Towards an Environmental Sustainability Management Accounting Template

Abstract

In the 1980s, a recognition of the growing significance of environmental sustainability saw a momentum of pressure to go beyond financial reporting to include non-financial reports, with a focus on corporate governance and sustainability matters (Larrinaga and Bebbington, 2021). That momentum stemmed from general references to sustainable development by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (1980), through to defined references in the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), initiatives from the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC 2005). Further work by the GRI - Global Reporting Initiative (1999, 2016), and successive COP summits led to the establishment of the International Sustainability Standards Board (November 2021) by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation, linked to the International Accounting Standards Board. Currently, on a voluntary basis, many companies disclose sustainability initiatives and results, often based on the framework and methodology issued by the GRI. In some localities, aspects are now compulsory (e.g., France, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, UK). The reporting scope itself has evolved from, initially, the three pillars of people, planet, profit, wider scopes. The three evolved into four: human, social, economic and environmental, and then into five: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. The challenge to organisations is to identify what needs to be measured and how, and to be reported upon. This working paper explores how an organisation’s internal management accounting function can provide a template for that, and to good effect. As a base it draws upon the UNDSD (United Nations Division for Sustainable Development, 2001) recommendations that environmental management accounting should focus on identification, collection, analysis and use of two types of information for internal decision making: physical information on the use, flows and destinies of energy, water and materials (including wastes), and monetary information on environment-related costs, earnings and savings. It builds on that base by identifying an examining what organisations are currently reporting upon, and evaluating the strengths an weakness of such reports.