Suchergebnisse

Using data from the China Social Survey 2013 and statistics from the Ministry of Environment Protection of China and the Institute of Public & Environment Affairs, this study empirically examines the relationship between actual and perceived air pollution and the moderating effect of environmental transparency on that relationship with a multilevel ordered logistic strategy. Estimations indicate a significant congruence of actual (both particulate matter less than 10 µm in diameter and sulfur dioxide) and perceived air pollution. More importantly, environmental transparency of local government is found to moderate the relationship between actual and perceived air pollution by neutralizing the halo effects and building more alert perceptions when local air quality deteriorates. Our findings not only challenge the work of identifying a mismatch of actual–perceived air pollution in some developed countries but also suggest that, apart from abating actual air pollution, environmental transparency should be emphasized and strengthened in institutional buildings to help address pollution challenges in developing countries.

Despite the ample literature on government transparency, our knowledge about how the vertical power structure of governments shapes local compliance with government transparency mandates is still limited. This study sets out to address this gap. Specifically, we investigate how the central government's environmental information disclosure (EID) signal and provincial governments' conflicting signal of economic growth affect, independently and interactively, city governments' compliance with central EID mandates in the center-province-city hierarchical structure in China. We argue that the central EID signal positively affects city compliance, while the provincial signal of economic growth reduces it. Moreover, the provincial signal of economic growth negatively moderates the impact of the central EID signal. Empirically, with a panel dataset for city-level governments from 2008 to 2018, we found robust evidence strongly supporting our theoretical hypotheses. Points for practitioners This research reveals the influences of the complex dynamics among governments at different levels on local compliance with government transparency mandates. The findings suggest that the maneuvers of middle-level governments in a multilevel power structure and the interactions among multiple conflicting policy goals should be taken seriously by practitioners when designing policies to promote government transparency reforms.

Purpose
This research paper aims to examine the influence of greater female participation on the board of directors on the environmental transparency of companies.

Design/methodology/approach
To achieve the purpose of this study, the authors analyzed the environmental transparency of 412 companies in the energy sector, headquartered in 19 countries, during a four-year period (2016 to 2019).

Findings
The data reveal that gender diversity has a positive effect on the environmental transparency of companies in developed countries and on the total model. Furthermore, after removing the US companies, the results remained the same, indicating that companies with more women on the board tend to have greater environmental transparency. Regarding corporate governance variables, the results show that companies that have a corporate social responsibility committee tend to have greater environmental transparency, both in emerging countries and in developed countries.

Practical implications
The findings indicate that if companies aim to have greater environmental transparency, they must encourage female participation on boards, giving them equal opportunities for professional growth. Organizations must deconstruct the ideology that women are fewer valuable members of their boards, which limits their contribution to organizational success. Additionally, regulators can encourage greater female participation on boards through the implementation of quota laws.

Originality/value
The authors' evidence indicates that the presence of women on board is an antecedent of greater quality in the dissemination of environmental information. Thus, managers of companies in the energy sector must understand that diversity on the board affects communication with its stakeholders through environmental transparency.

Regulatory schemes designed to further sustainable development – whether through pollution control or natural resources preservation – often employ grandfathering, that is, granting legal rights based on activity that predates the regulatory regime. Transparency in the context of grandfathering must be nuanced. Government should be transparent about incentives to engage in environmentally valuable behavior, but government should not be transparent to the extent that grandfathering relies on prior behavior that is detrimental to the environment and sustainable development. Consider first grandfathering based upon prior behavior that is environmentally detrimental – for example, allocating fishing quotas based upon prior years' catches. When a government wishes to distribute grandfathering rights to societal actors who currently engage in a behavior that will soon be restricted, the societal actors may engage in inefficient behavior to secure additional property rights. Such behavior may artificially increase pollution emissions, prematurely and inefficiently deplete natural resources, or both. To minimize the undesirable incentive, the government may employ a "retrospective allocation" based on activities that predate the limitations on resource access. Legal uncertainty makes it more difficult for societal actors to modify their behavior. Such systems have become increasingly common in the context of environmental and natural resource regulation. Over time, societal actors likely will come to expect retrospective allocation, and act in anticipation by engaging in the behaviors on which they predict the allocations will be based. In order to combat this gaming of the system, the criteria for winning allocations must change over time for retrospective allocation to maintain effectiveness on an ongoing basis. In other words, too much transparency in this context leads to inefficient behavioral distortions and poor environmental consequences; opacity serves to ameliorate these outcomes.In contrast, consider grandfathering of rewards for positive behavior – for example, awarding credits to societal actors who voluntarily reduce pollution emissions before a regulatory regime requires such reductions, or who make factories fuel-efficient before increased fuel efficiency is required. Whereas distortions by actors in attempts to garner more grandfathering rights by engaging in environmentally detrimental behavior is undesirable and should be discouraged by relying on some measure of opacity, environmentally desirable behavior should be encouraged via transparency. Assuming the government has decided upon behaviors it would like societal actors to undertake, the government should announce those behaviors and be transparent about its desire to provide positive benefits in the future. Such transparency will "lock the government in" and create greater incentives for societal actors to engage in the desired behaviors early in time, thus providing environmental benefits even before a regulatory regime is enacted and become binding.Before proceeding, I believe it important to identify an important caveat to the arguments I discuss here. I do not mean here to endorse grandfathering as normatively desirable. As I discuss below, legal and economic commentators have criticized grandfathering as a form of "transition relief" that is, relief from a transition in legal rule. These commentators argue that grandfathering inefficiently discourages actors from anticipating legal changes; they assert that it would be more efficient to subject all societal actors immediately to new legal regimes. While (as I also discuss below) there are arguments in support of limited grandfathering under limited circumstances, the arguments I make here have application so long as whatever the reason, and whether or not it is normatively desirable grandfathering continues to play a prominent role in environmental regulation.The balance of this chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 provides an overview of the role of grandfathering in environmental regulation. Section 2 explains how opacity should figure prominently in the government's allocation of grandfathered rights on the basis of environmentally undesirable behavior. Section 3 discusses how, in contrast, the government should be transparent in identifying desirable behavior that it will reward with grandfathered rights. Section 5 concludes.

This article examines the impact of transparency regulations enacted under authoritarian conditions, through a study of China's environmental transparency measures. Given China's decentralized administrative structure, environmental disclosure ends up being weakest in the most polluted cities. However, the measures have allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to affect environmental governance through unusual pathways. Multinational companies (MNCs) have used NGO pollution databases to monitor Chinese suppliers, whereas local governments have responded to a transparency index with greater NGO engagement. That said, these civil society initiatives have had limited impact on key stakeholder behavior. For the environment ministry, enforcement costs remain high. Local government behavior depends on their economic priorities and the nature of their relations with enterprises. Chinese enterprise behavior depends on the character of their relations with government and MNCs. Given China's authoritarian structure, improved governance does not translate into stronger accountability, challenging common assumptions about the relationship between transparency and accountability. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the impact of transparency regulations enacted under authoritarian conditions, through a study of China's environmental transparency measures. Given China's decentralized administrative structure, environmental disclosure ends up being weakest in the most polluted cities. However, the measures have allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to affect environmental governance through unusual pathways. Multinational companies (MNCs) have used NGO pollution databases to monitor Chinese suppliers, whereas local governments have responded to a transparency index with greater NGO engagement. That said, these civil society initiatives have had limited impact on key stakeholder behavior. For the environment ministry, enforcement costs remain high. Local government behavior depends on their economic priorities and the nature of their relations with enterprises. Chinese enterprise behavior depends on the character of their relations with government and MNCs. Given China's authoritarian structure, improved governance does not translate into stronger accountability, challenging common assumptions about the relationship between transparency and accountability.

PurposeThis work analyzes, through social-environmental reports, whether banks with higher transparency in social-environmental policies better safeguard financial stability in Brazil.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is carried out through a panel database analysis of the 42 largest Brazilian banks, representing 98% of the Brazilian financial system. Seeking to avoid spurious results, we followed rigorous methodological standards. Hence, we conducted an empirical analysis using a dynamic panel data model, we used the difference generalized method of moments (D-GMM) and the system generalized method of moments (S-GMM).FindingsThe results show that the higher the transparency of social-environmental policies, the lower the chance of possible stress on the financial stability of Brazilian banks. In sum, this study builds evidence that disclosing risks related to policies about sustainability can enhance financial stability. It is essential to highlight that social-environmental transparency does not have as direct objective financial stability.Originality/valueThe manuscript submitted represents an original work that analyzes whether banks with higher transparency in social-environmental policies better safeguard financial stability. Some countries, such as Brazil, have their potential for sustainable policies spotlighted due to their green territory and diverse natural ecosystems. Besides having green potential, Brazil is a developing country with a well-developed financial system. These characteristics make Brazil one of the best laboratories for studying the relationship between transparency in social-environmental policies and financial stability.

In 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development recognized in its tenth principle the right of 'each individual [for] appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities.' Since then, numerous policy papers by the United Nations, donor countries, and NGOs have called for increased transparency and accountability in environmental governance. The rising salience of environmental transparency regimes is evident in the level of attention (and politicization) of this topic in the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as seen in the clash between the USA and China during the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen (COP15) and recent debates on monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) concerning the reduction of emissions from avoided deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). As a result, questions concerning the emergence of environmental transparency regimes (i.e., the creation of monitoring systems and the validation and disclosure of environmental data) are not a mere 'technicality' better left to experts, but one of the hotspots of climate change politics. Adapted from the source document.

This article describes the need for increased transparency in global environmental governance (GEG) & offers a definition of the rather vague idea of transparency, since it takes on different meanings within different structures of global governance. The legitimate purposes of transparency are detailed, & the neoliberal fundamentalist vision is examined. The political processes associated with the making of GEG are extended beyond environmental treaties, as institutionalized practices are increasingly being scrutinized. However, some problems remain with increased transparency in GEG, as the two contending discourse-coalitions of neoliberal fundamentalism in liberal internationalism have alternative views of the legitimate purpose of transparency. E. Larsen