Guidelines would allow companies to substantiate green claims The draft guidelines for corporate environmental reporting unveiled by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) in March represent the most promising effort yet to standardize what are currently a cacophony of green business claims. This month, the international group of business people, regulators, and environmental stakeholders who collaborated to create the guidelines are meeting again to further their goal of publishing a usable format by the end of 1999. The number of businesses producing environmental performance reports has skyrocketed in recent years. At least 1000 were issued in 1998 worldwide, estimates a spokesperson for SustainAbility, a London-based consulting firm. But there is no way to evaluate many of the green claims made in environmental reports, much less compare them. What DuPont reports doing to promote sustainability bears little relationship to what Monsanto brags about. Environmental groups charge that some businesses' environmental claims don't bear up well under scrutiny. With the goal of creating more credible reports, CERES—a nonprofit organization that devised one of the first of what are now more than 50 competing environmental reporting standards— launched the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) last year. With funding from the MacArthur and Mott Foundations, CERES brought together an international lineup of stakeholders, including representatives from corporations, environmental groups, governmental agencies, universities, and investment houses. The end result of a year's worth of negotiations is being promoted by more than 50 organizations, including the United Nations Environment Programme, The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, the Stockholm Environmental Institute, General Motors, and British Petroleum. No other environmental reporting standard has as many influential institutional supporters, including
CERES' own standard (which will be compatible with the new GRI standard). In their current form, the GRI guidelines stipulate that corporations must disclose details of all accidental chemical releases. Corporations wishing to file one of the voluntary reports also would be required to list their air emissions and water discharges, as well as their total energy, material, and water use. And they would agree to report whether they were complying with local, national, and international laws in regard to the environment, labor and human rights. The overall intent is to provide a detailed profile of a company's progress toward sustainability, which CERES defines as having environmental, social, and economic components. Although there will be no numeric sustainability rating, the information will be presented in a way that allows different companies' claims to be compared to one another. Following a common standard for producing sustainability reports ultimately could aid companies interested in regulatory relief, said
Global Reporting Initiative The Global Reporting Initiative's supporters hope that the new sustainability reporting guidelines will provide a basis for comparing corporate claims.
Jeff Smoller, special assistant to the secretary of Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources. Smoller is helping develop Wisconsin's proposed "green tier" program for providing regulatory relief to corporations that publicly report their environmental performance. Green tier programs also have been proposed at the federal level, as well as in Oregon. General Motors has officially committed to using the GRI guidelines and is involved in a pilot test of them. CERES also hopes to involve several dozen large multinational corporations in the pilot test; nearly 20 had signed up by the end of March. The guidelines are publicly available at CERES' Web site (http://www.ceres.org). —KELLYN BETTS
Can farming changes help shrink the dead zone in the Gulf? Agricultural runoff is the largest source of nutrients feeding the 7000 square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the first nitrogen budget calculated for the Mississippi River basin. Although there is evidence that farmers could reduce nitrogen runoff by 20-25% without hurting food prices, some researchers claim that cuts as high as 50% are needed to make a dent in the dead zone. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's January meeting, several researchers unveiled preliminary results from an ongoing study planned for release May 30. The study is part of a White House integrated assessment of nitrogen reduction strategies for the Mississippi River Basin.
Since 1992, the dead zone has emerged annually after oxygen concentrations in the northern Gulf of Mexico crash, suffocating marine animals that cannot escape to more oxygen-rich water. The culprit is nitrogen fertilizer that is carried down the Mississippi River; the excess nitrogen produces massive algal blooms, which then die and consume oxygen. Over the last six years, the dead zone hugging Louisiana's coast has doubled in size and now generally covers between 6100 and 7000 square miles, said Nancy Rabalais, a professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium {ES&T, Sept. 1998, p. 396A). But for the first time, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists have described how much
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and where nitrogen enters the river. At most, 18% of the 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen that flows into the Gulf each year can be traced to sewage plants and industrial sources, said Don Goolsby, a USGS hydrologist. The remainder comes from commercial fertilizer, manure, nitrogenfixing crops, air pollutants, and oxidation of soil organic nitrogen. Goolsby's research has targeted the corn belt of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and southern Minnesota as the source of more than half of the nitrogen coursing down the Mississippi River. By embracing practices that increase efficient use of nitrogen, farmers could cut nitrogen runoff from their farms by 20-25%, said William Mitsch, professor of natural resources and environmental science at Ohio State University.
These practices include shifting crops to soils that do not leach nitrogen, and adjusting the timing and amounts of fertilizer applications to match soil and crop needs. Farmers could achieve these nitrogen reductions without
hurting food prices or farm exports, said Otto Doering, an agricultural economist at Purdue University, based on economic models he analyzed. "This is not to say that some farmers won't be hurt and that some prices won't increase," he cautioned. "The economics of overfertilization is very compelling," he explained. Nitrogen costs only 18 cents a pound and may yield an extra bushel of corn worth $2.10, he said. But even if farmers embrace efficient practices, it will not be enough to shrink the dead zone, Mitsch said. "We need reductions of 50% or more," he said. The solution, he concluded, is to restore 13-18 million acres of stream buffers and wetlands to soak up excess nitrogen runoff. —JANET PELLEY
Livability Agenda may be unable to encourage smart growth Conflicts with existing federal regulations may hobble the Clinton administration's Livability Agenda, a midwestern city mayor charged at a Senate hearing in March. If not resolved, these conflicts might prevent the program, which seeks to revitalize urban areas by redeveloping brownfields, from halting the exodus of businesses and residents to outer suburbs. The goals of the Livability Agenda are at odds with some of the government's own environmental regulations, said Paul Helmke, mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., at the Senate hearing. Provisions under Superfund, the Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act "have created an antiurban bias over the years," he asserted. For example, when stormwater regulations were enacted in 1991, Fort Wayne created a stormwater utility and charged fees based on a property's impervious surface area, Helmke explained. Because the regulations apply only to cities with more than 100,000 people, businesses have an incentive to avoid the fee by locating in the suburbs, he said. The Clean Air Act's pollutant nonattainment policy also contributes to "urban disinvestment and regional sprawl," said Matt
Ward, attorney with Spiegel McDiarmid, a law firm that represents local governments. If an urban county exceeds standards for pollutants such as ozone or carbon monoxide, stringent restrictions are applied that may require new sources in the county to offset their emissions, he said. In some cases, the need for these "new source offsets" has discouraged corporations from locating in cities, he said. When asked by mayors about the conflicts between the Livability Agenda and the Clean Air Act at a January meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, EPA Administrator Carol Browner said, "There are some situations [in federal legislation] where the sections bump up against each other, and it is my job to say, is the bumping up good or bad?" Later, an EPA spokesperson only would say that the agency is evaluating whether there may be conflicts. "We can't find evidence that it's a real problem," said Harriet Tregoning, EPA's director of urban and economic development. Business interests are quick to point out that businesses often decide to locate in the suburbs for reasons beyond merely trying to avoid environmental regulations.
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Access to labor markets and clients usually have a greater impact on business location decisions than environmental regulations, said Nat Bottigheimer, manager with Hagler BaiUy, a consulting firm specializing in energy, transportation, and the environment. Ward admitted that it is difficult to find examples where environmental regulations were responsible for increasing urban sprawl. To clarify the issue, Ward is conducting a survey of 70 business leaders for the National Association of Local Government Environmental Professionals. Three other organizations also are engaged in similar efforts. With a grant from EPA, the U.S. Conference of Mayors is attempting to determine whether or not federal regulations have a role in business decision making, said Judy Sheahan, director of the Brownfields Redevelopment Project. The conference is using real data from Dallas, Chicago, and Baltimore to calculate whedier air quality improves when development is focused in core urban areas versus previously undeveloped sites. The Government Accounting Office and the Northeast Midwest Institute also are conducting studies. —JANET PELLEY
