| 1. |
- Dauriach, Alice, 1991-
(författare)
-
Financial institutions, companies, and the biosphere
- 2022
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- International organisations, governments and civil society have become increasingly vocal in their demands that financial institutions take social and environmental responsibility for the companies they invest in. Some financial institutions have started to assume this responsibility in practice by building international alliances and standards, by reallocating their capital, and by trying to influence corporate policies towards environmental and social goals. Through their ability to allocate and price capital, financial institutions are sometimes believed to be a leverage point to enact rapid and large-scale change towards sustainability. The influence these financial institutions have is still under-researched, however, especially on companies in sectors associated with changes in the biosphere which pose severe risks to human development. In this thesis, I ask: to what extent can financial institutions advance biosphere-based sustainability through their investments in companies? I have three main aims. The first one is to identify key companies and financial institutions which can be linked to changes in the biosphere that pose severe risks to human wellbeing. I select the most critical commodity production sectors driving large-scale biosphere change using insights from social-ecological systems science. I focus on economic activities that result in anthropogenic land use changes that either affect known tipping points in the climate system (the Amazon rainforest), or that increase the risk of emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. The second aim is to develop methods to assess the degree of influence that financial institutions have on corporate activities, drawing from finance research and management theory. I investigate the relationship between financial institutions and large companies, and especially to what extent companies are reliant on different financial flows for their operations, in order to determine through which mechanisms financial institutions could exert influence on them, if at all. Assessing the potential influence of financial institutions on companies requires combining existing methods and bringing together disconnected sources of data about environmental impact, business activity, investments, and financing sources. The third aim is to analyse what factors pose limits to financial influence.Paper 1 analyses the role played by financial institutions as owners in industries associated with anthropogenic land use changes and, as a result, increased zoonotic disease risks. We identify publicly listed companies present in nine regional case studies, as well as the financial institutions that invest in them. We analyse those financial institutions’ potential influence based on both their ownership size and their position in the network of owners.Paper 2 examines the origin of loans obtained by all companies operating in the high deforestation-risk sectors of mineral production, soy trade or cattle trade in the Brazilian Amazon. We assess to what extent companies rely on relatively unaccountable sources of credit, notably credit from secrecy jurisdictions and transnational intra-company credit, which may limit the potential for influence from financial institutions.In conclusion, I find that financial institutions have an important role to play in many sectors and regions analysed, but that this role is limited by a number of factors. These factors include the prevalence of non-financial shareholders in some companies, especially in case studies in the Global South, and the reliance of companies on internal finance and financial flows from secrecy jurisdictions. Companies themselves, and the inner workings of their corporate groups – their private owners, their subsidiaries in various countries, their ethical stance – seem to also be of great importance.
|
|
| 2. |
- Folke, Carl, et al.
(författare)
-
Transnational corporations and the challenge of biosphere stewardship
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 3:10, s. 1396-1403
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainability within planetary boundaries requires concerted action by individuals, governments, civil society and private actors. For the private sector, there is concern that the power exercised by transnational corporations generates, and is even central to, global environmental change. Here, we ask under which conditions transnational corporations could either hinder or promote a global shift towards sustainability. We show that a handful of transnational corporations have become a major force shaping the global intertwined system of people and planet. Transnational corporations in agriculture, forestry, seafood, cement, minerals and fossil energy cause environmental impacts and possess the ability to influence critical functions of the biosphere. We review evidence of current practices and identify six observed features of change towards 'corporate biosphere stewardship', with significant potential for upscaling. Actions by transnational corporations, if combined with effective public policies and improved governmental regulations, could substantially accelerate sustainability efforts.
|
|
| 3. |
- Galaz, Victor, et al.
(författare)
-
Finance and the Earth system – Exploring the links between financial actors and non-linear changes in the climate system
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 53, s. 296-302
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Financial actors and capital play a key role in extractive economic activities around the world, as well as in current efforts to avoid dangerous climate change. Here, in contrast to standard approaches in finance, sustainability and climate change, we elaborate in what ways financial actors affect key biomes around the world, and through this known “tipping elements” in the Earth system. We combine Earth system and sustainability sciences with corporate finance to develop a methodology that allows us to link financial actors to economic activities modifying biomes of key importance for stabilizing Earth's climate system. Our analysis of key owners of companies operating in the Amazon rainforest (Brazil) and boreal forests (Russia and Canada) identifies a small set of international financial actors with considerable, but as of yet unrealized, globally spanning influence. We denote these “Financial Giants” and elaborate how incentives and disincentives currently influence their potential to bolster or undermine the stability of the Earth's climate system.
|
|
| 4. |
- Galaz, Victor, et al.
(författare)
-
Financial influence on global risks of zoonotic emerging and re-emerging diseases : an integrative analysis
- 2023
-
Ingår i: The Lancet Planetary Health. - 2542-5196. ; 7:12, s. e951-E962
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), such as Ebola virus disease and highly pathogenic influenza, are serious threats to human health and wellbeing worldwide. The financial sector has an important, yet often ignored, influence as owners and investors in industries that are associated with anthropogenic land-use changes in ecosystems linked to increased EIDs risks. We aimed to analyse financial influence associated with EIDs risks that are affected by anthropogenic land-use changes. We also aimed to provide empirical assessments of such influence to help guide engagements by governments, private organisations, and non-governmental organisations with the financial sector to advance a planetary health agenda.Methods: For this integrative analysis, we identified regions in the world where there was evidence of a connection between EIDs and anthropogenic land-use changes between Nov 9, 1999, and Oct 25, 2021, through a targeted literature review of academic literature and grey literature to identify evidence of drivers of anthropogenic land-use change and their association with commodity production in these regions. We only included publications in English that showed a connection between deforestation and the production of one or more commodities. Publications merely describing spatial or temporal land-use change dynamics (eg, a reduction of forest or an increase of palm-oil plantations) were excluded. As we were assessing financial influence on corporate activities through ownership specifically, we focused our analysis on publicly listed companies. Equity data and data about ownership structure were extracted from Orbis, a company information database. We assessed financial influence by identifying financial entities with the largest equity ownership, descriptively mapping transboundary connections between investors and publicly listed companies.Findings 227 public and private companies operating in five economic sectors (ie, production of palm oil, pulp and wood products, cocoa, soybeans, and beef) between Dec 15, 2020, and March 8, 2021, were identified. Of these 227, 99 (44%) were publicly listed companies, with 2310 unique shareholders. These publicly listed companies operated in six geographical regions, resulting in nine case-study regions. 54 (55%) companies with complete geographical information were included in the countries network. Four financial entities (ie, Dimensional, Vanguard, BlackRock, and Norway's sovereign wealth fund) each had ownership in 39 companies or more in three of the case-study regions (ie, north America, east Asia, and Europe). Four large US-based asset managers (ie, Vanguard, BlackRock, T Rowe Price, and State Street) were the largest owners of publicly listed companies in terms of total equity size, with ownership amounts for these four entities ranging from US$8 billion to $21 billion. The specific patterns of cross -national ownership depended on the region of interest; for example, financial influence on EIDs risks that was associated with commodity production in southeast and east Asia came from not only global asset managers but also Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean financial entities. India, Brazil, the USA, Mexico, and Argentina were the countries towards which investments were most directed. Interpretation Although commodity supply chains and financial markets are highly globalised, a small number of investors and countries could be viewed as disproportionally influential in sectors that increase EIDs risks. Such financial influence could be used to develop and implement effective policies to reduce ecological degradation and mitigate EIDs risks and their effects on population health.
|
|
| 5. |
- Galaz, Victor, et al.
(författare)
-
Tax havens and global environmental degradation
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 2:9, s. 1352-1357
-
Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The release of classified documents in the past years have offered a rare glimpse into the opaque world of tax havens and their role in the global economy. Although the political, economic and social implications related to these financial secrecy jurisdictions are known, their role in supporting economic activities with potentially detrimental environmental consequences have until now been largely ignored. Here, we combine quantitative analysis with case descriptions to elaborate and quantify the connections between tax havens and the environment, both in global fisheries and the Brazilian Amazon. We show that while only 4% of all registered fishing vessels are currently flagged in a tax haven, 70% of the known vessels implicated in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing are, or have been, flagged under a tax haven jurisdiction. We also find that between October 2000 and August 2011, 68% of all investigated foreign capital to nine focal companies in the soy and beef sectors in the Brazilian Amazon was transferred through one, or several, known tax havens. This represents as much as 90-100% of foreign capital for some companies investigated. We highlight key research challenges for the academic community that emerge from our findings and present a set of proposed actions for policy that would put tax havens on the global sustainability agenda.
|
|
