Biodiversity Reporting Among Malaysian Companies: does the Risk Level Matter?

Norhayati Mat Husin,Bakhtiar Alrazi,Azrinawati Mohd Remali

doi:10.14419/ijet.v7i4.35.22731

Norhayati Mat Husin, Bakhtiar Alrazi + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i4.35.22731

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Abstract

As Malaysia launched its National Key Economic Areas, biodiversity has been identified as one of the entry point projects for one of the sectors that will drive Malaysia towards high-income status i.e. tourism. Biodiversity, however, is facing a crisis, due to the development of business operation that has direct or indirect contribution to biodiversity loss. Despite the growing concern on biodiversity issue, previous studies have put more focus on general sustainability or environmental reporting issues. This paper aims to provide an analysis on the extent of biodiversity information disclosed by the top 100 Malaysian public listed companies and to see whether there is significant difference, in terms of reporting, between companies from different categories of biodiversity risk. The findings show 80 of the Malaysian companies disclose information regarding biodiversity with ‘mission statement’ being the highest reported biodiversity related item. There is also significant difference, in the context of biodiversity reporting, between companies from different categories of biodiversity risk. Further analysis shows companies with higher biodiversity risk (red-zone) provide more reports on biodiversity related information leading to a statistically significant difference from companies with lower biodiversity risk i.e. amber-zone and green-zone.

Highlights

The launched of Malaysian National Key Economic Areas has seen tourism being identified as one of the 12 selected sectors that will drive Malaysia towards high-income status and global competitiveness
Taking into consideration the importance of corporate sectors’ role in sustaining biodiversity in Malaysia and the lack of focus on biodiversity issue in previous sustainability and environmental literature, this paper aims to examine the following two research questions: RQ1: What is the extent of biodiversity reporting by top Malaysian public listed companies? RQ2: Is there any significant difference between companies from different categories of biodiversity risk in the reporting of their biodiversity information? The study is crucial for several reasons
The objectives of this paper is to provide an analysis on the extent of biodiversity information disclosed by the top Malaysian public listed companies and to see whether there is significant difference, in terms of reporting, between companies from different categories of biodiversity risk

Summary

Introduction

The launched of Malaysian National Key Economic Areas has seen tourism being identified as one of the 12 selected sectors that will drive Malaysia towards high-income status and global competitiveness. In the World Development Indicators (WDI)’s report, Malaysia has been reported as having one of the richest biodiversity of fauna and flora in the world, second only to Indonesia in South East Asia, despite having only 0.2 percent of the land mass of the world [2] In another statistic published by WDI, Malaysia is ranked among the top countries that provide homes for several threatened species including mammals (ranked 4th) and higher plants (ranked 2nd) [3]. In doing so, it adds to the body of knowledge, which had, so far, placed greater emphasis on the reporting of general environmental information. The findings will provide a signal to the policy makers to revisit the existing requirements for biodiversity reporting in Malaysia, which will eventually help to improve the overall biodiversity-related policies

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