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This study aims to identify the effect of board diversity on environmental policy in Latin American companies. This research focuses on 11 industrial sectors in Brazil, Mexico, and Chile that took into consideration a broader extension of environmental policy, involving practices regarding resource use, emissions reduction, and innovation. Drawing on corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) relationships, a regression analysis was conducted with 1214 firm‐year observations from 181 companies. Our results indicate that the predominantly weak CG in Latin America might favour the use of manipulative environmental policy decisions. Board diversity does not have a relevant influence on CSR activities, as environmental issues are only taken into account so far as the cost of natural resources, while issues such as environmental innovation and reducing emission are not part of the agenda. In Brazil and Chile, independent directors have no significant effect on environmental policy decisions, while in Mexico, a less independent board grants managers greater discretion to establish an environmental policy, whereas in all three countries, board gender diversity has no significant effect. The theoretical insights drawn from this study reinforce that board composition, as an internal CG mechanism, is insufficient to overcome the institutional voids and give protagonist to sustainability issues in Latin America, reiterating the need for more robust CG mechanisms to coerce CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wholesale conversion of natural Amazonian ecosystems has been encouraged by Brazil's extreme antienvironmental government, and historical forest loss explains municipal-scale voting prevalence. Embracing a new administration would strengthen local-to-regional governance, suppress illegal land grabbing, deforestation, logging, and gold mining, thereby protecting the world's most species-rich forest domain and ensuring global sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources are essential for life on earth. It has already been proven that although it is a resource renewable, water is a limited natural resource. Countries like Brazil, Angola and the United States of America, despite being on different continents and having economic development indices very different, are privileged in this regard, and that is why they were chosen to be objects of this search. But the lack of preservation of this natural resource in all of them, combined with poor water distribution, triggered important warnings in these nations. Consequently, it was necessary to implement regulation for water protection and its correct distribution. From this delimitation, the object of this article is to investigate the main foundations and instruments existing in the Water Laws edited in the Brazil, Angola and the United States. With the use of the deductive method and from research bibliographical and legislative of each of the countries, it is concluded by the need of adequate use of the water resources from the principle of sustainability and the constitutional principles governing the environmental and urban policy, as it is a limited and fundamental resource for the survival of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil and China share important vantage points in environmental fora, actively coordinating their positions within Brazil, South Africa, India, and China (BASIC) and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). Both countries have incorporated sustainability concerns in their multilateral stances, but their bilateral strategic partnership lacks a clear environmental orientation. This study analyses the discrepancy between multilateral commitments and the realities of their bilateral interactions. The low degree of priority of, or outright non-attendance to, environmental concerns on the operational level of Sino–Brazilian diplomatic relations illustrates the detachment of official rhetoric from effective engagements. We explore these contradictions and their repercussions for the commodity-centric governance of the telecoupled Sino–Brazilian relations, focusing on the soy sector and on its environmental impacts within Brazil. We caution against the trend of exclusively paying attention to private regulatory initiatives, and highlight the importance of bringing states back into the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to discuss to what extent are WMPs practical tools for circular and sustainable waste management in universities, presenting, therefore, a case study of the usage of WMP in the Brazilian public universities and comparing this scenario with the international context. Design/methodology/approach: The WMPs were identified by online search and analyzed according to qualitative indicators (spatial-temporal distribution, year, extent and virtual availability), and through circularity and sustainability criteria, using a proposed checklist. Findings: Even being mandatory instruments, only 17% of the 103 public universities in Brazil had a WMP identified, and, among these plans, 55% were restricted to healthcare services waste, only 15% covered all university campuses. Although most of the available plans indicate measures for more sustainable waste management (e.g., recyclable waste collection on campus), they lack specific deadlines for presented goals on waste management, treating waste management at a more emergency pace than in well-structured long-term planning. Originality/value: Numerous studies have discussed waste management strategies for universities worldwide, but few have addressed the usage and structure of WMPs. A case study of the Brazilian situation in light of the international scenario is of great value in understanding the differences between universities in terms of waste management, and with strong potential to support the structuring of more solid environmental policies in universities, especially in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper is proposed to analyze, in a descriptive and prescriptive way, Public Policies that carry the concept of sustainable civil construction, and that are related to the issue of housing in Brazil. Methodology: The legal framework pertinent to this scenario is presented through content study, policy evaluation and information for policy formulation. Relevance: The paper discusses the existing gaps in the legal and fiscal scope of Brazilian public policies aimed at the sustainability in the civil construction sector. Results: The public policies analyzed to encourage sustainable construction lack a preventive focus, especially regarding the generation of waste and waste of natural resources. Contributions: Additional efforts, mainly political, are needed to increase the effectiveness of the application of environmental policies inherent to this theme, to guarantee the right to housing and environmental protection, both provided for in the Brazilian Federal Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing trend of seeking to move toward sustainable development and because of this, together with the increasingly watchful eye of society, companies are increasingly taking note of this new niche in the stock market. Thus, fund managers and investors see a need to align profits with environmental, social and economic variables in business management as well as corporate governance. The Brazilian Corporate Sustainability Index (Índice de Sustentabilidade Empresarial—ISE) was created in 2005 by the São Paulo Stock Exchange, currently known as B3, which is the result of the merger between the BM&FBovespa and CETIP, and has this nomenclature in reference to the initial letters of Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão. The ISE aims to identify a company's commitment to sustainability and thereby guide the capital and credit market, highlighting companies that incorporate social and environmental risks into the organization, seeking to positively influence the image of the companies involved. The aim of this research was to verify the superior economic and financial performance of the Brazilian companies that are included in the ISE portfolio in relation to the other companies that constitute the Ibovespa, between the years of 2014 and 2018. As a result, a neutral relationship between financial performance and sustainable development was identified, which is consistent with the results of previous studies referenced and addressed in this research. The findings of this study provide an important contribution to the existing research on sustainability in financial markets, since few scientific articles that investigate, using indicators and statistical treatment, the Brazilian sustainability market, are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amazonian frontier, shaped by developmentalist policies in the 1970s and 1980s and a socio-environmental response in the 1990s, has historically been a site of widespread violence and environmental destruction. After the imposition of new environmental governance measures in the mid-2000s, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to historic lows. Many analyses of this 'greening' of Amazonia operate within a limited historical perspective that obscures complex and still-evolving contestation among diverse actors and projects. The long-term evolution of the frontier is illustrated dramatically in the municipality of São Félix do Xingu (São Félix). Emerging as a 'contested frontier' in the 1970s, São Félix in the early 2000s lost over 1000 km2 of forest annually, but since the mid-2000s, the municipality has entered a period of 'greening'. This contribution deploys a historical political ecology framework to analyse how decades of agrarian frontier change and land conflicts among actors on the ground interacted with shifting national policy debates. Nearly a half-decade of field research in São Félix is combined with data from a 2014 field 'revisit' to situate the current 'greening' of policy and discourse within the longer term history of frontier development, revealing positive social and environmental developments and persistent contradictions and uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability perception can be understood as humans' awareness of the environment. This study assessed the sustainability perception of the Paraná III Basin residents in Brazil through item response theory (IRT). For this purpose, a scale to measure sustainability perception, in which the items and latent features of respondents in the same unit of measurement are positioned, was constructed. Fifty-two items (sustainability indicators) evaluated through structured questionnaires applied to 2519 respondents, residents of three cities in the study area, were created. The results indicated that 52.3% of respondents have no, very low or low perception of sustainability, and the study population was allocated between levels 90 and 100 of the perception scale. IRT was suitable for the data analysis because it enabled quality evaluation of the items, construction of a scale to quantify sustainability perception and identification of perception levels. The developed tool - the measurement scale for sustainability perception - can be used by those responsible for local environmental governance to develop projects aimed at social and environmental education with the goal of identifying alternatives to raise the perception levels of the local residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental laws are necessary to governance and a sustainable use of nature resource. Brazil federal environmental laws have been improved in the last 50 years, with significant advances in legal provisions and monitoring systems. However, the recent dismantling of legal environmental framework by the Bolsonaro administration has led to increase of human pressure on biodiversity and ecosystems. The purpose of this article is to present some environmental impacts in Brazil due to the dismantling of environmental laws. To address this, some examples we gathered and established a timeline of Brazilian environmental laws to allow a perspective of temporal dismantling. Among the environmental impacts related to the dismantling of environmental policies are the increase in deforestation in the Amazon, the release of pesticides, and the lack of actions to minimize the effects of oil spill. In conclusion, the current Brazilian federal govern is dismantling environment laws, and the consequent lack of environmental governance in the country, will result in severe negative impacts to the biodiversity and human well-being. • Countries with mega-diversity harbours a large natural capital. • Despite this importance, we are assisting a tentative to weakness the environmental laws in Brazil. • The dismantling has local, regional and worldwide consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]