ABSTRACT
For the purposes of this chapter the term ‘sustainability accounting’ will be taken to equate to the range of topics normally included within social and environmental accounting (SEA). To some extent, the terms will be used interchangeably in this chapter though we acknowledge that much of what constitutes SEA stops seriously short of engaging with the notion of sustainability. Within the SEA canon we could include technical eco-efficiency issues including environmental management accounting, implications for and critiques of conventional accounting and reporting,
and critiques and prescriptions of innovative forms of reporting: ‘sustainability accounting’ draws on all these areas but, ideally, also explicitly recognizes the limitations of the biosphere and its profound implications for peaceful human co-existence.
