ABSTRACT
Within the United Kingdom primary education has adopted study of the environment within the key stages, secondary education sector Environmental Education has been established as one of the National Curriculum’s five cross curricular themes. Higher education, in the delivery of Degrees and Higher National Diplomas in Business Studies and Administration usually include the studies of business ethics and quality management although these are discrete studies, often with a managerial rather than a financial emphasis. Outside the education sector organisations are pursuing environmental reporting standards and the press and other media deliver the environmental message from a variety of perspectives. Young children through television programmes like Blue Peter and Newsround have been given a global awareness, a sense of environmental 'right and wrong', a perception of life, and corporate behaviour in particular, that was never apparent in earlier generations. It is hoped that these activities have raised the public awareness of the issues and debates that surround the topic and that over time a means to address the problems and opportunities presented will come forth. In the mean time the accounting profession is confronting a series of opportunities itself. The public are demanding more accountability and hard information on the impact of economies upon the environment and economists and accountants are pressed to find an acceptable currency or language in which to trade. The accounting profession is still endeavouring to recover its reputation from the fall in the late eighties and it is now having to provide solutions to three, and some might say intractable, areas of professional competence:
• Environmental Reporting, disclosure and compliance; • Environmental Accounting, forecasting and costing; • Environmental Auditing compliance and control.
