Towards Sustainable Development in the Arab Middle East and North Africa Region: A Longitudinal Analysis of Environmental Disclosure in Corporate Annual Reports

Abstract

This paper presents the first comprehensive analysis of corporate environmental disclosure in the Arab Middle East and North Africa region. Using a detailed research instrument containing 55 items, content analysis of the annual reports of 180 non-financial companies listed on nine major stock markets was conducted over a 5-year period. The calculation of an unweighted disclosure index indicates that, although the level of disclosure might be considered relatively low by international standards, it varies by country. Perhaps of greater significance for the future of sustainable development in the region, disclosure is shown to have increased significantly over the period [2010][2011][2012][2013][2014]. Further analysis shows that although there are some differences relating to categories of disclosure, this is a region-wide phenomenon not driven by a subset of countries or types of company. This benchmark study provides a systematic picture for policy-makers in the region and, for future researchers, both substantive findings and methodological insight.

Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosure, Ownership Structure and Cost of Capital: Evidence from the UAE

“…More recently and in a larger institutional context, the annual reports of 180 non-financial companies traded on nine financial market in the MENA region have been examined during 2010-2014. These countries include Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia, and Jordan [16]. The empirical results show that overall, the environmental disclosure is at a low level.…”

“…In the literature, several studies have explored the extent of the non-financial disclosure in the annual reports of the companies in the developed countries while only few studies have emphasized on the GCC or MENA regions. These studies could be classified according to the type of the non-financial disclosure into: Environmental disclosure [14][15][16], social disclosure [17][18][19][20][21][22], and governance disclosure [29][30][31] while few others have considered the overall sustainability disclosure including different dimensions [32,33]. All these studies have used the content analysis of the annuals reports of the listed companies and constructed disclosure indices.…”

“…This research contributes to the existing literature on the ESG disclosure in two important ways. First, this study focuses not only on one type of non-financial disclosure but on a more comprehensive disclosure including environmental, social, and governance information, whereas most previous researches have examined the environmental or/and corporate social responsibility disclosures [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Hence, the ESG disclosure of the listed companies needs to be furtherly explored as well, since this type of disclosure is done, so far, on a voluntary basis.…”

Sustainable development carbon pricing initiative and voluntary environmental disclosures quality

“…This study used content analysis approach for data collection purposes as many prior researchers (Clarkson, Li, Richardson, & Vasvari, ; Freedman & Jaggi, ; Gerged, Cowton, & Beddewela, ) used content analysis as the major research tool to measure the level of VED from time to time.…”

Is earnings management associated with corporate environmental disclosure?

“…In 1991, the KSE required all listed firms to be compliant with International Accounting Standards (IAS) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) (Warf & Vincent, 2007). In this regard, Gerged et al (2017) argue that the increasing trend of CED in the Arab MENA emerging markets, including Kuwait, is attributed to the implementation of IFRS that enforced by the stock exchanges in order to attract more inwards foreign investments, particularly after the global financial crisis and the fall of oil prices (Lyra et al, 2017). Therefore, the significance of this study stems from the environmental challenges that are facing Kuwait as an oil-reliant economy coupled together with the newly enacted environmental laws and regulations that have led to cost increases on companies which might have either stimulated managers to manipulate their earnings numbers to display a financial distress (See Patten and Trompeter, 2003), or motivated them to be ethical, honest, and trustworthy (See Kim et al, 2012).…”