albertmartinez/OSDG huggingface dataset:
A major difference between financial reporting and reporting on sustainability performance is that these last reports are much more transparent on the sustainability performance in the value chain. The most relevant topics to report on are those that reflect a company’s significant environmental impacts or substantively influence the assessments and decisions of stakeholders. Insight into the justified information needs from users is necessary to be able to provide relevant environmental data 43 The process for defining report content is therefore based on a materiality process that finds its basis in stakeholder engagement. Although guidance is given, in practice, companies still struggle on how to perform such materiality assessments and identify the most relevant indicators to report on.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg12)
It is notable that 69% of development finance for the energy sector is climate-related, and particularly that finance for mitigation is higher than the global average (60%). There seems to be room for projects that aim to increase the resilience of the energy sector to climate impacts through adaptation, particularly for those especially vulnerable to climate change such as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. A larger share of climate-related development finance in agriculture was committed to adaptation, but the total of 26% (including both mitigation and adaptation) is much lower than the global average (40% for climate-related development finance). For the water sector, the share of climate-related finance in the total development finance in the EECCA countries is the same as the global average (i.e. 37%). However, the level of committed finance to mitigation in the sector is much higher (i.e. 21% in EECCA vs. 3% in the world), reflecting the need to rehabilitate old, inefficient infrastructure in this sector.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg13)
The Programme Officer of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Nandhini Iyer Krishna, highlighted the interaction between land degradation and deforestation, stressing that unsustainable agriculture practices could be a significant drivers of deforestation, in this context, she emphasized the importance sustainable livestock management and the value of agroforestry. She also noted that, while attention was often focused on rain forests, dry land forests were also important, providing a buffer against drought and desertification, a safety net against poverty, biodiversity richness and other vital ecosystem goods and services.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
System-wide issues include, for example, encouraging consistent quality across the range of providers, ensuring specialisation amongst key intermediaries, encouraging scale economies amongst intermediaries delivering more than a single element of the programme, and facilitating the exit of intermediaries providing services of insufficient standard. Here the aspiration is to make the individual institutions more market oriented and to get them acting together more effectively as a system -exchanging experience and knowledge as well as competing to improve quality and effectiveness. Where changes in the institutional arrangements have already been made these will need monitoring and assessment, for example placing the 51 PymExporta centres provided by intermediaries under the central control of the new specialised national agency ProMexico.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg8)
Furthermore, as highlighted in table 2, because payments do not need to be direct cash transfers, payments in the forms of infrastructure such as schools, road, irrigation systems or health clinics can be used to deliver significant benefits to the community as a whole. Benefits to the poor can also go beyond additional income or rewards. It is however difficult to rescind such forms of payments if communities fail to live up to their obligations.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
Gender gaps exist for a wide range of agricultural technologies, including machines and tools, improved plant varieties and animal breeds, fertilisers, pest control measures and management techniques. Often technologies and tools have been adapted to men’s tasks or to equipment used by men, whilst women struggle with cultivation and harvesting using handheld tools (World Bank, FAO and IFAD, 2009). Only 15% of the extension personnel were female. Several new and participatory extension approaches have been developed and tested in the past decade in an effort to move away from a top-down model to more farmer-driven services. The impact of agricultural extension services can be improved by working with the whole household, rather than with individuals (Box 2.9 Agriculture support programme, Zambia) (Farnworth, 2010a). When both women’s and men’s work is explicitly recognised, the entire farm is strengthened as a productive enterprise.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg5)
These shares have been fairly stable over the past five years. In comparison, the IEA average in 2008 was 23% for industry, and 32% for transport and 45% for other sectors. Industry has modernised and restructured itself, and, counterbalancing the impact of rapid population growth, energy use in buildings has become more efficient. The transport sector, in turn, has seen a dramatic increase in energy use over the past decade.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg7)
In EU member countries, MEPS programmes have so far been less ambitious than those of some other developed countries in terms of the number of standards set and performance levels demanded. However, the EuP Directive represents a new approach by setting eco-design requirements for a larger range of EuPs. In December 2008, the EU member States approved a regulation (formally adopted by the European Commission (EC) in March 2009) for the progressive phasing out of incandescent bulbs by 2012.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg7)
Untreated wastewater from industry is a problem there. However, reconstruction of the refinery and improvements to oil extraction practices have reduced oil pollution of the Caspian Sea, but permissible limits for discharges are still exceeded. A network of collectors was constructed to transport drainage water into desert depressions.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
In accordance with domestic law, each Party shall take measures, as appropriate, with the aim of ensuring that the prior informed consent or approval and involvement of indigenous and local communities is obtained for access to genetic resources where they have the established right to grant access to such resources. These include the requirement to formulate fair and non-arbitrary rules and procedures for access, information on how to apply for PIC, the issuance of permits as evidence of PIC, the requirement to provide written decision by the competent national authority within a reasonable period of time and the like. A national competent authority must be established to implement the ABS system, where it will be possible to register ABS agreements and any other documentation that can potentially serve as evidence of PIC and MAT (Nagoya Protocol, Article 13).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg2)
Results of the health care cost models are used to forecast future health expenditures based on the characteristics and health status of the projected future elderly population from the other two FEM model components. Per capita expenditures are also calculated for each of these four payment categories. All projected expenditures are in real terms that correspond to 1998 dollars.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg3)
One example is the recent pilot project “Payment for Ecosystem Sendees (PES) on Flood Regulation” in Hull, whose objectives were to characterise the current state of ecosystem services delivered to uiban areas, identify potential improvements of ecosystem service delivery, and design potential payments for ecosystem services. The pilot project led to two proposed PES schemes, including a country park-scale PES that would allow mitigating flood risk in north western Hull by developing “swales, bunds, ponds, replacement of permeable road and car park surfaces and conversion of amenity grassland to semi-natural grasslands and more varied woodlands”. Another example is the Beckingham Marshes Washland Creation, which aims to create 94 hectares of floodplain grasslands in order to improve flood risk mitigation for the towns of Gainsborough and Beckingham on the River Trent.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
Spearheaded by the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, in close partnership with civil society organisations led primarily by women - the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding-Sierra Leone (WANEP) and the Mano River Union Peace Network (MARWOPNET) - the development of the plan also involved a broad spectrum of stakeholders including other government line ministries, parliamentarians and UN agencies. The collaboration of so many varied stakeholders and the extensive involvement of local and international partners can help provide a strong framework for awareness raising, capacity building and overall monitoring and evaluation of the impact of the NAP, but it will take time for the effects of the plan to be identified and assessed. The present conflict has lasted over 20 years, with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under rebel leader Joseph Kony being particularly brutal and committing acts of unspeakable violence. Women and children have been especially affected, subject to abductions, widespread rape and murder.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg5)
One method to induce a sensation of travelling at high speed is through the use of so called “psychological traffic calming” where road features and markings are used to create a heightened awareness of the need to slow down and/or of entry into a lower speed zone. An example of an entry treatment is the now widely used installation of a “gateway” at village or town entry as shown in Figure 6.5. One example is the study of Jamson et al. ( A major criterion used in the testing was the durability of the effect, i.e. a demonstration that it would work on repeated experience rather than wearing off after the initial encounter.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg11)
The states’ legal frameworks were adapted and harmonised to facilitate the development of water markets. Water-access entitlements were converted to a system of tradable ownership entitlements, with most of the new entitlements being separated from land ownership rights." However, differences remained between the states’ regulatory regimes and their respective definitions of water rights.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
In this special section of this issue of Science and Public Policy, authors are reflecting the fundamental challenges that the rapid progress in science and technology poses for human rights and privacy in particular. They aim to find new answers to the question how a (global) governance of science and technology could address these challenges. Copyright The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
The rule of law (RoL), as a highly valued international principle and one of the founding principles of the European Union (EU), plays a significant role in its environmental governance. Overlapping interests between China’s search for effective solutions to environmental problems and the EU’s environmental governance experience provide a solid ground for bilateral cooperation in environmental area, and the RoL which is embodied in these bilateral programmes has also been diffused to China. Through looking at the top-down approach of capacity building in law enforcement and the bottom-up approach of the raising of public awareness of environmental rights and public participation promotion, China’s lesson-drawing and the EU’s RoL promotion in EU-China Environmental Governance Programme can be understood. Moreover, although studying the long-term effect of RoL promotion requires more empirical data, this paper does explain how EU norms diffuse in practice.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
According to the Romanian monitoring results in 2009, the Prut River is of class I (high) on 12% of its length (115 km between Stanca —Costcsti Reservoir and confluence with Bascu tributary), and class II (good) on 88%. Among the provisions is a regulation on the maintenance and operation of the Hydrotechnical Knot Stanca-Costesti on the Prut River. A Joint Subcommission for Operation of the Hy-drotcchnic Knot “Stanca-Costesti” currently acts on the basis of the Regulation from 1985,151 and the 2010 bilateral agreement on transboundary watcis.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
It is also noticeable that while for both Jamaica and St Luda the dramatic fall in treatment costs caused the share of GDP lost to be reduced, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago the opposite happened. The downward effect of the fall in treatment costs was more than compensated for by the upward impact of the significant increase in the number of infected individuals. The results of the study are summarised in Table 4.4, which shows HIV/AIDS negatively impacting on key macroeconomic variables.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg3)
This paper argues the need to think the concept of global justice beyond the traditional paradigms of philosophy. If we want a global justice that includes the single individual, then it is necessary to rethink the traditional perspective that dominates the discussion about International Law. We need a critical reflection on modernity and globalization. This review will allow propose a new Enlightenment able to link the global order with cosmopolitanism and moral universalism. The challenge is to build a fair globalization with each and everyone of the individuals. These individuals are members of the new global citizenship.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
The effective integration of land and water management issues is hampered by the fact that, although the Province of Venice has the administrative responsibility for residential and industrial development on much of the coast, it does not control “upstream” land use, which also affects water quality in the Lagoon and in coastal waters, and it does not control the main urban areas of the Lagoon (the responsibility of the municipalities). In theory, all plans are required to refer to the Watershed Plan, but compliance with and interpretation of these plans is often weak. Sewage in the historic centre is untreated, and flows directly into the Lagoon, which receives an organic and pathogen loading equivalent to a city of more than 400 000 persons during the tourist season.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
It begins with an overview of the historical evolution of science, technology and innovation policy in Malaysia. It next examines the main policy actors, governance arrangements and national plans. The chapter then reviews current policies under the light of the observations made in earlier chapters and concludes with a summary note on the strengths and weaknesses of the country's STI governance and policy mix.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg9)
Still, globally in 2012, 6.6 million children died before reaching their fifth birthday. Out of all child deaths worldwide, 50 per cent occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and an additional 32 per cent occurred in South Asia. Most of these child deaths were caused by preventable diseases, such as acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea, measles and malaria (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2013).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg3)
The EU Commission's Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package, published in 2008, sets the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in the period 1990-2020 and increasing the share of renewable energy to 20% of total energy consumption by 2020 (EC, 2010). The share of renewable energy in total energy use in the Nordic and Baltic countries in 2008 and their 2020 targets are shown in Table 2.1. The percentage (%) share of renewable energy in final energy use in the Nordic and Baltic countries in 2008 and targets for 2020.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg7)
Also the top PIT rate applies to very high income levels only. In 2014 in Chile, the top PIT rate of 40% had to be paid on gross earnings exceeding 12.7 times the average wage. After abolishing the top PIT bracket, this threshold in Chile will be lowered to 10.5 times the average wage, which remains very high.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg5)
Therefore, daily supply is adjusted with the factor LSSPR to account for the loss of the largest supplier, route, or plant. If extreme events are taken into account, total storage capacity should be corrected for the storage capacity of the largest supplier if this is storage. This availability can be corrected further for the energy dependency of gas in order to show the relative importance of gas as primary fuel. The energy dependency is based on the complement of the share in primary energy, instead of the share itself, because of the positive formulation of the indicator (short-run availability increases when a country is not fully dependent on gas). Therefore, in order to calculate the short-run availability of oil the required critical stocks of oil that would need to be kept to cover a benchmark period of time are considered. The benchmark period could be based on the length of the period IEA members are required to maintain stock: 90 days of average consumption.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg7)
In the Western Cape province of South Africa, receiving areas for biodiversity offsets have been defined based on regional or local conservation priorities as determined through a process of biodiversity mapping and threat assessment (Brownlie and Botha, 2009, Treweek et al., Elsewhere, strategic environment assessments and Development by Design approaches have sought to identify conservation priorities within a landscape in advance of development impacts occurring so that offsets may be designed and located in recognition of the cumulative impacts of planned development activities on biodiversity, these issues are discussed further in Chapter 2. If a biobank has greater reach in terms of the possible developments it can service, it may make the project more economically viable and may allow it to be placed in regions where landscape-level biodiversity outcomes are more optimal (Wissel and Watzold, 2010).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
This paper investigates the legitimacy tactics used in the annual reports of UK listed companies in the aftermath of major corporate scandals.,We carried out a content analysis of annual reports of 19 companies that have been involved in corporate scandals with a view to understand how firms communicate negative scandals affecting them.,The findings reveal that firms use a wide range of legitimisation strategies in the manner that contribute to shape disclosure communications concerning negative incidents. For instance, some firms may offset the negativity linked to an incident by rendering such explanations amidst positive information.,Contrary to earlier studies conducted on accounting scandals, the authors incorporated extensive corporate scandals such as human rights violations, controversies concerning child labour, environmental scandals, corruption, financial embezzlement and tax evasion.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Metropolitan spatial plans typically aim to provide a medium- to long-term vision for development, which is, however, not always aligned with the timeframe of other plans at municipal or national levels. There is also a risk that such medium- to long-term plans may be considered too long to imply anything meaningful or realistically feasible for short-term political mandates. However, it eventually turned into gated communities (called fraccionamientos), whose development and public sendee provision mainly take place outside the control of public authorities and contribute to increasing socio-economic inequalities within the metropolitan region.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg11)
They can be complemented by some relevant sub-sector and disease level performance information (OECD, 2010b). This section puts Finnish health outcomes into international perspective before relating them to inputs, such as health care spending or the number of health practitioners, to derive efficiency indicators. The difference in life expectancy between genders is one of the highest in the EU15 and within the OECD it is higher only in eastern European countries. While life expectancy for women is among the top 10 in the OECD, it is below the EU15 average and all other Nordic countries for men.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg3)
Continued efforts are needed to improve the coverage and, in particular, the effectiveness of the global protected area network. These are the findings of the Red List Index, compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and its partners. The index measures trends in the overall extinction risk of sets of species. The most recent update—for birds, presenting findings up to 2012— shows that declines are continuing at the same, or even an accelerating, pace.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
In many cases, the under-use of highly skilled workers is a reflection of the general under-use of labour. In Ireland and Japan, for example, around one in four adults with Level 3 proficiency is outside the labour force, while in the United Slates, fewer than one in five adults al this proficiency level does not participate in the labour market. Two out of three Korean adults who score at or below level 1 are employed, while in the Slovak Republic, only two in five adults with this level of proficiency are employed. These patterns may be affected by the extent of jobs available for those with very low skills, they may also reflect weak financial rewards for working, especially if interactions between the tax and benefit systems mean that low-skilled adults face high marginal effective tax rates.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg4)
A reduction in C02 intensity would involve less fossil fuel consumption, and therefore less depletion and less need to develop very water intensive non-conventional resources. Therefore, one of their co-benefits would be to limit the energy and water bottlenecks. On the other hand, as outlined above, increased reliance on bioenergy may aggravate the competition for scarce land.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
This development is featured as a national demonstration project for the circular economy and “scientific development” under the principles of “reduce, reuse and recycle” that applies to both residential and industry development. Industry agglomerations in Caofeidian development zone will be developed in 5 industry zones for: (1) modern logistics, (2) iron and steel, (3) petrochemicals, (4) equipment manufacturing, and (5) high and new technologies (Caofeidian Forum, 2009). Not all businesses can be part of the new type of industrialisation, chiefly very inefficient enterprises might need to be closed, as was the case for 26 inefficient cement factories that were destroyed at the outskirts of Tangshan prior to the Olympic Games in order to reduce pollution.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg8)
This section describes the wide variety of alternatives that are applied in the countries studied, in terms of the beneficiaries and benefits of unemployment insurance (section B.2), the access conditions (section B.3), the financing of the system (section B.4) and its organizational models (section B.5). This is followed by a brief discussion on unemployment assistance (section B.6), particularly as regards Australia and New Zealand. The section concludes with some comments on the challenges facing the design of unemployment insurance (section B.7) and a brief summary (section B.8).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg8)