Environmental Accounting

Mining activities generate significant social concerns in terms of employee safety and stakeholder scrutiny has increased considerably in recent years. Social and environmental accounting research is largely dedicated to environmental issues and the study of other components of social accounting is limited. This study examines safety disclosures in the annual reports, sustainability reports, and reactive corporate press releases of South African mining organisations following two major mining accidents occurring at Harmony Gold and Gold Fields' mines. Results show that organisations react to perceived legitimacy threats through increased safety disclosures. The entire mining industry evidences an increase in disclosure levels after the incidents, suggesting that organisations do respond to increased stakeholder scrutiny threatening their legitimacy. Furthermore, our results provide evidence of an association between safety disclosure levels and firm size, social performance, risk, and number of fatalities, while the media attention devoted to mining accidents appears to be unrelated to safety disclosure levels. It is possible that stakeholder pressure, which motivates corporate social disclosures according to legitimacy and stakeholder theories, consists of various factors, which combined form the motivation to report. Media attention, therefore, cannot be considered in isolation as a driver of disclosure. Rather, a combination of variables such as size, social responsibility performance, number of fatalities, risk, and media attention could serve as a proxy for social pressure.

Mandatory environmental reporting has been seen as a way of increasing accountability of organizations, regarding environmental issues. This paper is concerned with one standard, which requires all the Spanish companies to include environmental disclosures in their financial statements. From the survey of the rationale of the disclosure requirements it results that the more sound environmental initiatives are obscured by an end-of-pipe emphasis. Additionally, from the research of the reporting activity of a sample of companies, it results a low compliance level with roughly 80% of companies not providing any environmental information. It also results that those companies which are reporting some environmental information neglect those aspects of the regulation that are not in their interests. The interpretation of these findings using the theoretical distinction between administrative and institutional reforms, leads to conclude that the Spanish standard on environmental disclosure is insufficient to enabling new accountability relationships and to empower stakeholders.

The aims of this paper are to describe the state of the environmental knowledge of the terrestrial National Parks (NPs) in Italy and to assess their conservation status and their efficacy to deal with the pressures of land changes. We collected and analysed data regarding land units, vegetation series, old-growth forests, Important Plant Areas (IPAs) and changes in landscape conservation status, to provide a systemic overview of the condition of the NPs and to verify their effectiveness against pressures and impacts induced by human activities. Moreover, NPs were organised according to the ecoregional setting for a multi-scale interpretation of biodiversity baselines and indicators. The results highlight the essential role of NP system for biodiversity conservation in Italy. The long-term protection regime proved to be particularly effective as a means of conserving ageing forest communities, threatened vascular plants and contrasting threats posed by human-induced changes. However, this work points out the need for more detailed scientific data for a comprehensive assessment of the representativeness and effectiveness of the NP system.

In this paper two methods for energy analysis and environmental accounting (Gross Energy Requirement and Emergy Synthesis) are critically discussed in order to explore their ability to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the performance and environmental sustainability of human-dominated production processes. In order to allow a quantitative comparison, two cropping systems, namely 1 ha of corn production in Italy, and 1 ha of willow production in Sweden, are investigated by means of the parallel application of both methods. The case studies are carried out by performing a quantitative inventory of both natural and economic input flows to the investigated cropping systems. Such input flows are then converted into embodied energy (MJ) as well as emergy (seJ) units. Finally, performance indicators representative for each method are calculated. Results provided by the two methods and their respective theoretical features are compared and discussed in order to point out limits and potentialities of both approaches. The study shows that the two methods account for different – although complementary – categories of input flows, use different conversion factors, and answer to different questions and concerns. Gross Energy Requirement focuses on fossil fuel use and is capable to support the development of more efficient use of commercial energy. Emergy Synthesis uses broader spatial and time frames and accounts for both natural and economic resources. In so doing, it takes into consideration different forms of energy, materials, human labor and economic services on a common basis, offering larger potentiality to explore the sustainable interplay of environment and economy.

In this paper we compute the genuine savings indicators for the Republic of Ireland over the period 1995 e2005. We expand and improve existing World Bank's estimates by: a) using data collected from official Irish sources; b) employing the net present value method to assess resource depreciation; c) including external costs from SO 2 and NOx emissions; and d) estimating human capital accumulation using the returns to education. We also perform a sensitivity analysis to check the robustness of our estimates to different assumptions and parameters. Our estimates are consistently smaller than the World Bank's and negative in the first years of the period considered.

Achieving economic efficiency is a necessary, but not a singular, requirement of business sustainability. Stakeholders demand business organisations are socially and environmentally responsible, and balancing financial performance and corporate sustainability are considered a major challenge in today’s economic environment. These challenges have triggered a growing interest in social and environmental research among academicians, governmental and professional bodies, and environmentalists. Numerous studies in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have focused on the issues of corporate social reporting, but limited attention has been given to investigate the question of how social and environmental issues are managed internally. Moreover, most of the previous studies in this area are characterized as normative and descriptive, using quantitative research methods. This paper accentuates the importance of more engagement with practice in social and environmental accountin...

This report summarises key results of the INCA project. INCA delivered an integrated system of ecosystem accounts for the EU. The report provides an introduction to ecosystem accounting and presents ecosystem extent accounts, initial ecosystem condition accounts and ecosystem services accounts for EU28, before the withdrawal of the UK. The report shows practical examples of possible uses of ecosystem services accounts and existing policy applications. The report is intended for a broad audience — policy makers, researchers, compilers of ecosystem accounts and other expert and non-expert users who wish to learn how ecosystems and their services support our society, what changes in ecosystems and ecosystem services took place in the EU in the past couple of decades and how all this can be measured in a standardised and comparable way.

Global warming mitigation calculations require consistent procedures for handling time in order to compare 'permanent' gains from energy-sector mitigation options with 'impermanent' gains from many forest-sector options. A critical part of carbon accounting methodologies such as those based on 'ton-years' (the product of the number of tons of carbon times the number of years that each ton is held out of the atmosphere) is definition of a time horizon, or the time period over which carbon impacts and benefits are considered. Here a case is made for using a time horizon of 100 years. This choice avoids distortions created by much longer time horizons that would lead to decisions inconsistent with societal behavior in other spheres; it also avoids a rapid increase in the implied value of time if horizons shorter than 100 years are used. Selection of a time horizon affects decisions on financial mechanisms and carbon credit. Simple adaptations can allow a time horizon to be specified and used to calculate mitigation benefits and at the same time reserve a given percentage of weight in decision making for generations beyond the end of the time horizon. The choice of a time horizon will heavily influence whether mitigation options such as avoided deforestation are considered viable.

This paper develops an alternative (or supplementary) theoretical justification for the regulation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social and environmental accounting and reporting (SEAR) to the justification contained in the extant academic literature. It does this by demonstrating how, contrary to the dominant business discourse, increased regulation designed to protect the social and environmental interests of a range of stakeholders can also serve to enhance corporate economic performance and shareholder value.The theoretical perspectives developed in this paper are drawn from Beck's and Giddens’ theories on reflexive modernity, and indicate that reflexively appropriated knowledge can be a key factor in developing socially constructed understandings of the social and environmental risks to a range of stakeholders inherent in business operations.In situations where voluntary self-regulation of CSR and SEAR has been ineffective in preventing corporate actions and decisions that have resulted in damaging social and environmental consequences, processes of reflexivity can substantially increase public awareness of the level of risk they face from corporate operations. Such increased perceptions of risk can lead to a loss of trust in an individual corporation or a whole industrial sector, and this can be exacerbated where stakeholders begin to actively seek out alternative risk discourses to inform themselves about possible risks of which they were previously unaware. We argue that effective statutory regulation could avoid these outcomes, and the loss of shareholder economic value that can flow from these outcomes.

At a time when public and private agencies recognise the importance of sustainable development, the environmental impacts of mega sporting events are commanding increasing attention. However, despite event sponsors often flagging the importance of environmental as well as socioeconomic legacy components, the environmental impacts of events are difficult to assess quantitatively, being complex and often occurring over extended periods. The general assessment issue is particularly acute with regard to mega events such as the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup. The practical issues mean that any quantitative techniques seeking to assess environmental impacts are likely to be partial in scope. This paper examines two such approaches for quantitative impact assessment of selected environmental externalities connected with visitation at sporting events. The paper considers the use of Ecological Footprint analysis and Environmental Input-Output modelling. It provides examples of the applications of these techniques to discrete sporting events in a UK region, and discusses whether these techniques are appropriate for exploring the environmental impacts of mega events.

In order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies, there is a need to capture the whole life-cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains. Multi-region input-output (MRIO) databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions. In this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in MRIO compilation, summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for MRIO analysis. We list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective MRIO research and propose systemic and institutional changes. We deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for MRIO compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of MRIO research.

Sustainable development or sustainability concept has become increasingly relevant in corporate executive's agenda after Brundtland Report was launched in 1987. Social and environmental accounting and reporting plays a relevant role in this context to analyse sustainability performance of the organizations. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines were developed as a way of helping organizations to report on their environmental, social and economic performance and to increase their accountability. However, evidence from practice seems to show a different reality. Some organizations that label themselves as GRI reporters do not behave in a responsible way concerning sustainability question, like gas emissions, social equity or human rights.

Biodiversity has been recognized as one of the key components of environmental sustainability. Assessment of biodiversity trends and progress toward targets requires effective and sound indicators. In our article, we review and compare the leading multispecies biodiversity indices used in global and regional assessments. We reviewed basic characteristics of these aggregated and composite biodiversity indicators and evaluated them with regard to their ecological performance, policy relevance and other accounting aspects. Indices analyzed include species and populations based indicators, such as Living Planet Index and Red List Index, as well as ecosystem based indicators like Natural Capital Index and Biodiversity Intactness Index. We also include measures of ecological integrity such as Marine Trophic Index and Index of Biotic Integrity. Indicators analyzed differ in both their ecological focus, baselines, basic units or policy use. Multispecies biodiversity indices illustrate prevailingly negative trends in the state of nature as a result of human induced pressures, especially land cover change. Biodiversity loss is therefore not decoupled from socioeconomic progress. We show that current indicators include a balanced mix of important biodiversity aspects and have some policy resonance. Leading biodiversity indices should be further promoted and integrated into monitoring, modelling and decision-making frameworks.

In a capitalist system apt annual report that includes financial statement is assumed to provide sound information concerning a given company. The annual report offers a background to a company, its financial position, operational results, and its performance According to radical economics, a financial statement serves the interests of capitalists (Belkaoui, 1984) Annual reports are also value free and are not concerned with issues such as justice or ethics. Indeed, current trends in accounting have raised some questions concerning the paradigm of traditional accounting theory and especially its bias concerning capitalist interests. The emergence of Employee Reporting Value Added Accounting, Socio-Economic Accounting, and Environmental Accounting to name just a few, is evidences of the shortcomings of the capitalistic accounting system in establishing both just and fair principles among company stakeholders This has therefore led to a demand for a new approach towards accounting disclosure including among others things: a clear account of how a company treats its employees, society, the environment and the beliefs of employees. Even though the standard formulated by AAOIFI (1998) based on capitalistic accounting, are still in a theoretical stage of development they can be used as a starting point that may help lead to an improved set of disclosure criteria that can be used by an Islamic bank or organization. This paper will discuss the empirical evidence derived from one such Islamic organization. Bank Muamalat Indonesia, has compiled information using capitalistic accounting standards so as to clarify its financial position and results of operations to stakeholders. It is hypothesized though, that the current disclosures system employed gives no indication of justness or fairness and so is incompatible with Islamic value. The paper argues Muslim researcher should aim to move from utilizing capitalistic practice primarily concerned with the disclosure, of 'financial indicators and towards a system that also consider justice, fairness, and ethical practices.

The study examines the cost implications of environmental activities on the profitability of oil companies. Data for the study were collected from the internal management report and analyzed using the ordinary least square (OLS) method. The results revealed that there is a significant relationship between environmental activities and profitability. Proper management of environmental activities is therefore desirable if organizational profitability is to be sustained.  It was recommended that Nigeria petroleum companies should show data on environmental expenditure, environmental cost charged to income in the account as well as details in the notes to the accounts.  To enhance the effectiveness of the policy, separate accounts should be opened for environmental expenditures in order to facilitate the measurement and reporting of environmental expenditures and environmental performance of each company as well as the whole sector.

Nigeria has remained recognized as one of those nations with great level of environmental pollution that contributes significantly to global environmental worries. The broad objective of this study is to investigate corporate characteristics and quality of environmental disclosures in pre and post IFRS adoption among Nigeria Oil and gas companies from 2004 to 2019. Ordinary Least Square Regression analysis was used to determine the influence of corporate characteristics on the quality of the environmental disclosure. The results show that during pre IFRS period, leverage ratio has significant positive relationship with environmental disclosure quality; firm size, return on asset, and firm age have no significant relationship with environmental disclosure quality. On the other hand, in post IFRS adoption, Firm size and firm age have positive and significant relationship with environmental disclosure quality; while leverage ratio and return on asset have no significant relationship among the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. The overall result shows that contribution of profitability, leverage, firm age and firm size to environmental disclosure quality reduced after the adoption of IFRS among the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. It is therefore recommended that companies should be given incentives that would make them grow; as firm size has positive and significant relationship with environmental disclosure quality after IFRS adoption in Nigeria. The bigger the firm, the better the environmental disclosure quality. The continued existence on of firms should also be encouraged as after IFRS adoption, firm age has positive and significant relationship with environmental disclosure quality.

This report outlines the ecosystem accounting applications that have been presented in the Ecosystem
Services World Conference in Hannover, Germany in 2019. Eight cases are summarized here; applications of
ecosystem accounts in Europe, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Uganda, Bulgaria, Andalusia-Spain and
Oslo-Norway. Most of these applications are in line with the System of Integrated Environmental and
Economic Accounts (SEEA) framework and the outcomes are regarded as pilot attempts concluding in
interesting messages that should be accounted for in next development steps. All cases discuss the
compilation process of certain type of ecosystem asset or ecosystem services accounts either at regional,
national or local level depicting the methodological process as well as the main outcomes. They also report
the policy priorities that these accounts attempted to address and the policy implications that may follow
given the accounts’ results. Some of the strong highlights emerged from these cases are summarized as
follows: countries should initiate the development of accounts using currently available data and then evolve
this attempt based on pilot accounts. It is imperative that collaboration between institutes is ensured as
ecosystem accounting is a complex process that demands strong joint forces between different experts as
well as stakeholders. Demand for ecosystem accounts should be systematically developed if ecosystem
accounting is to be institutionalized. Accounts need to demonstrate clear messages and be linked to certain
policy needs even in this primary stage to foster policy support.

This paper reports and analyses the results of a trans-European project to investigate the present and potential future links between the environmental management and management accounting functions of a company or business. A taxonomy of four broad but distinct approaches to environmental accounting is identified from the literature: external financial reporting; social accountability reporting; energy and materials accounting; and environmental management accounting. This project focuses on the latter -the generation, analysis and use of financial and related non-financial information, in order to support management within a company or business, in integrating corporate environmental and economic policies and building sustainable business. The research involved interviews with accountants' and

Environmental adverse consequences of economic development and ignoring social and
environmental developments, leads to the reaction of international organizations and attends their
attention to Sustainable Development concept, which is a simultaneous development in all three
aspects of economic, social and environmental. To review the status and completion progress of
sustainable development, social accounting was introduced in 1970, and subsequently in later it has
been expanded to environmental accounting. In Iran, Sustainable development has been highlighted by
signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997; but unfortunately after that signature, has not done any practical
action. Lack of environmental and sustainable accounting, is a huge vacuum in accounting and
sustainable development, which is one the reasons of not adverting of companies to the environment.
This study discusses practical environmental accounting in Iran and determines cost derivers base on
sustainable development view. It tries to provide drivers that both satisfy information needs of decision
makers and financial statements users, and reflect the correct information of the reality in the view of
environmental experts and accountants. This study just concentrates on the sustainable indexes of the
air, because of extensiveness of sustainable development in environmental dimension. First, we
recognized environmental development indexes of the air by Driver-State-Response model, and
examine these indexes between 4 groups of environmental experts, accountants, municipality
managers and citizens, using a questionnaire to collect required data; then, categorized Tehran
municipality activities by the confirmed indexes and determined cost pools, so that related cost drivers
can be identified. Lastly we allocated costs by related cost drives

Aims: The study examined the relationship existing between financial leverage and the dividend policy of quoted oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Methodology: The data was analyzed employing descriptive statistics and the least square regression technique. Results: The study revealed that a significant relationship exists between long term debt and dividend payout ratio; total debt and dividend payout ratio while no significant relationship exists between short term debt and dividend payout ratio of quoted oil and gas firms in Nigeria Conclusion: Given the integral role the Oil and Gas sector plays in Nigeria, this paper showed the centrality of the capital structure and dividend policy in ensuring the stability of corporations in the Nigerian Oil and Gas industry.

In December, 2013, hazardous air pollution forced schools to shut or suspend outdoor activities in several cities in eastern and northern China. The problem of environment protection has once again aroused deep concerns nationwide. This paper reviews the main literatures on the theory of environmental accounting in recent years, and attempts to describe the new development of researches on environmental accounting from viewpoints in five aspects of sustainability, externalities, information disclosure, cost management and behavior. The thesis also discusses development status of the current theoretical research in environmental accounting in China. Finally, it points out the possible future research directions combining with the research situations in China so as to provide experiences and references for further research on environmental accounting theory

This paper examines the impact of environmental accounting on sustainable development in Nigeria. The study used content analysis research design. The extant literature reviewed that the efforts made by the Nigerian companies to make environmental disclosures deserve appreciation, but in most cases the quality and quantity of disclosures are not satisfactory as observed that environmental accounting has positive impact on sustainable development in Nigeria. The paper concludes that the impact of environmental accounting is that organizations can track their environmental data and other green house gas (GHG) emission against reduction targets, and facilitates environmental reporting to provide sustainability related data that is comprehensive, auditable, and timely to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development-economic development, social development and environmental protection in Nigeria. The paper recommends that a standard should be developed by regulatory bodies to guide the practices of Environmental Accounting.

This study analysed the relationship between public spending and economic growth in Nigeria. The study used the secondary data from CBN Statistical Bulletin from 2004 – 2018. The Real Gross Domestic Product formed the dependent variable and the independent variable of interest were the Capital Expenditure on Economic Services, and Expenditure of Transfers. The variables were validated by conducting the unit root test using the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips Perron Test (PP), and the correlation coefficient were determined using STATA and the Pearson Product Moment Correlation. A multiple regression model was employed for the study and was analysed using the Generalized Least Squares (GLSs) with the aid of Eviews 11 statistical program. The results of the study indicated that Capital Expenditure on Economic Services has a positive and significant impact on Economic Growth while Expenditure on Transfer has a negative and insignificant impact on Economic Growth. The study r...

Bangladesh is one of the highly populated small countries in Asia which is ecologically vulnerable and facing acute challenges on air and water pollution, land deterioration, and waste management. This research is outlined to explore the extent and nature of practicing environmental accounting (EA) and reporting by listed non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) for the period of 2012 to 2016. The annual reports of the sample NBFIs have been used to collect relevant data which are grouped into twelve categories. Therefore, the findings simply show that the application of this concept is in the very tertiary level where the NBFIs are trying to adopt and disclose gradually. The highly disclosed areas include energy savings initiatives, environmental awareness programs and investment in water treatment plants, whereas award for environmental initiative, tree plantation and global warming are in least positions. The yearly comparisons unveiled that the disclosure practices increased sharply from 19% in 2012 to 63% in 2016 wherein majority of the disclosures were qualitative. Moreover, the study found that environmental disclosure practices were closely linked with paid-up capital. Therefore, it is recommended that all the financial institutions, regardless of capital strength, be encouraged to practice environmental disclosures.

History is the main backbone of understanding the reasons behind developments, and sustainability reporting is one of the most important developments in accounting. In this sense, the purpose of this study is to provide a chronology of the historical development of sustainability reporting. The historical research method with a periodic approach was applied. This paper divides the development history of sustainability reporting into three main periods: the pre-standardization period, between 1962 and 1998, the standardization (institutionalization) period, between 1999 and 2016, and the post-standardization period, which started after 2016. In addition, based on events, three sub-periods are defined for the pre-standardization period. This paper is one of the rare studies in the literature that identifies the chronological process of sustainability reporting's historical development.

The study examined the influence of firm characteristics on the quality of Corporate Environmental Accounting Information Disclosure (CEAID) in the Nigeria manufacturing companies. Ex-post facto and content analysis research designs were adopted. The study collected panel data for seven year period covering 2008-2014 from the annual reports of 10 quoted selected manufacturing firms. The study applied the use of Weight Average Environmental Disclosure Index to measure the quality of CEAID based on financial disclosure. The pooled panel data least square regression model was used to estimate the influence of the independent variable on the dependent variables. The results strongly showed that firm financial performance has a significant impact on the quality of CEAID, but firm size had no impact on the quality of CEAID. The descriptive analysis showed that the highest quality of CEAID as examined using the Global Reporting Initiative and IS0 14301 environmental requirement is far below standard at 2.5%. The study concluded that voluntary CEAID alone would not enhance the quality of CEAID in the manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Civilisation has involved many countries in industrial activities such as refining, manufacturing mining and other activities many of which generate waste with potential constituents. The ultimate disposal of waste leads to environmental pollution in many parts of the world thereby constituting environmental problems. The magnitude of contamination of the environment has already reached an alarming level (Srinivas, 2014). According to Wabuyi (2009), the bad environmental behaviour may have an adverse impact on the business and its finances. Therefore environment risks such as of global warming, atmospheric, soil and water pollution (Dutta & Bose, 2008), cannot be ignored. It is because the success or failure of a company may be determined not only by the products or services it deals with but also by the complexity of its environment (Adediran & Alade 2013). Organisations are now expected to show their awareness of environmental issues, and that they are addressing the impact which their operations has on the environment and society in general (Uwuigbe and Jimoh, 2012) by accounting and reporting them. According to Srinivasa, (2014), the importance of environmental accounting and reporting is expanding because of expansion in environmental problems, economic, communal and technological development. As a result of environmental issues most developed countries have initiated mandatory disclosure of environmentally related matters (Uwuigbe and Jimoh, 2012). Most of the research carried out in this developed countries have shown that firm size, and financial performance which is amongst the company primary characteristic has an influence on the quality of Corporate Environmental Disclosure. However, in developing countries (Nigeria Inclusive) CEAID still rely heavily on voluntary initiation of reporting institutions (Onyali et al. 2014).Therefore; it is inconclusive if such firm characteristics would also influence the quality of CEAID in Nigeria Manufacturing Firms and if voluntarily initiation alone would produce high quality of CEAID. Corporate Environmental Accounting Information disclosure (CEAID) entails the financial and non–financial disclosure of social and environmental aspects upon which manufacturing firms activities have an impact on its environment. There is a dearth of literature on Corporate Environmental Accounting Information Disclosure in Nigeria. Also, no study has examined if firm size and financial performance influences the quality of corporate environmental accounting information disclosure specifically in the manufacturing firms in Nigeria using Global Reporting Initiative and International Standardization for Organization 14301 as a guide in accessing the quality of CEAID. This gap in the literature is what the study seeks to fill. In Nigeria, the increasing environmental issues of which manufacturing industries tend to have a profound impact on the environment calls for examination of the quality of environmental accounting information voluntarily provided in their annual reports to creating awareness among the stakeholder. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to examine if certain firm characteristic influence the quality of CEAID. The study specifically seeks to determine; (i) the influence of firms' size on the quality of CEAID (ii) the impact of financial performance on the quality of CEAID in the selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria.

Ten LCC-oriented environmental accounting tools suggested as useful in environmental decision-making have been identiÿed. However, their implementation in the building industry seems to be limited, which opens up for a conceptual discussion. The purpose of this article is to discuss theoretical assumptions and the practical usefulness of the LCC approach in making environmentally responsible investment decisions. LCC's monetary unit and extended scope may speak in favour of using LCC but LCC fails to handle irreversible decisions, neglects items that have no owner and does not consider costs to future generations. Moreover, LCC does not take into account the decision makers' limited ability to make rational decisions under uncertainty. LCC's practical usefulness is constrained by its oversimpliÿcation to a monetary unit, the lack of reliable data, complexity of the building process and conceptual confusions. To handle these inconsistencies in future development of environmental decision support tools three research solutions are proposed. ?

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to contribute to discussions about engagement in social and environmental accounting, drawing on dialogic theory and philosophy. A dialogic approach, building on existing critical inquiries, is introduced to derive principles to inform "on the ground" engagements. Applying dialogic thinking to social and environmental accounting encourages the development of dialogic forms of accountability, more authentic engagements and is more likely to contribute to sustainable social and environmental change. Design/methodology/approach -Contains a synthesis of literature from within and beyond social and environmental accounting to shed light on the issues addressed by the special issue. Findings -Research engagements in social and environmental accounting need not be taken in a haphazard manner uninformed by theory. In particular, the "learning turn" in social sciences has generated a large body of theorizing (informed by concrete engagement activities) that can be used to shape, guide and support engagement. Practical implications -The principles developed can be used to inform future research design, with the aim of increasing the likelihood that such engagements will yield outcomes of "value" usually defined as emancipatory changes. Originality/value -This paper develops a new (to accounting) theoretical perspective.

Cette thèse étudie l’intégration systématique d’entités environnementales pour « elles-mêmes » dans la comptabilité générale d’entreprise. Nous resituons premièrement les termes de cette question (Q) dans le cadre des rapports Homme/Nature via une analyse de la Modernité (Latour, 1997). Nous en déduisons trois approches-types de Q : une Moderne Orthodoxe centrée sur l’Objectivation, et rapprochée du Capitalisme (Castoriadis, 2013), incluant notamment la valeur d’existence néoclassique (Krutilla, 1967) – dont nous discutons les modalités, raisons et obstacles pour son incorporation comptable ; une Moderne renvoyant à l’Ethique Environnementale, où les entités non-humaines sont Subjectivées via la valeur intrinsèque ; une a-Moderne Ecologique Relationnelle. Nous montrons ensuite que la ligne narrative centrale de la comptabilité financière « classique » est celle du maintien d’une entité particulière, le « capital », et nous argumentons que trois capitaux différents structurent les théories comptables financières actuelles : le Capital (Capitaliste) Fundiste, le Capital (Capitaliste) Matérialiste (Hicks, 1974) ou le capital-monnaie. De cette analyse ressort l’idée que les différentes notions de résultat comptable sont assimilables à une extension de la notion de profit Hicksien selon Lindhal (Hicks, 1939) à ces trois capitaux. A partir de cette étude, nous proposons une redéfinition de la notion de « capital », apte à l’élargir à des questionnements extra-financiers, et nous construisons un Modèle Comptable Intégratif (MCI), systématisant l’extension des états financiers à tout « capital » ainsi redéfini, à partir du principe de maintien des capitaux. Nous montrons notamment que la valeur d’un capital (financier ou non) peut toujours être appréhendée comme étant égale au coût de maintien (Gray, 1992; Richard, 2012) de ce capital : en particulier, nous relions la notion de valeur actualisée au coût de maintien (non actualisé) du Capital Fundiste. Nous rattachons finalement l’intégration des entités environnementales pour « elles-mêmes », selon chaque approche-type, au maintien de certains « capitaux » (tels que redéfinis) et appliquons le MCI à ceux-ci pour obtenir des modèles comptables (bilans et comptes de résultats) répondant de façon méthodique et systématique à Q.
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Gray, R. (1992). Accounting and environmentalism: an exploration of the challenge of gently accounting for accountability, transparency and sustainability. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 17(5), 399–425.
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Enacting Environments is an ethnography of the midst of the encounter between corporations, sustainable development and climate change. At this intersection 'environmental management' and 'carbon accounting' are put into practice. Purportedly, these practices green capitalism. Drawing on fieldwork of day-to-day practices of corporate environmental accountants and managers, Ingmar Lippert reconstructs their work as achieving to produce a reality of environment that is simultaneously stable and flexible enough for a particular corporate project: to stage the company, and in consequence capitalism, as in control over its relations to an antecedent environment. Not confined to mere texts or meetings between shiny stakeholders co-governing the corporation – among them some of the world's biggest auditing firms, an environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO) and standards – control is found to be distributed across as well as limited to a myriad of practical work situations, involving spreadsheets and slide shows. Carbon accounting takes place in the midst of docile as well as dissident humans and nonhumans. As a result of this analysis, Enacting Environments establishes how carbon emission facts are produced and co-configure climate change realities. Ingmar Lippert argues: within capitalism, environment does not exist in the singular but in the plural; and these environments are not existing out there to be read off some anterior Nature but they are brought into social, economic and political existence in the practices of accounting for them. Providing a portfolio of methods to study techno-managerial engagement with carbon, Ingmar Lippert shows how much is overlooked in received theories of corporate environmental accounting, theories of the performativity of environmental economics and, ultimately, the epistemic and ontic effects of fact-making in the heart of neoliberal capitalism.

cite as: Ingmar Lippert (2013). Enacting Environments: An Ethnography of the Digitalisation and Naturalisation of Emissions. PhD Dissertation in Sociology, University of Augsburg, Augsburg.

The present research paper examines the importance of environmental accounting for local self-government towards environmental protection and management, evaluates the role of local self-government towards promotion and development of environmental accounting and also investigates the local self-government initiatives towards sustainable environmental development. For this study 5, local self-government body has selected from Goa, based on random sampling technics. The analysis highlights that environmental accounting has a multi-dimensional construct rather than a one-dimensional form. Three main aspects of environmental accounting are firstly direct monetary and physical flows in environmental protection and management. Secondly, for accounting-environmental costs and impacts are hidden in overheads and future periods in waste management, thirdly accounting for external environmental costs and effects in waste management. Similarly, critical roles of government in promoting and development of environmental accounting is vision/goal setter, leader by example, facilitator, green fiscal authority, and innovator/catalyst. The study even highlights that a moderate level of environmental accounting has found in local government towards environmental protection and management. It has seen that local self-government has used around half of the environmental accounting information items included in this research.

In response to perceived valuation problems giving rise to global environmental crisis, ‘nature’ is being qualified, quantified and materialised as the new external(ised) ‘Nature-whole’ of ‘natural capital’. This paper problematises the increasing legibility, through numbering and (ac)counting practices, of natural capital as an apparently exterior ‘matter of fact’ that can be leveraged financially. Interconnected policy and technical texts, combined with observation as an academic participant in recent international environmental policy meetings, form the basis for a delineation of four connected and intensifying dimensions of articulation in fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’: discursive, numerical-economic, material and institutional. Performative economic sociology approaches are drawn on to clarify the numbering and calculative practices making and performing indicators of nature health and harm as formally economic. These institutionalised fabrications are interpreted as attempts to enrol previously uncosted ‘standing natures’ in the forward-driving movement of capital.

The ‘Triple Bottom Line’ (TBL) is a major and increasingly used socio-environmental accounting framework. However, critical academic examinations of this model have been remained scarce and most importantly, no real alternatives have been developed. Thus this theoretical paper provides a contribution to fill this gap. Through a critical analysis of the TBL, we argue that it suffers from severe limitations. In particular, it does not protect human and natural capital (HNC). As an answer to these problems, we propose and discuss another accounting framework, the ‘Triple Depreciation Line’ (TDL), which extends to HNC the powerful capitalist accounting tool for preserving financial capital – the historical cost accounting (HCA) and its planned depreciation. To this end, we analyse and (re-)define the concept of capital in an ecological accounting context. We clearly specify the assumptions on which the TDL relies, to facilitate comparisons or dialogues with other accounting models and to avoid misunderstanding as in the case of the TBL. These axioms concern what we call the ‘social’ (axioms SA1–2) and ‘corporate’ (axioms AA1–4) capital maintenance. While the two first appeal to the most precise ontological investigation possible of HNC, the others imply mainly the recourse to the HCA and its depreciation.

The purpose of ecosystem services accounting is to quantify the main transactions from ecosystems to society and economy and to report these transactions into accounting tables that are compatible with the structures and practices used in traditional economic accounting. The European Commission launched in 2015 the INCA (Integrated system for Natural Capital Accounting) project to produce concrete applications for the EU, compliant with the international standard of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA). In this report we assess, value and account for three new ecosystem services: Habitat and Species Maintenance, on site Soil Retention and Water Purification. We also review and improve already existing ecosystem services accounts, such as Crop and Timber provision, Carbon Sequestration and Crop Pollination. Based on the nine ecosystem services accounts compiled for the EU, we finally start processing INCA readily available indicators, that can support policy analysis and can contribute to international reference frameworks such as the post 2020 Biodiversity framework and the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract
This study evaluates the relationship between corporate diversification and assets utilization among diversified firms in selected countries in Africa. The study formulated six objectives and hypotheses, was based on ex-post facto design and used panel data collected from the financial reports of twenty two diversified firms in selected countries in Africa between 2008 and 2017. The study proxy corporate diversification using product diversification, subsidiary diversification, international diversification, regional diversification, export diversification, sector diversification, and proxy assets utilization using noncurrent assets and current assets utilization. The data were analyzed using ordinary least square regression. However some preliminary analyses such as descriptive statistics, correlation analyses were carried out. The study finds that corporate diversification has 65.7% effect on current assets utilization and 57.9% effect on non-current assets utilization. The study also finds that Product diversification, subsidiary diversification, and international diversification have negative but not significant effect on current assets and noncurrent asset utilization. Export diversification positively affects current assets utilization and negatively affects noncurrent assets utilization. However, the effect is not significant. Regional diversification positively affects current assets and non-current assets utilization but the effect is not significant. Sector diversification has positive and significant effects on noncurrent assets and current assets utilization. The inter country comparative analysis result shows that corporate diversification has more effect on assets utilization among diversified firms in Mauritius than in South Africa and Nigeria. The study recommends among others that management of diversified firms should adopt sector diversification as this will significantly enhance their assets utilization.

This paper investigates the relationship between corporate performance indices-Earnings Per Share (EPS), Net Asset Value per Share (NAVPS) and Net Profit After Tax (NPAT) found in corporate annual reports and environmental accounting and reporting (EAR) practices by listed non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) during 2013-2016. To achieve the objectives, this study tests hypothesis that firms' performance indices namely EPS, NAVPS, and NPAT have significant impact on EAR using estimate of fixed effect model under Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression. Checking multicollinearity and estimating regression analysis through Pearson Correlation and Autoregressive model respectively this study found that EPS is negatively significant in explaining the level of EAR disclosures. Results also reveal that NAVPS and NPAT have positive but not significantly associated with EAR. Therefore, this paper concludes that performance indices are not significant in explaining the level of EAR practices.

This study goes beyond celebration of catalogue of achievements in voluntary environmental disclosures in corporate annual reports, into actual commitment by the industrialised world in tackling environmental degradation. It critically evaluates the mainstream theoretical arguments, and contributions made by critical theory literature. Discussion then shifts to the failed promises of Marx and Habermas on ecological crisis. As a way forward, an ecocentric perspective is introduced, one that draws upon an ecologically informed philosophy of internal relatedness to narrow the gap between 'good news' environmental disclosures and actual commitment to environmental protection. The paper ends with some limitations of ecocentrism, followed by discussion and conclusion.

ABSTRACT
Environmental accounting is on an expansion path. With increasing social focus on the
environment, accounting fills an expectation role, to measure environmental performance. Only
stressing on the economic and industrial development unfortunately we, the Indian forget the
importance of and the consequences of such forgetfulness gave birth to the remarkable incidence
of the Bhopal chemical leak (1984), Tsunami in India (2004). Infect the industrial and business
activity are directly or indirectly responsible for various environmental problems such as Global
Warming, a rapid changes in climate, glacier meltdown, soil erosion, land degradation,
deforestation, loss of biodiversity and pollution of all kinds such as water, air, marine, noise,
light etc.
A native American proverb states that, “only when the last tree is cut, only when the last river is
polluted, only when the last fish is caught only when they will realized that you cannot eat
money”. The issue of environmental responsibility and the sustainable industrial development
has given to the birth of new branch of accounting, i.e. environmental accounting and reporting.
Environmental accounting is relatively a recent entrant in the domain of accounting. It is the
process of identification measurement and commutation of information in the environmental
responsibility of the performance of an entity to permit economic decision. Environmental
accounting first adopted by Norway in the 1970s and in India it is applied only the cements, oil
and petroleum, power and electronics, steel, engineering and textile industries.
For proper implementation of environmental accounting in India a large number of researches,
discussion, accounting standard and regulatory frameworks is necessary. The status of
environmental awareness provides a dynamic for business reporting its environmental
performance. Examining the integration of environmental policy with business policy is the
focus of this research. The business firm’s strategy includes responding to capital and operating AJRBF
Asian Journal of Research in Banking and Finance
Vol.2 Issue 4, April 2012, ISSN 2249 7323
Journal of Asian Research Consortium                  86
                http://www.aijsh.org
costs of pollution control equipment. This is caused by increasing public concerns over
environmental issues, and by a recent government-led trend to incentive-based regulation.
This paper describes the environmental component of the business strategy, producing the
required performance reports and recognizing the multiple skills required to measure, compile
and analyze the requisite data. Special emphasis of the research is on generation of reports and
their standards, for the range of business and regulatory purposes.
KEYWORDS: Environmental Accounting, Business Strategy, Environmental Reporting,
Environmental policy.

The US parking infrastructure is vast and little is known about its scale and environmental impacts. The few parking space inventories that exist are typically regionalized and no known environmental assessment has been performed to determine the energy and emissions from providing this infrastructure. A better understanding of the scale of US parking is necessary to properly value the total costs of automobile travel. Energy and emissions from constructing and maintaining the parking infrastructure should be considered when assessing the total human health and environmental impacts of vehicle travel. We develop five parking space inventory scenarios and from these estimate the range of infrastructure provided in the US to be between 105 million and 2 billion spaces. Using these estimates, a life-cycle environmental inventory is performed to capture the energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases, CO, SO 2 , NO X , VOC (volatile organic compounds), and PM 10 (PM: particulate matter) from raw material extraction, transport, asphalt and concrete production, and placement (including direct, indirect, and supply chain processes) of space construction and maintenance. The environmental assessment is then evaluated within the life-cycle performance of sedans, SUVs (sports utility vehicles), and pickups. Depending on the scenario and vehicle type, the inclusion of parking within the overall life-cycle inventory increases energy consumption from 3.1 to 4.8 MJ by 0.1-0.3 MJ and greenhouse gas emissions from 230 to 380 g CO 2 e by 6-23 g CO 2 e per passenger kilometer traveled. Life-cycle automobile SO 2 and PM 10 emissions show some of the largest increases, by as much as 24% and 89% from the baseline inventory. The environmental consequences of providing the parking spaces are discussed as well as the uncertainty in allocating paved area between parking and roadways.

This article responds to call for normative research on social and environmental accounting (SEA) and call for active engagement in the process of designing SEA systems. More specifically, our investigation focuses on the study of boundary setting for triple bottom line (TBL) reporting, an issue that has been given more attention by practitioners than by researchers. The study reviews the consequences of boundary setting for the discharge of organizational accountability, from which it develops a framework to investigate TBL reporting boundaries and then reports on an empirical survey of best practice. It concludes that organizations are strategically setting and disclosing their boundaries instead of discharging their accountability and argues that such strategies have far-reaching consequences, because reporting boundaries are not only reflective of organizations but also have a constitutive role in their definition. A further consequence is that it calls into question the use of voluntary labeling, such as ''in accordance'' with Global Reporting Initiative; one implication being that further research into technical developments in TBL reporting could contribute to the discharge of organizational accountability.