Basariah Salim

The Influence of Environmental Supervisory Agencies on Environmental Information Disclosure in Nigeria

Environmental reporting based on triple bottom line (TBL) reporting consists of three basic elements of profit, people and planet depicting economic, social and environmental information respectively. Past studies have tend to examine the relationships between these three collectively and other variables, especially corporate characteristics. Of greater concern to environmentalists however, is the dissemination of environmental information, which has been greatly ignored. This study is, therefore, an attempt to examine exclusively the relationship between pure environmental information disclosure and environmental monitoring agencies. Methodology: Using environmentally sensitive firms operating in Nigeria, the study employed content analysis and regression to determine the relationship covering the period 2009-2014. Findings: It concluded that both significant positive and negative relationships exists between environmental reporting and monitoring agencies. Research Implications: This shows that while Nigerian Stock Exchange contributes positively to environmental information disclosure, Department of Petroleum Resources and National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency are having a negative impact on environmental information dissemination. Practical Implications: There is a clear indication that the Department of Petroleum Resources and National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency are inefficient/ineffective. Originality/ The lack of treating environmental information dissemination independently from other elements of sustainability is what this study capitalized on. Furthermore, studying the influence of environmental monitoring agencies (NSE, DPR and NESREA) on environmental reporting is mostly overlooked by scholars.

Nature and Trend of GRI Reporting by Listed Firms in the NSE

The major objective of the research is to examine how environmental information disclosure has been reported over the years through GRI disclosure standard and guidelines. The study considers environmentally sensitive firms listed in the NSE for the 6-year period ranging from 2009-2014. Data of the selected sample were analyzed using Excel13, SPSS22 and Stata13 to produce diagrammatic as well as statistical results. The outcome of evaluated data was very encouraging as it shows an average disclosure rate of 60.36% given by the simple average disclosure index. Besides, the discovery also pointed out that the rate of disclosure was higher after the adoption of the IFRS reporting system by the Nigerian government on 1 st January, 2012.It was therefore, recommended that environmental reporting be made mandatory and an effective and efficient enforcement of IFRS be done, so that positive trends in environmental reporting could be encouraged and maintained. The research covers a shorter period of just six years. This could be extended by further studies which may cover wider periods (10 years and above) and sectors (more than six) of the economy of a developing nation.