and environmental reporting assurance: a field study approach

This study investigates the logics or values that shape the social and environmental reporting (SER) and SER assurance (SERA) process. The influence of logics is observed through a study of the conceptualisation and operationalisation of the materiality concept by accounting and non-accounting assurors and their assurance statements. We gathered qualitative data from interviews with both accounting and non-accounting assurors. We analysed the interplay between old and new logics that are shaping materiality as a reporting concept in SER. SER is a rich field in which to study the dynamics of change because it is a voluntary, unregulated, qualitative reporting arena. It has a broad, stakeholder audience, where accounting and non-accounting organisations are in competition. There are three key findings. First, the introduction of a new, stakeholder logic has significantly changed the meaning and role of materiality. Second, a more versatile, performative, social understanding of materiality was portrayed by assurors, with a forward-looking rather than a historic focus. Third, competing logics have encouraged different beliefs about materiality, and practices, to develop. This influenced the way assurors theorised the concept and interpreted outcomes. A patchwork of localised understandings of materiality is developing. Policy implications both in SERA and also in financial audit are explored.

Earth hummocks in north-east Okstindan, northern Norway: morphology, distribution and environmental constraints

Earth hummocks (also termed pounus or thúfur) are a common form of periglacial non-sorted patterned ground. The study objectives were to determine the morphology, distribution and development on slopes of earth hummocks in north-east Okstindan, Norway, an area with many hummocks but few documented accounts. The methodology involved detailed geomorphological mapping and precise measurement with a profileometer. The internal structure of the hummocks was investigated through excavations and sediment sample analyses. Fourteen sites with well-developed earth hummocks (accounting for over 650 individual hummock forms) were investigated. The sites have an average altitude of 750 m and occur on slopes with an average gradient of 7°. The hummock heights are in the range 0.11–0.52 m and their diameters 0.7–1.5 m, although coalescent forms are up to 5 m in length. The hummock morphology is characterised by a variable plan form, asymmetry with respect to upslope and downslope forms, downslope elongation, coalescence, and superimposed microtopography. The hummocks’ distribution appeared to have been controlled by the existence of a frost-susceptible ‘host’ sediment, but moisture availability and topographic position played a role. The authors conclude that differential frost heave and vegetation cover stability are critical for the hummocks’ longevity in the studied landscape.

A new regime of carbon counting: the practices and politics of accounting for everyday carbon through C02e

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyzes the counting practices that create the ‘e’ in ‘CO2e’. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden, 2012 and Star and Griesemer, 1989) we conceptualize here as ‘boundary objects’. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of ‘everyday supply chain carbon’. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable and in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product's carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, is the outcome of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn, inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

Lacustrine sediments provide geochemical evidence of environmental change during the last millennium in southeastern Brazil

A 172 cm-long sediment core was collected from a small pristine lake situated within a centripetal drainage basin in a tropical karst environment (Ribeira River valley, southeastern Brazil) in order to investigate the paleoenvironmental record provided by the lacustrine geochemistry. Sediments derived from erosion of the surrounding cambisoils contain quartz, kaolinite, mica, chlorite and goethite. Accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) (14)C dating provided the geochronological framework. Three major sedimentary units were identified based on the structure and color of the sediments: Unit III from 170 to 140 cm (1030 +/- 60-730 +/- 60 yr BP), Unit II from 140 to 90 cm (730 +/- 60-360 +/- 60 yr BP) and Unit I from 90 to 0 cm (360 +/- 60-0 yr BP). Results of major and trace element concentrations were analysed through multivariate statistical techniques. Factor analysis provided three factors accounting for 72.4% of the total variance. F1 and F2 have high positive loadings from K, Ba, Cs, Rb, Sr, Sc, Th, light rare earth element (LREE), Fe, Cr, Ti, Zr, Hf and Ta, and high negative loadings from Mg, Co, Cu, Zn, Br and loss on ignition (LOI). F3, with positive loadings from V and non-metals As and Sb, accounts for a low percentage (9.7%) of the total variance, being therefore of little interpretative use. The profile distribution of F1 scores reveals negative values in Units I and III, and positive values in Unit II, meaning that K, Ba, Cs, Rb, Sr, Sc, Th, LREE, Fe, Cr, Ti, Zr, Hf and Ta are relatively more concentrated in Unit II, and Mg, Co, Cu, Zn and Br are relatively more abundant in Units I and III. The observed fluctuations in the geochemical composition of the sediments are consistent with slight variations of the erosion intensity in the catchment area as a possible response to variations of climatic conditions during the last millennium. (c) 2009 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

SMEs in the environmental goods and services market: identifying areas of opportunity, policies and instruments: case studies: Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico

Includes bibliography

Energetic-environmental assessment of a scenario for Brazilian cellulosic ethanol

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Accounting for uncertainty in ecological analysis: the strengths and limitations of hierarchical statistical modeling

Analyses of ecological data should account for the uncertainty in the process(es) that generated the data. However, accounting for these uncertainties is a difficult task, since ecology is known for its complexity. Measurement and/or process errors are often the only sources of uncertainty modeled when addressing complex ecological problems, yet analyses should also account for uncertainty in sampling design, in model specification, in parameters governing the specified model, and in initial and boundary conditions. Only then can we be confident in the scientific inferences and forecasts made from an analysis. Probability and statistics provide a framework that accounts for multiple sources of uncertainty. Given the complexities of ecological studies, the hierarchical statistical model is an invaluable tool. This approach is not new in ecology, and there are many examples (both Bayesian and non-Bayesian) in the literature illustrating the benefits of this approach. In this article, we provide a baseline for concepts, notation, and methods, from which discussion on hierarchical statistical modeling in ecology can proceed. We have also planted some seeds for discussion and tried to show where the practical difficulties lie. Our thesis is that hierarchical statistical modeling is a powerful way of approaching ecological analysis in the presence of inevitable but quantifiable uncertainties, even if practical issues sometimes require pragmatic compromises.

Masking environmental feedback : Misfits between institutions and ecosystems in Belize and Thailand

The thesis analyses relationships between ecological and social systems in the context of coastal ecosystems. It examines human impacts from resource extraction and addresses management and governance behind resource exploitation. The main premises are that a lack of ecological knowledge leads to poor ecosystem management and that the dichotomy between social and natural systems is an artificial one. The thesis illustrates the importance of basing resource management on the ecological conditions of the resource and its ecosystem. It also demonstrates the necessity of accounting for the human dimension in ecosystem management and the challenges of organising human actions for sustainable use of ecosystem services in the face of economic incentives that push users towards short-term extraction. Many Caribbean coral reefs have undergone a shift from coral to macroalgal domination. An experiment on Glovers Reef Atoll in Belize manually cleared patch reefs in a no-take zone and a fished zone (Papers I and II). The study hypothesised that overfishing has reduced herbivorous fish populations that control macroalgae growth. Overall, management had no significant effect on fish abundance and the impacts of the algal reduction were short-lived. This illustrated that the benefits of setting aside marine reserves in impacted environments should not be taken for granted. Papers III and IV studied the development of the lobster and conch fisheries in Belize, and the shrimp farming industry in Thailand respectively. These studies found that environmental feedback can be masked to give the impression of resource abundance through sequential exploitation. In both cases inadequate property rights contributed to this unsustainable resource use. The final paper (V) compared the responses to changes in the resource by the lobster fisheries in Belize and Maine in terms of institutions, organisations and their role in management. In contrast to Maine’s, the Belize system seems to lack social mechanisms for responding effectively to environmental feedback. The results illustrate the importance of organisational and institutional diversity that incorporate ecological knowledge, respond to ecosystem feedback and provide a social context for learning from and adapting to change.

Accounting for warping and differential drying shrinkage mechanisms in the design of jointed plain concrete payments

When a concrete slab experiences differential volume change due to temperature, moisture, and shrinkage gradients, it deforms. The stresses induced by these differential volume changes can reduce the pavement’s fatigue life. Differential volume change is quantified by the equivalent temperature difference required to deform a comparable flat slab to the same shape as the actual slab. This thesis presents models to predict the equivalent temperature difference due to moisture warping and differential drying shrinkage. Moisture warping occurs because a portion of drying shrinkage is reversible, while differential drying shrinkage is due to the irreversible portion of drying shrinkage. The amount of reversible shrinkage was investigated for concretes made with different types of aggregate, including lightweight and recycled. Another source of differential volume change is built-in curl, which is caused by temperature gradients at the time of paving. This thesis also presents a comparison of methods used to quantify built-in curl.

Environmental characteristics and gas composition of Lost Hammer, Canadian Arctic

We report the first microbiological characterization of a terrestrial methane seep in a cryo-environment in the form of an Arctic hypersaline (~24% salinity), subzero (-5 C), perennial spring, arising through thick permafrost in an area with an average annual air temperature of -15 C. Bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA gene clone libraries indicated a relatively low diversity of phylotypes within the spring sediment (Shannon index values of 1.65 and 1.39, respectively). Bacterial phylotypes were related to microorganisms such as Loktanella, Gillisia, Halomonas and Marinobacter spp. previously recovered from cold, saline habitats. A proportion of the bacterial phylotypes were cultured, including Marinobacter and Halomonas, with all isolates capable of growth at the in situ temperature (-5 C). Archaeal phylotypes were related to signatures from hypersaline deep-sea methane-seep sediments and were dominated by the anaerobic methane group 1a (ANME-1a) clade of anaerobic methane oxidizing archaea. CARD-FISH analyses indicated that cells within the spring sediment consisted of ~84.0% bacterial and 3.8% archaeal cells with ANME-1 cells accounting for most of the archaeal cells. The major gas discharging from the spring was methane (~50%) with the low CH4/C2 + ratio and hydrogen and carbon isotope signatures consistent with a thermogenic origin of the methane. Overall, this hypersaline, subzero environment supports a viable microbial community capable of activity at in situ temperature and where methane may behave as an energy and carbon source for sustaining anaerobic oxidation of methane-based microbial metabolism. This site also provides a model of how a methane seep can form in a cryo-environment as well as a mechanism for the hypothesized Martian methane plumes.

Consumption-based accounting of U.S. CO2 emissions from 1990 to 2010

To tackle global climate change, it is desirable to reduce CO2 emissions associated with household consumption in particular in developed countries, which tend to have much higher per capita household carbon footprints than less developed countries. Our results show that carbon intensity of different consumption categories in the U.S. varies significantly. The carbon footprint tends to increase with increasing income but at a decreasing rate due to additional income being spent on less carbon intensive consumption items. This general tendency is frequently compensated by higher frequency of international trips and higher housing related carbon emissions (larger houses and more space for consumption items). Our results also show that more than 30% of CO2 emissions associated with household consumption in the U.S. occur outside of the U.S. Given these facts, the design of carbon mitigation policies should take changing household consumption patterns and international trade into account.

Electricity price forecasting accounting for renewable energies: optimal combined forecasts

Electricity price forecasting is an interesting problem for all the agents involved in electricity market operation. For instance, every profit maximisation strategy is based on the computation of accurate one-day-ahead forecasts, which is why electricity price forecasting has been a growing field of research in recent years. In addition, the increasing concern about environmental issues has led to a high penetration of renewable energies, particularly wind. In some European countries such as Spain, Germany and Denmark, renewable energy is having a deep impact on the local power markets. In this paper, we propose an optimal model from the perspective of forecasting accuracy, and it consists of a combination of several univariate and multivariate time series methods that account for the amount of energy produced with clean energies, particularly wind and hydro, which are the most relevant renewable energy sources in the Iberian Market. This market is used to illustrate the proposed methodology, as it is one of those markets in which wind power production is more relevant in terms of its percentage of the total demand, but of course our method can be applied to any other liberalised power market. As far as our contribution is concerned, first, the methodology proposed by García-Martos et al(2007 and 2012) is generalised twofold: we allow the incorporation of wind power production and hydro reservoirs, and we do not impose the restriction of using the same model for 24h. A computational experiment and a Design of Experiments (DOE) are performed for this purpose. Then, for those hours in which there are two or more models without statistically significant differences in terms of their forecasting accuracy, a combination of forecasts is proposed by weighting the best models(according to the DOE) and minimising the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The MAPE is the most popular accuracy metric for comparing electricity price forecasting models. We construct the combi nation of forecasts by solving several nonlinear optimisation problems that allow computation of the optimal weights for building the combination of forecasts. The results are obtained by a large computational experiment that entails calculating out-of-sample forecasts for every hour in every day in the period from January 2007 to Decem ber 2009. In addition, to reinforce the value of our methodology, we compare our results with those that appear in recent published works in the field. This comparison shows the superiority of our methodology in terms of forecasting accuracy.

The Role of Environmental and Land Transaction Regulations on Agricultural Land Price: The example of Brittany. Factor Markets Working Document No. 52, June 2013

Using data from individual transactions for the period 1994-2010 in the French NUTS2 region Brittany, the authors investigated how environmental regulations and transaction land regulations influence the price of sold plots. Regressions on three sub-samples of buyers were performed in order to assess whether different buyers have different attitudes or plans regarding the farmland purchased: a sub-sample including only farmer-buyers, a sub-sample including non-farmer individual buyers, and a sub-sample including non-farmer non-individual buyers. Estimations were performed ignoring and accounting for spatial interactions (model SARAR). Results indicate that the price of land decreases when buyers are farmers, that the nitrate surplus area zoning increases the price of land, even more so for farmer-buyers. Regarding land transaction regulations, there is a negative effect, on land price, of the purchaser being the current tenant or being the land regulating public body SAFER. Estimating the model on different sub-samples depending on the buyers’ type shed light on the factors that are more important for each buyer.

Accounting for residential and non-residential environments to measure contextual effects on health behavior : the case of recreational walking behavior

Thèse réalisée en cotutelle entre l'Université de Montréal et l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 06, Sorbonne Universités.

Motor carriers: the availability of environmental restoration insurance.

Mode of access: Internet.