Sustainability Accounting and Reporting

Abstract

The chapter discusses a number of accounting-related issues in terms of the overall concepts of environment and sustainability. The financial accounting focus of objectively measuring defined assets and liabilities often handles environmental costs as a part of the costing process and simply lumps these costs into the overhead cost pool. The financial accounting treatment of contingent liabilities is too rigid for environmental decision purposes. Environmental management should estimate the likelihood of an action being taken against the organization, and it should also estimate the potential liabilities related to cleanup costs and related fines if environmental pollution has occurred. The chapter also illustrates that several existing managerial methodological approaches are potentially very useful as environmental and sustainability tools.