Environmental Accounting Guidelines and Corporate Cases in Korea

Abstract

Since the 1990s environmental accounting has spread rapidly as an effective tool for environmental management. Leading global companies, especially in Europe, North America and Japan, have applied environmental accounting to enhance their eco-efficiency and resource productivity.

Moreover, increasing external pressure from stakeholders like financial institutions, SRI (Social Responsible Investment), the government, and local communities has forced companies to show an active interest in environmental accounting.

Compared to advanced companies in developed countries, however, most companies in developing countries are still far behind in understanding and applying environmental accounting techniques and methods.

As a wide range of Korean stakeholders has been interested in corporate environmental performance and its disclosure in annual reports since the mid-1990s, a number of leading Korean companies have started to introduce environmental accounting. Also, in the late 1990s the Korean government made efforts to disseminate environmental accounting into the industrial sector to promote sustainable development. The Korean Ministry of Environment (KMOE) developed the “Environmental Accounting Guidelines” to disseminate information about environmental accounting into the corporate world¹. Also, LG Environmental Strategy Institute (LGESI) is carrying out an EMA (Environmental Management Accounting) project to develop corporate EMA cases; these are funded by the Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (KMOCIE).