Addressing corporate governance and carbon accounting disclosure gaps: A path toward firms commitment to sustainable development goal 13

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between corporate governance and carbon accounting disclosure (CAD) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to address how firms can achieve sustainable development goal (SDG) 13. We employed purposive sampling to select 277 companies from 20 MENA countries from the period 2012–2022. A favorable relationship was found between board independence and CAD. Gender diversity was also found to have a beneficial effect on CAD. The sustainability committee and CAD also had a positive and significant connection. A positive association was also found between foreign nationals and CAD. We found positive and significant connection between board meetings and CAD. In contrast, we found a negative relationship between board size and CAD, as well as between boards with CEOs duality and CAD. We also found that shareholding proportion has inverse but insignificant impact on CAD. The results concur that corporate boards have a role to reduce carbon emission in MENA to accomplish SDG 13.