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Manufacturing and service companies are likely to make a variety of costs possible. Environmental costs are one of those costs. Environmental performance is one of the most important factors in assessing a company’s success. For environmental accounting, companies need to work together as teams of system designers, chemists, engineers, production managers, operators, employees, purchasing circle and accountants (those who may have never worked together before).

Nowadays, most of the companies are facing environmental issues and are seeking an appropriate way to report and disclose the information to the public. The environmental pollution issue is among the most important problems of today’s human society. Therefore, this is very important to use environmental accounting as an attempt towards protecting the environment.

Green accounting is a type of accounting that attempts to factor environmental costs into the financial results of operations. Apart from answering the question whether the economy has performed sustainably during one or more accounting periods, green accounting indicators [green gross domestic product (GDP)] can be used in policy formulation and evaluation. Green GDP calculations can contribute to raise awareness for sustainability concerns among national governments/policy-makers, who tend to concentrate on their countries’ fast economic development.

Environmental accounting can be applied to large and small companies in various industries, as well as in manufacturing or service sectors. Environmental accounting can be applied on a large or a smaller scale in a systematic manner for the required bases.

Environmental accounting requires the collection of information from all the groups. People of various groups need to talk to each other to achieve a common vision and understanding of environmental accounting and to realize this vision.

Undoubtedly, to establish an ideal system of environmental accounting in the country, accountants can become a powerful forearm of the government regarding economical and financial controls. To achieve this goal, environmental accounting objectives and tasks should be identified and defined in detail, and the standards, rules and criteria should be grounded and codified based on reasonable and practical principles.

Though environmental management accounting (EMA) is a globally recognized accounting practice, its application and development within several developing economies remain stunted. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the extent to which EMA practices have been implemented by local manufacturing companies in Nairobi, Kenya.

We measure the degree to which EMA methods have been adopted by manufacturing entities and hypothesize that firm size, financial performance, and regulation are positively associated to the extent to which EMA techniques are applied by Kenyan corporations. The chapter employs a mixed methods research approach and combines the use of surveys with semi-structured interviews to gain insights into drivers of EMA and the extent to which these methods are applied locally.

We find environmental regulation and financial performance are positively associated with the level of EMA practices applied by manufacturing entities.

The findings illustrate the complexities of applying EMA practices within an emerging context and provide evidence that EMA practices are still predominantly used by entities to meet local regulatory requirements. The qualitative findings indicate there could be some companies who engage with EMA at a more sophisticated level.

Organizations’ increasing concern for environment shows the interest in appropriate mechanisms that account for relevant flows of environment-related information. Today managers and researchers are promoting environmental management accounting (EMA) systems mechanisms as a means to incorporate the full spectrum of ecological data into day-to-day business decisions and foster green management execution. However implementation remains a challenge and many of the difficulties are associated with conceptual and practical problems in integrating ‘green’ information and providing guidance on effective implementation. In this context academics might investigate on further explanations on how to achieve excellence in both environmental and financial performance. Hence this chapter substantiates the need for more theoretical and empirical studies on EMA practices and proposes avenues for future research.

We review the growing body of EMA research to inform the reader of what has been studied to date and indicate the necessity for further investigation. In addition, we suggest areas for future research.

Our synthesis highlights the relevant aspects of EMA examined in prior studies. The review reveals unexplored facets that need to be investigated to complement existing knowledge. In particular researchers might explore the concept of environmental performance and the application of different forms of EMA within organizations. Moreover academics have the opportunity to further examine the role of EMA mechanisms in companies that do not pursue environmental results for economic benefits.

The chapter sheds some light on EMA literature and emphasizes the opportunities that new theoretical developments and appropriate research designs offer in the investigation of the remaining gaps in the literature.

Purpose – During the past decade in Malaysia, there has been a rise in the number of companies engaging in a rudimentary form of social and environmental reporting, and this has coincided with high-profile media coverage of environmental disasters in the country. The purpose of this article is to explore the perceptions of accounting practitioners in Malaysia to social and environmental accounting (SEA).

Methodology/approach – The study utilises a mixed-method approach and involves 245 survey questionnaire respondents, 7 in-depth interviews and the qualitative data from 123 of the survey respondents.

Findings – The level of knowledge and awareness of accounting practitioners in Malaysia of SEA is low. They are sceptical about quantification and valuation issues, but are able to see that reform, which would have to be driven by legislation, and could improve business performance regarding social justice and environmental quality.

Research limitations/implications – This study enables the development of SEA and reporting framework as a vehicle for further discussions on business communication and the participants’ perceptions relating to social and environmental accountability in Malaysia. It postulates the strong likelihood that SEA will take root in Malaysia given the strong undercurrents of accounting and business malpractices and the clarion call by many for the reinstatement of the ethical dimension of the profession.

Originality/value of the article – While most research on SEA and reporting in the context of Malaysia focuses on the disclosure aspects, this article explores the perceptions of accounting practitioners and establishes their insights on the issue of social and environmental accountability and reporting.

The objective of this study is to provide insights into insiders' perspectives on environmental accounting disclosures, which is relatively under-investigated. Based on insights from key managers, we provide information on company decisions and practices related to the data disclosed in annual reports. More specifically, we explore how regulation guidance affects and shapes disclosure strategies.

Drawing on the normativity framework, our research design involves a multiple-case study focusing on eight French listed firms in sensitive industries. We primarily build our investigation on the analysis of annual reports. Semi-structured interviews with 20 key managers belonging to these same firms provide interpretative explanations of the disclosed (and un-disclosed) figures.

Our main findings show that the disclosure of environmental accounting information (EAI) is still in its infancy. Weak definitions and poor guidance in regulations explain the limitations in disclosure and induce interpretative strategies depending on the type of data to be disclosed in the companies' annual reports. We document that separate logics drive environmental expenditure and environmental liability disclosures in many respects.

This study should be useful for regulators because environmental accounting standards are currently subject to change and helpful for users because of the careful consideration of disclosures.

Our research is timely and adds to the growing body of research on regulation. We document how a common regulation may lead to interpretative strategies by different actors and networks of actors, thereby contributing to shaping EAI norms.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a public policy solution to updating mainstream financial accounting from its nineteenth century roots and make it more relevant and consistent with public policy, individual investor motivations and global needs as exemplified in the sustainability development goals. Many approaches to integrating social and environmental accounts with financial accounts are additive; the two types of accounting information sit alongside each other. The opportunity to revise the basic building block of financial accounting, information to help investors make economic decisions relating to investments to increase integration and recognition that this is a public policy decision and not an accounting profession decision, is rarely considered.

The approach is a viewpoint on the opportunities for and benefits of integration of financial, social and environmental accounting.

The current basis of financial accounting does not reflect private investors’ motivations, and changing the basis of accounting is a public policy issue.

This is a viewpoint paper. The pros and cons of current approaches to valuation of social and environmental outcomes are not explored.

Changing policy would require support from asset managers and owners, accounting bodies, civil society and politicians and would need a plan for transitioning from the existing approach.

This is a possible starting point for formal research that could support policy changes that could result in resource allocation decisions taking account of social and environmental impacts.

There are several approaches for integrating social environmental and financial accounting; however, the proposal that integration would result from a change in public policy specifically clarifying and updating investor motivation provides a possible solution to many of the challenges of integration.

Discusses the arguments for teaching environmental accounting and provides a sample of teaching programmes which have been successfully introduced in Australian and overseas universities. Also includes a discussion of developments in tertiary education overseas, particularly the encouragement and advice provided in the UK by the Toyne Committee and the Common Learning Agenda of the Council for Environmental Education.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the drawbacks of current social and environmental accounting methods and to present a classification for developing a new accounting model.

The various social and environmental accounting methods are classified and discussed on the basis of various criteria such as the types of accounting principles and the content and information units utilized.

Current social and environmental accounting methods utilize different criteria, measurement units and principles, a fact that makes the information provided ambiguous and problematic for a reliable business‐society dialogue under a common and understandable context. A new classification is presented based on specific criteria in the prospect of developing a new accounting model.

The proposed new classification aiming to develop a new accounting model is a theoretical proposition which should be validated and tested in practice with a series of case studies before it can be recommended as an alternative to current accounting methods.

The paper attempts to highlight the drawbacks of the current social and environmental accounting methods and proposes a new classification for the development of a new accounting model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of natural resources accounting in sustainable development. Natural resource accounting is important because the welfare of a nation measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) has several weaknesses.

This paper achieves this objective by identifying the present status, the constraints and the challenges for the economics and accounting professions.

The main weakness of GDP as a measure of development is that it does not take into account damages to environmental resources. However, the improvement of the concept to include environmental resource use is made difficult because of the difficulties of measuring environmental damage. The challenge to the economics and accounting profession is to ensure interdisciplinary collaboration, development of a framework to explicitly include the environment, development of credible valuation procedures for the environment, and inclusion of the various ethical positions advanced by various groups on the value of the environment.

Some headway has been made on these issues during the last decade but a major challenge still lies ahead in further improving these approaches so that sustainable development becomes an achievable goal.

This paper brings together diverse views and fusing them together providing a future path for research in environmental accounting to achieve sustainable development.