|
|
Lack of Disclosure from European Automakers Threatens Investors
by Peter Denton
As European automakers near a deadline to reduce the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of their fleets, an analysis recently released by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) Group reveals that the car companies are not disclosing CO2 reduction commitments or strategies to comply with a European Union agreement to lower auto emissions.
In 1998, the European Commission and the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) agreed to voluntarily reduce CO2 emissions of their autos to an overall fleet average of 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer (gCO2/km) by 2008. With the industry at a fleet average of 160 gCO2/km in 2002, an additional reduction of 15 percent is needed by 2008 to meet the target.
"The problem with the ACEA Agreement is that nobody knows what the auto companies are planning to do to bring the industry to its 2008 target," said WRI's Amanda Sauer, lead author of Transparency Issues with the ACEA Agreement: Are Investors Driving Blindly?
Sauer and co-authors Fred Wellington of WRI and the SAM Group's Philipp Mettler and Gabriela Grab Hartmann are concerned that without these disclosures, investors are unaware of large potential costs and competitive implications that automakers could face as they race to meet the 2008 target. Although the ACEA Agreement is voluntary, the European Commission has repeatedly stated that it will formally regulate the industry if it fails to meet the 2008 target of 140 gCO2/km.
"It is unacceptable that, with only three years left to comply with the ACEA Agreement, auto companies have done little to disclose in their annual reports to investors how they plan to meet this voluntary target," Sauer added.
In an effort to determine how individual automakers are positioned to meet the ACEA target, the authors performed a basic cost analysis for two scenarios by which the industry could comply with the agreement by 2008. In each of these scenarios - which were somewhat speculative due to the widespread lack of disclosure - European automakers face a wide range of possible cost exposures.
The companies analyzed in Transparency Issues are BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Fiat, PSA Peugeot Citröen, Renault, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda. While the approaches these automakers are taking to meet the 2008 targets are largely unknown, the authors determined that Toyota is the best positioned of the group to meet the ACEA Agreement.
"The lack of disclosure around the ACEA Agreement means investors cannot make informed decisions because they do not know the relative cost exposure of the automakers," said co-author Fred Wellington. "Without information on these costs - as well as their potential effect on profit margins - market valuations could be distorted."
Transparency Issues with the ACEA Agreement is part of series of analyses on the auto industry conducted by WRI's Capital Market Research Project, which aims to ensure that the financial implications of future environmental risks and opportunities facing companies are properly understood by investors and appropriately reflected in stock market valuations.
Sauer and WRI's Duncan Austin released Changing Drivers: The Impact of Climate Change on Competitiveness and Value Creation in the Automotive Industry in 2003. The report took a broad approach and helped investors make better informed decisions regarding automotive company stocks in light of emerging regulatory constraints on CO2 emissions.
In late 2004, Sauer and Wellington collaborated on Taking the High (Fuel Economy) Road: What Do the New Chinese Fuel Economy Standards Mean for Foreign Automakers? The report analyzed how car companies were positioned to meet new Chinese regulations on fuel economy. (WRI Features, 589 words)
|
|
|
Exchange of Conservation Tips Benefits African Nations
by Emmanuel Koro
A Kenyan delegation of policy makers and representatives from rural communities and NGOs recently completed a whirlwind tour of Southern Africa. The Kenyans returned to their country with a greater knowledge of sustainable development projects in the region and information on how to replicate the successes in their nation.
The Kenyan delegation visited Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) Projects in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. They interviewed communities implementing CBNRM Projects and also met with policy makers, community and NGO representatives from the three Southern African nations.
"Our purpose to come to the Southern Africa is to come and learn," said George Kaniri, Kenyan Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism. "Our visit is at the right time because we are in the process of trying to overhaul our Wildlife Management and Conservation Act and we believe that when we embark on that process we will share the experiences that we would have learnt from the Southern African region. We know that they have done well - better than us - and we want to learn from them."
The visit by the Kenyan delegation emphasized Africa's timely entry into a new conservation era, which hopes to unite African countries exploring diverse conservation and development approaches. African countries obviously have different conservation problems and also different approaches towards solving these issues. There are some areas, however, where their wildlife management dilemmas overlap, creating the need for African countries to learn from one another how they are tackling common problems.
Similar exchange visits between African countries are increasingly becoming an effective approach to addressing challenges in the continent. In 2002, for example, a delegation from West Africa visited Southern Africa to learn how the region was addressing their conservation and development problems.
For the past 10 years, Southern African countries have been successfully implementing initiatives that promote sustainable utilization of natural resources in rural areas. Sustainable utilization of natural resources is popularly referred to as CBNRM.
Through this conservation and development approach, Southern African countries have demonstrated that if local communities are given sustainable user and management rights over their natural resources, they will be motivated to accept the costs of living alongside wildlife and jealously protect it from poachers.
"Conservation in Southern Africa has demonstrated its economic potential on both public and private land," said Dr. Harrison Kojwang, regional representative of WWF's Southern African Regional Program Office. "We can improve poverty alleviation through wildlife management which need not only be viable within fences of national parks. We can do that ourselves."
Dr. Kojwang cited Namibia's Torra Conservancy as an example of how sustainable use concept is helping to improve the growth of wildlife population. There have been tremendous increases in animal population in northwest Namibia outside protected areas.
"It is very clear that through the responsible management of these areas, these communities are managing their wildlife on their own," said Dr. Kojwang. "This is just an indicator of what has happened in one particular area."
In Botswana, the Kenyan delegation met with communities in the Chobe Enclave and also visited Namibian CBNRM projects in Mayuni Conservancy and Zimbabwe's Hwange CAMPFIRE Community.
Dr. Rutina, a senior officer for Botswana's Department of Parks and Wildlife Management, explained to the Kenyan delegation how Botswana, along with other Southern African countries were facing challenges to manage an overabundant elephant population.
"The wildlife biomass is increasing," said Dr. Rutina. "The elephant is transforming the vegetation and that transformation is affecting many species. That's why we have some of the species populations going down, like herbivore grazers in the Chobe River."
Pelonomi Venson, Botswana's Minister of Environment and Tourism, said she was convinced that the Kenyans' visit to Southern Africa would help promote sustainable use of wildlife in Africa.
"It's going to be a great moment when we next meet with other countries that we can speak on a common ground on issues that we would have had an opportunity to share with you," she said while addressing the Kenyan delegation in Sankuyo, a CBNRM Community in Botswana.
After the exchange visits, the West African and Kenyan delegations and the Southern Africans learned that - although their conservation policies and approaches might have differed - their interests in wildlife and natural resources management and the need to alleviate poverty through promotion of development in rural Africa brought them together. (WRI Features, 720 words)
|
|
|
Bioinvasions: Stemming the Tide of Invasive Species
by Amy Wagener and Wendy Vanasselt
Ever since humans began traveling over land and sea, assorted livestock, crops, pets, pests, and weeds have tagged along. Nearly every region of the globe has benefited economically from introduced species. Yet new arrivals that become invasive have also created major problems for agriculture and other human enterprises and disrupted distinct communities of native plants and animals.
Today, almost 20 percent of the world's endangered vertebrate species are threatened in some way by exotic invaders, including 13 percent of vulnerable mainland vertebrates and 31 percent of those on islands. In fact, invasions of natural ecosystems by non-native species now rank second to habitat loss as a major threat to biodiversity.
Non-native fish introductions are common in most parts of the world, too, with serious consequences for freshwater and coastal ecosystems. A survey of 31 fish introductions in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand found that in 77 percent of the cases, native fish populations were reduced or eliminated following the introduction of nonnative fish.
The pace of invasions is accelerating in parallel with the growth of global trade. Some ecologists predict that as the number of potential invaders increases and the supply of undisturbed natural areas declines, biological pollution by alien invaders may become the leading factor of ecological disintegration.
Burgeoning world trade has a particularly great potential to increase bioinvasions by opening unintentional but major dispersal opportunities. Food- and water-borne disease organisms, agricultural pests and weeds, and other nuisance species hitchhike to new lands aboard ships, airplanes, and trucks, stowed in shipping containers and packing materials or riding on nursery stock, unprocessed logs, fruits, vegetables, and seeds.
Deliberate introductions of exotic plants and animals for commercial and agricultural purposes also can pose risks. The bulk of the diet of most of the world's population comes from crop and livestock species that originated elsewhere, and land managers, agricultural scientists, and other sectors of society have clear economic incentives to continue importing exotic species for food, timber, horticultural, and other uses.
Of course, not all newly arriving species become problems. About 10 percent of introduced species become established in nonnative environments, and about 10 percent of those become pests. But those nonnative species that do become problems cause economic as well as biological damage.
Estimates of economic losses, not including damage to native species or to ecological services, range up to several billion dollars per year in the United States alone. One recent attempt to quantify the economic damages and control costs of invasive species in five countries-the United States, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India-came to $336 billion a year.
What can be done to stem the tide of bioinvasions? For one, before intentionally introducing an exotic, it would be helpful to thoroughly analyze potential risks and trade-offs of the introduction. However, biologists cannot predict with certainty the invasive potential of any given plant, animal, or microbe.
For this reason, a few nations-such as New Zealand, where 47 percent of the flora is already exotic-have adopted the precautionary principle, banning importation of all exotic species except for a few clean-list species that are known to be benign. In contrast, most nations, if they have any import restrictions at all, use a dirty-list concept, only denying import of known problem pests or weeds.
In the case of unintentional invasions, the first line of defense is a system of quarantines and regulations designed to limit the free flow of species through trade, transport, aquaculture, agriculture, forestry, game farming, horticulture, the pet trade, recreation, tourism, and travel.
Some countries are raising the profile of the battle against invasives. For example, in 1999, President Clinton created a United States interagency Invasive Species Council charged with improving education, research, and action against invasives.
There are also signs that individuals are beginning to understand the importance of their role in curbing invasive introductions, given that many invaders reach new territory via people who import seeds for their gardens, shop at nurseries, or transport plants in their luggage. In a recent survey of 157 people, mostly United States citizens interested in horticulture, 83 percent expressed a desire to avoid buying invasive plants.
Once invasives are established, eradication is difficult and costly. As of 1999, South Africa was spending about $35 million a year on efforts to control invasions of woody tree species which, unlike native species, consume large quantities of the country's water. In South Africa, employees of the national Working for Water Programme physically cut down the problem species.
With globalization making the world smaller, stronger international cooperation and increased education on the issue of invasive species is necessary to protect native habitats and species. (WRI Features, 791 words)
|
