Search results for "Environmental Sustainability Index"
showing 10 items of 14 documents
Ranking corporate sustainability: a flexible multidimensional approach based on linguistic variables
2017
Corporate sustainability implies a compromise between the present environmental, social, and economic needs of a firm's stakeholders and their future needs. Corporate sustainability is therefore a multidimensional concept. Nowadays, several independent rating agencies rate firms in terms of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. These ratings are usually used by main sustainability indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, FTSE4 Good, Stoxx Sustainability Index, or Euronext Vigeo Family to select companies to invest in. Only those firms performing better than the average of their sector are selected. However, although providing linguistic ratings about the performan…
An intertemporal approach to measuring environmental performance with directional distance functions: Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union
2014
Abstract The impact of economic activity on the environment is a matter of growing concern for firm managers, policymakers, researchers and society as a whole. Building on previous work by Kortelainen (2008) [Dynamic environmental performance analysis: A Malmquist index approach. Ecological Economics 64, 701–715], we contribute an approach to assessing intertemporal environmental performance at the level of the management of specific pollutants, as the result of change in eco-efficiency and environmental technical change, which identify catching-up with best available environmental practices and eco-innovation, respectively. In doing so, we use Data Envelopment Analysis techniques, directio…
Ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability
2011
The assessment of sustainability at farm level has been growing in popularity over the last few years. This article contributes to this line of research by building up composite indicators for different facets—social, economic, environmental, and global—of farm sustainability using a methodological approach that combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods, and assigns common weights to each individual sustainability indicator. This approach is applied to a database of 163 farms located in the Campos County, a region belonging to the dry lands of the Spanish Northern Plateau, using 12 individual indicators of sustainability. Our findings show tha…
Business Sustainable Competitiveness a Synergistic, Long-Run Approach of a Company's Resources and Results
2018
Abstract Business sustainable competitiveness is a very complex concept. This complexity generates a variety of possibilities to define, to measure and to test it. The purpose of the paper is to develop the concept of businessness (for business sustainable competitiveness) by leveraging productivity, profitability, effectiveness and sustainability, at firm level. The interrelations between them, in terms of revenues per employee, return on assets, total assets turnover and Dow Jones Sustainability Index, were integrated into models/functions in order to develop, test and apply businessness. The article is about proposing functions (by using multiple discriminant analysis) in order to measur…
Introduction to environmental security
2007
The term "Environmental Security" refers to a range of concerns that can be organized into three general categories: (1) concerns about the adverse impact of human activities on the environment, seen as an asset to be inherited by the next generations; (2) concerns about the direct and indirect effects of various forms of environmental change (especially scarcity and degradation), which may be natural or human-generated on national and regional security; (3) concerns about the loss of security individuals and groups (from small communities to humankind) experience due to environmental change such as water scarcity, air pollution, global warming, and so on. In order to provide sustainability…
The Inclusion of Socially Irresponsible Companies in Sustainable Stock Indices
2019
Social rating agencies implement complex filters to identify the companies with the best sustainable and social performance and help investors select the companies for their sustainable portfolios. This study analysed whether companies that are defined as ethical, sustainable and socially responsible by those agencies actually deserve this label. More specifically, the inclusion in the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) World of companies that have been involved in controversies according to the Thomson Reuters Eikon database was studied. The results show that the inclusion of irresponsible companies in the DJSI Index is a fact. This outcome is in line with previous studies t…
Do irresponsible corporate activities prevent membership in sustainable stock indices? The case of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index world
2021
Abstract The study analyses the real-life results from the DJSI World selection process and investigates whether companies are treated differently because of sectoral or geographical diversification needs of the index; furthermore, the question whether its methodology penalises ESG-related irresponsible corporate activities is investigated. The last is an important issue, as it is not unusual to find constituents of sustainable indices implicated in corporate scandals. This is a striking fact, contradicting the ethical and sustainable imperative such companies are supposed to comply with. The authors scrutinise data from a data panel containing 2872 firms between 2011 and 2016 and estimate …
Environmental education in Latvia
2012
This paper discusses the development of environmental education and education for sustainable development in Latvia since 1991. The article highlights best practices of environmental education in Latvia, which include curriculum and study materials development, active participation of various business enterprises in providing informal education, eco-school activities, etc. The objective of this paper is to share our experience with the international community and to promote a global dialogue in sustainable development.
Environmental sustainability – aspects and criteria in forest biorefineries
2012
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine what the most significant aspects of environmental sustainability in the forest biorefinery sector are and what kind of criteria should be applied to an evaluation of environmental sustainability in the forest biorefinery context.Design/methodology/approachThe topic is approached by themed interviews in Scandinavia and North America with 23 representatives from the forest and bioproducts sectors. The interviews were examined using the thematic analysis method.FindingsThe study indicates that environmental sustainability may be an important driver for the forest biorefinery business. From the perspective of environmental sustainability, harvesti…
Social Responsibility Initiative Implementation in the Public Sector in Latvia
2014
The public sector provides many different jobs in Latvia; however, the number of people employed in the public sector is small. Sometimes private sector organisations with a socially responsible culture are more attractive for specialists. The authors propose to evaluate Social Responsibility’s (SR) importance, benefits, and ways of possible implementation for several types of public sector organisations.
 The objective of this paper is to enquire what kind of activities organisations need to carry out to be included in the Sustainability Index rating and overview the possible reasons of difficulties encountered by public organisations.
 The authors describe the structure of the p…