scholarly journals A Quiet Revolution: Central Banks, Financial Regulators, and Climate Finance

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 9596
Author(s):  
Neil Gunningham
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Climate Risks ◽  
Social License ◽  
Individual Industry ◽  
Cutting Mechanisms

If the free market cannot deliver a low carbon financial revolution, what sort of interventions in financial markets might be necessary to do so? Using interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and applying regulatory theory, this article argues for (i) cross cutting mechanisms designed to curb short-termism, to leverage the social license of financial institutions and to expand corporate conceptions of fiduciary duty to embrace climate change; and (ii) approaches tailored to the characteristics of each individual industry sector. Institutional investors and banks are used as case studies to highlight the importance of third-party benchmarking, expanding rights to litigate, requiring pension funds to address climate risks when making investment decisions, and disincentivizing high carbon investments by bank clients. Finally, it shows that a multi-instrumental approach can create a web of regulation that is more resilient and effective than its individual constituents. Its principal contribution is to show how Central Banks and Financial Regulators (CBFRs) might best fast-track a low-carbon financial transition.

scholarly journals Drivers of sustainability practices and contributions to sustainable development evident in sustainability reports of European mining companies

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anđela Ivic ◽  
Nína María Saviolidis ◽  
Lara Johannsdottir
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Mining Activities ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Mining Companies ◽  
Social License ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
Sustainability Practices

AbstractMining activities cause negative environmental impacts and social conflicts but also provide economic benefits to communities and secure the minerals necessary for low-carbon technology. The aim of this multiple case study is to analyze, compare and critically evaluate sustainability reports of 10 European mining companies for the 2016–2018 period to determine the drivers for implementation of sustainability practices and their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The findings suggest that European mining companies act under pressures from international initiatives and industry associations, the European Union, governments, stakeholders, and maintaining social license to operate. The companies report on the core subjects of corporate governance, employees, the environment, stakeholders’ engagement and occupational health and safety. Positive trends were observed in stakeholders’ engagement and health and safety, while air emissions and water and energy usage increased for most companies. Furthermore, there was an absence of improvement in gender diversity, utilization of renewable energy, and waste recycling. Even though all analyzed companies mentioned SDGs in the reports, the reports lacked a comprehensive explanation of mining activities’ contribution to the SDGs. This study addresses a gap in the existing literature on the European mining context of sustainable development and SDGs relevant for researchers, policymakers, and other impacted stakeholders and adds new theoretical knowledge on the external drivers of CSR activities based on institutional theory.

scholarly journals Client or Volunteer? Understanding Neoliberalism and Neocolonialism Within International Volunteer Health Work

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 233339361879295
Author(s):  
Oona St-Amant ◽  
Catherine Ward-Griffin ◽  
Helene Berman ◽  
Arja Vainio-Mattila
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Health Work ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Volunteer

As international volunteer health work increases globally, research pertaining to the social organizations that coordinate the volunteer experience in the Global South has severely lagged. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to critically examine the social organizations within Canadian NGOs in the provision of health work in Tanzania. Multiple, concurrent data collection methods, including text analysis, participant observation and in-depth interviews were utilized. Data collection occurred in Tanzania and Canada. Neoliberalism and neocolonialism were pervasive in international volunteer health work. In this study, the social relations—“volunteer as client,” “experience as commodity,” and “free market evaluation”—coordinated the volunteer experience, whereby the volunteers became “the client” over the local community and resulting in an asymmetrical relationship. These findings illuminate the need to generate additional awareness and response related to social inequities embedded in international volunteer health work.

scholarly journals Technology Roadmap for Eco-Friendly Building Materials Industry

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyunsook Shim ◽  
Taeyeon Kim ◽  
Gyunghyun Choi
Keyword(s):  
Quality Function Deployment ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Analytic Hierarchy ◽  
Technology Roadmap ◽  
Save Energy

As quality of life has improved, the need for high-performance building materials that meet specific technological requirements has increased. Residential environments have also changed owing to climate change. A technology roadmap could define and systematically reflect a timeline for the development of future core technologies. The purpose of this research is to build a technology roadmap that could be utilized for the development of technology in the eco-friendly building material industry. This research is composed of multiple analysis processes—patent analysis, Delphi, and analytic hierarchy process analysis—that minimize the uncertainty caused by the lack of information in the eco-friendly construction industry by securing objective future forecast data. Subsequently, the quality function deployment test is implemented to verify the feasibility of the technology roadmap that is constructed. The design of various types of functional, low-carbon building materials could reduce carbon emissions and save energy by ensuring a hazardous-material-free market in the future. This design development roadmap is required to complement this technology roadmap.

scholarly journals The Culture of Amateur Real Estate Investing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Garboden
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Investment Decisions ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Real Estate Investment ◽  
Real Estate Markets ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Do So

The majority of rental properties in the U.S. today is owned by small- to medium-sized investors, many of whom enter the trade with little prior experience. This paper considers the cultural factors that motivate these amateurs to purchase real estate–an investment with high risks and relatively poor returns. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 93 investors in three heterogeneous real estate markets, Baltimore, MD, Dallas, TX, and Cleveland, OH, combined with participant observation of 22 real estate investment association meetings (REIAs), this paper finds that amateurs who decide to become investors often do so during periods when their professional identities are insecure or they perceive their retirement portfolios to be insufficient. Through participation in real estate investment associations and other investor networks, they quickly internalize “investor culture,” embracing ideologies of self-sufficiency and risk. “Investor culture”—perpetuated by REIAs--motivates and legitimizes strategies of action that lead to increasingly leveraged investments. Third-party actors, including real estate gurus, paid mentors, and private “hard money” lenders exploit the intersection of insecurity and the propagation of investor culture to profit off amateurs’ investment decisions.

scholarly journals The ‘No-Alternative Scenario’ in the Alternative Analysis of NEPA

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Kalpana Murari
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
The Public

Environmental impact assessment report is the primary document required to assess sustainable issues of any business/commercial activity, but it is most often overlooked for serious anomalies in its presentation to the public. It is most often incomplete and there is a need to review the standards of impact assessment procedures that help preserve environmental integrity among developing nations. The absence of sanctions for improper assessment of environmental, social and economic impacts of commercial activities, including extraction of natural resources by domestic and multinational corporations undermines sustainable development across the globe. The procedures in place to study various impacts of a business activity that enable access to genuine, verifiable and actionable information by the public require review and oversight by a third-party institution. The standardization of procedures and universal harmonization of enforcement and compliance regulations by nations has to become a topic for debate at various academic levels to gain importance. Essentially, EIA reports in large infrastructure projects serve as a blueprint for low carbon economies. Developing nations ignore vital provisions relating to the listing and analysis of alternatives in their attempt to meet developmental goals. Environmental protection is to maintain the ecological integrity of habitats and ecosystems. EIA reports, ultimately, aim at conserving and replenishing the reserves of natural resources. Judicial law has played an important role in highlighting the importance of alternatives in EIA. It is therefore important as how developing nations use the provision for the alternative analysis within their environmental laws. This paper will discuss EIA under the auspices of International law relating it to Sustainable Development. It shall emphasize the significance of providing alternatives in large infrastructure projects that have enviro-social impacts including transboundary effects and how the use of “no-action” alternative helps preserve and conserve a nation’s resources, reducing negative impacts Keywords: NEPA, CEQ, Impact Assessment, Alternatives Assessment, Alternatives Analysis, no-action alternative, hydropower, mega dams.

scholarly journals Diverse Schemes of Cost Pooling for Carbon- Reduction Outsourcing in Low-Carbon Supply Chains

Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 3013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qinpeng Wang ◽  
Longfei He ◽  
Daozhi Zhao ◽  
Michele Lundy
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Carbon Reduction ◽  
Carbon Supply ◽  
External Expert ◽  
Reduction Efficiency ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Better Than

Among responses to governmental regulations for curbing carbon emissions, outsourcing carbon reduction to a specialized third-party is an important means to satisfy a variety of carbon-emission restraints. In this situation, however, designing efficient contracts for emission reducing while retaining appropriate supply-chain profit is a substantial but challenging problem. We therefore refine this from practice and consider a low-carbon supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer to analyze in which conditions the system should outsource its carbon reduction efforts to an external expert firm under the assumption that consumers with a sense of social responsibility prefer low carbon products. In the decarbonization expert firm embedded supply chain, we examine the respective impacts of three cost-pooling schemes for emission reduction on supply chain performances. We find that the manufacturer-undertaking contract is the worst in terms of profit and carbon reduction level among the contracts being studied, while the retailer-undertaking contract yields the best outcome in terms of the profit and performs well in carbon reduction when the contractor has cost efficiency in carbon reduction, which is even better than the joint-undertaking contract in carbon reduction when the contractor is inefficient. The study shows the diversity of contracts on outsourcing carbon reduction significantly impacts the supply chain profitability, carbon reduction efficiency and sustainability of operations.

scholarly journals Complaint-Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. 769-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Herring
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Homeless Men ◽  
Zero Tolerance Policing ◽  
Social Marginality

Over the past 30 years, cities across the United States have adopted quality-of-life ordinances aimed at policing social marginality. Scholars have documented zero-tolerance policing and emerging tactics of therapeutic policing in these efforts, but little attention has been paid to 911 calls and forms of third-party policing in governing public space and the poor. Drawing on an analysis of 3.9 million 911 and 311 call records and participant observation alongside police officers, social workers, and homeless men and women residing on the streets of San Francisco, this article elaborates a model of “complaint-oriented policing” to explain additional causes and consequences of policing visible poverty. Situating the police within a broader bureaucratic field of poverty governance, I demonstrate how policing aimed at the poor can be initiated by callers, organizations, and government agencies, and how police officers manage these complaints in collaboration and conflict with health, welfare, and sanitation agencies. Expanding the conception of the criminalization of poverty, which is often centered on incarceration or arrest, the study reveals previously unforeseen consequences of move-along orders, citations, and threats that dispossess the poor of property, create barriers to services and jobs, and increase vulnerability to violence and crime.

A Corrective Justice Account of Disgorgement for Breach of Contract by Analogy to Fiduciary Remedies

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-190
Author(s):  
Anthony Robert Sangiuliano
Keyword(s):  
Attorney General ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Contractual Rights ◽  
Do So

A corrective justice account of a private law remedy attempts to the explain the remedy as giving back to the plaintiff something to which the plaintiff had a prior right that was breached by the defendant's receipt of that thing. It has proven challenging to explain how disgorgement for breach of contract is consistent with corrective justice. This remedy gives to the plaintiff any profit that a defendant received from a third party by breaching a contract with the plaintiff. In this paper, I critique two leading attempts to show how disgorgement for breach of contract is consistent with corrective justice. I argue that these attempts fail, and I suggest that a plausible corrective justice account of disgorgement should be based on something other than the nature of the contractual rights borne by a plaintiff. I then develop an alternative account based on an analogy between disgorgement for breach of contract and disgorgement for breach of fiduciary duty. To do so, I draw on recent scholarship on the consistency of disgorgement for breach of fiduciary with corrective justice and analyze the leading judicial decision on disgorgement for breach of contract by the UK House of Lords inAttorney General v. Blake. I argue that the fiduciary-based account can provide a plausible explanation for how disgorgement effectuates corrective justice by giving back to a plaintiff something to which he had an antecedent right that the defendant violated by profiting from a breach of contract.

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