ABSTRACT
THE NEED FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING The need for integrating ecological aspects into the general management of companies and business organisations arises from the increasing danger and damage to the environment being caused by human activities, as well as from the rapidly growing environmental awareness of all social groups. The aim of eco-oriented control-in the form of ‘environmental management accounting’ —is to safeguard the vital interests of companies and
organisations against potential or manifest threats arising from the continuing degradation of the natural environment on which they depend for material and energy resources. The need to develop environmental management accounting is also an acknowledgement of the essential unity of the entire natural system in which the single components are connected to, and interact with, each other and are vitally important to the long-term future of companies and organisations. To this extent environmental management accounting, or simply ‘environmental accounting’, can be defined as an internal set of management
SUMMARY This chapter is concerned with environmental accounting in the particular context of companies and business organisations. It is explained how, faced with increasing degradation of the natural environment and mounting public concern about environmental problems and issues, companies are now having to take account of environmental aspects in their corporate decision-making and strategic planning. Given that it is the natural environment which provides all the material and energy resources for industrial production, it is argued that it is in the long-term interest of companies to integrate all relevant aspects of sound environmental management into their general management regime. To this end a number of monetary and non-monetary management instruments have been proposed, and it is explained how industry at large can benefit much in the long term by adopting eco-oriented management systems that are both sympathetic to the needs of environmental protection and compatible with the demands and aspirations of the stakeholders.
