Category: Africa

LONDON, Jan. 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Morrow Sodali and Nestor Advisors – A Morrow Sodali Company, are pleased to announce the publication of “Governance of sustainability in the largest global banks: A study of the top 30 European and North American banks”.

This Report examines the sustainability governance practices of the 30 largest European and North American banks. In preparing the Report, we reviewed various publicly available documentation and also interviewed representatives from fifteen leading banks, including nine board chairs, other board members and senior executives. Interviewees shed light on different practices, and why banks chose to pursue them. The resulting Report compares the banks across several data points and analyzes these findings against a double index of sustainability and financial performance.

Stilpon Nestor, the Report’s leading author stated, “Sustainability is one of the big issues facing banks and their leadership. Shareholders and various stakeholders, including regulators, expect banks to be proactive in sustainability. On the strategy side, the “greening of the book” is the big challenge, especially in markets with big “brown” sectors. On the risk side, some regulators expect banks to integrate sustainability risk within the core risk management framework and its key categories. They also expect a clear sustainability perspective in the risk appetite framework. In order to deliver in these areas, global banks have reshaped existing governance and organizational arrangements and have developed some new ones. Our Report examines these arrangements and comes up with interesting, sometimes counterintuitive, findings.”

Among these findings, the issue of board skills in relation to sustainability was highlighted. All of the banks we interviewed do not see having sustainability experts on the board as a priority. Their priority is to make their existing board members more cognizant in the sustainability area. In that sense, they emphasize the development of director skills.

How does a board structure itself to address sustainability? In many cases, this is done by setting up a new committee. However, structure often reflects the level of maturity of the issues in a bank. One interesting finding of the Report is that banks further advanced in the “maturity spectrum” have done away with special committees and discuss sustainability as part of the general strategy and risk appetite.

Another key finding relates to the role of management in ensuring all business functions strengthen their capabilities to understand sustainability. This is an issue that touches upon all business areas of a bank, whether it is a corporate, retail or private bank, as well as risk, finance and internal audit functions. That is why most global banks have created senior management committees to oversee this transversal work. The seniority of the members of this committee is key. In 50% of the banks, the CEOs themselves are heading this senior coordinating committee.

Most banks have also included sustainability parameters in their executive remuneration approach. The Report finds that in the best performing ones, sustainability considerations have a relatively significant “weight” among other factors in determining variable compensation.

We hope you find this study insightful, and that the findings will be helpful from the perspective of all stakeholders. Click here to request the Report in full.

ABOUT MORROW SODALI

Morrow Sodali is a leading provider of strategic advice and shareholder services to corporate clients around the world. The firm provides corporate boards and executives with strategic advice and services relating to corporate governance, ESG, shareholder and bondholder communication and engagement, capital markets intelligence, proxy solicitation, shareholder activism and mergers and acquisitions.

From headquarters in New York and London, and offices and partners in major capital markets, Morrow Sodali serves over 1,000 corporate clients in 80+ countries, including many of the world’s largest multinational corporations. In addition to listed and private companies, its clients include financial institutions, mutual funds, ETFs, stock exchanges and membership associations.

For more information, please visit morrowsodali.com.

ABOUT NESTOR ADVISORS

Nestor Advisors is the specialized board and governance advisory subsidiary of Morrow Sodali. We are a global advisory firm specializing in corporate governance, sustainability and organizational design, and work with the boards and senior management of financial institutions, companies and not-for-profit organizations to improve decision making, organizational structures, controls and incentives.

Fully integrated with Morrow Sodali, the two companies provide the firm’s global client base with a comprehensive suite of advisory services relating to corporate governance, ESG, sustainability and stakeholder engagement.

Our services span a broad spectrum including holistic assessments yielding a significant redesign of a company’s governance system, board evaluations, group governance, board training, risk management, and the development of specific policies and controls. Whatever the scope, our services are always closely tailored to our clients’ needs.

For more information, please visit nestoradvisors.com.

CONTACTS

Elena Cargnello
Corporate Director, Marketing
e.cargnello@morrowsodali.com
+44 (0)20 4513 6913

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8732968

Scientific study fuses multiple data sources to advance global understanding of vessel identity and behavior

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A new study published today in Science Advances combines a decade’s worth of satellite vessel tracking data with identification information from more than 40 public registries to determine where and when vessels responsible for most of the world’s industrial fishing change their country of registration, a practice known as “reflagging”, and identify hotspots of potential unauthorized fishing and activity of foreign-owned vessels.

Using big data processing and a compilation of global datasets, researchers from Global Fishing Watch, the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab from Duke University, and Stockholm Resilience Centre were able to track and analyze 35,000 commercial fishing and support vessels to reveal their changing identities and enable the reconstruction of vessel histories to demonstrate reflagging patterns.

The study, “Tracking Elusive and Shifting Identities of the Global Fishing Fleet” found that close to 20 percent of high seas fishing is carried out by vessels that are either internationally unregulated or not publicly authorized, with large concentrations of these ships operating in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean and the western Indian Ocean.

The data used in the study is intended to complement the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Global Record of Fishing Vessels, Refrigerated Transport Vessels and Supply Vessels, a flagship transparency initiative which serves as the official database of information on vessels used for fishing and fishing-related activities. Together with the International Maritime Organization’s ship identification number scheme, these resources can provide fisheries authorities with the information needed to adequately monitor vessel activity, implement flag State responsibilities, and inform responsible fisheries management.

“Until now, we’ve had limited information linking together the identity and activity of specific vessels,” said Jaeyoon Park, senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch and lead author of the study. “When a vessel’s identity is changed, it makes tracking them all the more difficult, allowing bad actors the opportunity to take advantage of information gaps and avoid oversight. We need to close that loophole.”

Of the 116 States involved in reflagging, the study found that one-fifth of them were responsible for about 80 percent of this practice over the past decade, with most reflagging occurring in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. The study found that reflagging takes place in just a few ports—Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Busan, Zhoushan, and Kaohsiung have the highest activity. Vessels are often reflagged to States that are unrelated to the ports in which they are changing their registrations. This means that a vessel can change its flag from one country to another without ever having to enter port in either of those countries.

While there are legitimate reasons for a vessel to change its identity, abusive reflagging, or “flag hopping,” is one way that operators avoid oversight. The study found that fleets with prevalent reflagging are over five times more likely to be composed of vessels under foreign ownership which are often registered to “flags of convenience,” defined by the International Transport Workers’ Federation as countries that offer foreign shipowners the ability to register, or fly the flag, of their own State.

While reflagging and foreign ownership are lawful, when not properly regulated and monitored, they can indicate a risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. IUU fishing accounts for as much as 20 percent of the global seafood catch with annual losses valued at up to $23.5 billion.

“Knowing the identities of vessels fishing the high seas is critical for uncovering the connection between the potential IUU fishing behavior and vessels that repeatedly change their name, flag State or registered owner,” said co-author Gabrielle Carmine, a doctoral candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “This analysis could be used to help monitor fisheries more effectively and for accountability in the use and protection of marine biodiversity.”

The study also identified concentrations of fishing activity by foreign-owned vessels, which are focused in parts of the high seas and certain national waters, including the southwest Pacific, the northwest Indian Ocean, Argentina and the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), and West Africa where vessels are typically owned by China, Chinese Taipei, and Spain. The hotspots in this study correspond to the areas in which multiple nongovernmental organizations have called for better governance systems.

“By synthesizing more than 100 billion GPS positions with consolidated identity information from 200,000 vessels, we were able to reveal patterns about vessel activity from the past decade,” added Park. “This study represents a major step forward in our ability to enhance monitoring efforts and help authorities direct enforcement resources.”

The data used in this study will be periodically updated and shared publicly to help enable better understanding of vessel behavior and bolster international fisheries management.

Notes to the editor:

• Download data visualizations, video, and figures from the paper here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11T-UNkRQmlktINuTw5ufurNFuzAIxTu8?usp=share_link
• Data visualization caption: Data analysis in this study’s assessment of fishing compliance revealed hotspots of fishing activity by foreign-owned vessels in the southwest Pacific, the west Indian oceans, and certain national waters.
• About vessel identity data: The data used to determine vessel identities in this study were based on public registries. A lack of vessel identity information exists at the national level, while the high seas are predominantly covered by registries published by regional fisheries management organizations. The identity data used in this study has more extensive coverage for vessels that are 24 meters and longer, as these vessels are more likely to be registered to national or international public registries than smaller ones.
• About AIS data: First developed as a collision-avoidance system, AIS is essential to vessel and crew safety. But AIS is easily manipulated, as it can simply be switched off or allow the transmission of false information, such as a vessel’s name, type or location. Currently there is no global mandate for all fishing vessels to broadcast on AIS. And due to the varying quality of satellite reception by region, there is also unequal coverage of AIS data throughout the world. Most vessels larger than 24 meters are equipped with AIS while only a small fraction of vessels smaller than 24 meters use AIS, resulting in limitations in AIS data.
• Paper citation: J. Park, J. Van Osdel, J. Turner, C. M. Farthing, N. A. Miller, H. L. Linder, G. Ortuño Crespo, G. Carmine, D. A. Kroodsma, Tracking elusive and shifting identities of the global fishing fleet. Sci. Adv. 9, eabp8200 (2023).
• Download the data at: https://globalfishingwatch.org/data-download/datasets/public-vessel-identity:v20230118 

Global Fishing Watch is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea. By creating and publicly sharing map visualizations, data and analysis tools, we aim to enable scientific research and transform the way our ocean is managed. We believe human activity at sea should be public knowledge in order to safeguard the global ocean for the common good of all.

Attachment

• Fishing effort by foreign-owned fishing vessels, 2012-2020

Lisa Tossey
Global Fishing Watch
+1-302-448-6638
lisa.tossey@globalfishingwatch.org

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8732331