How can we measure Scotland’s footprint? (and, once we have, what do we do with it?)

Recent months have seen a great deal of interest and consultation in Scotland regarding environmental and carbon accounting in general, and the calculation and use of ecological and carbon footprints in particular. Ecological footprints are concerned with the global impacts of our consumption decisions in terms of resource use (most commonly focussing on land use), while carbon footprints are concerned with the pollution side of the equation, carbon emissions around the world engendered by our consumption activities. Footprint measures are powerful pedagogic tools for raising interest in, and awareness of, ecological and sustainability issues, and have some valuable characteristics

Ecological Management Accounting—Taking into Account Sustainability, Does Accounting Have Far to Travel?

Concerns regarding the development of environmental accounting have been around for decades. This work is an update to some of the previous questions around the development of ecological accounting to see how this has changed over the last two decades. The work is based on a systematic review of two journal articles from separate accounting journals. The two articles are by widely published academics and are formative ecological management accounting papers highlighting issues since 2000. The analysis includes a comparative review of the two articles, a review of successive articles in the journals, and a citation analysis. The first general finding is around the complex and confusing terminology that is still used, exemplified in the amorphous term sustainability. Specific findings from the paper analysis include ecological management accounting requires a fundamental change to organization management, different values exploring relationships such as material flows, inclusive of the living and physical world, with a longer time horizon, and a centrality of external factors. Due to these challenges, ecological management accounting is presently not used as a research category and therefore is an un-developed research domain. Environmental accounting is a more commonly used synonym for ecological accounting, though this term is distinct and does not cover many of the ecological challenges. Under this research area, there have more recently been attempts to bridge the difficult macro (planetary) and micro (organization) environmental challenge. Concepts such as Accounting for the Management of Ecosystems and Material Flow Cost Accounting are areas of research seen as offering future opportunities to develop into a more ecological management accounting framework, though this will ultimately require research in ecological management accounting based on a multi-disciplinary approach

Forest Accounting and Ecological Sustainability

Forest accounting is creating ground for ecological rationality. World is in danger because of clashes in natural resources particularly ecological ecosystem. There is nexus between forest accounting and sustainable development. Forest is one of the important resources as it is one of the important components of the terrestrial environmental system and larger resource base. Forests provide different basic inputs to the global economic cum ecological system in a multi-dimensional way. It provides timber, fuel wood, pulpwood, fodder, fiber grass and non-wood forest produce & support industrial & commercial activities. They also maintain the ecological balance & life-support systems which is essential for food production, health as well as overall development of human kind.  Forest accounting is having direct input to ecological ecosystem sustainability in various way such as (1) reducing loss of biodiversity. (2) Mitigate inflated economic production figures. (3) Enable value chain and supply chain accounting starting with net forest produce. (4) Enable Gross National Happiness -GNH calculation that is dependent on forest living and environmental standards. (5) Enable balanced economic growth keeping future economic concerns. (6)  Enable balance in regional economic diversity. (7) Safeguard biodiversity (both plant and animal). (8)  Assess tradeoff between agriculture and environment preservation exercises (9) assess nature of food safety networks based on area specific nutrition availability and bring economic measures for balanced nutrition in regions. (10) Cause rational international economic and diplomacy dialogues based on hard data. (11) Measure economic sustainability. It means need to change perspective of human being towards ecological system.  More rationality must bring while dealing with ecology. Present research work would focuses ecological rationality Therefore forest accounting however following are the specific objectives of present research are as follows 1. To explore relationship between forest accounting and ecological sustainability. 2. To develop theoretical modeling of ecological ecosystem sustainability. 3. To discuss various issues of ecological rationality through forest accounting system. 4. To identified challenges of forest accounting. 5. To suggest remedies for ecological ecosystem sustainability. The present study is explorative study on ecological rationality and sustainability through developing forest accounting system. Essential data has been collected and analyze to find out present nexus. Forest accounting would definitely contribute in making effective decision for forest ecology.  There is need to look after forest accounting is one of the instrument for ecological rationality because it’s providing various inputs for rational decision making. It cannot afford forest in danger otherwise society will be in danger. It must be recognized invisible forest ecosystem services and determined its economic value so that ecological rationality would come in picture. Keywords: Rationality, Ecology, Ecosystem, Forest Accounting, India, sustainability, Biodiversity, Flora, Fauna

Agricultural land-use and biological conservation

Land use change is a main driver of biodiversity erosion, especially in agricultural landscapes. Incentive-based land-use policies aim at influence land-use pattern, and are usually evaluated with habitat suitability scores, without accounting explicitly for the ecology of the studied population. In this paper, we propose a methodology to define and evaluate agricultural land-use policies with respect to their ecological outcomes directly. We use an ecological-economic model to link the regional abundance of a bird species to the economic context. Policies based on such ecological economics approaches appear to be more efficient than that based on landscape evaluation, from both economic and ecological viewpoints.Ecological-economic model, agriculture, land-use, landscape, conservation

An industry in crisis : risk, reflexivity, sub-politics and accountability processes in salmon farming

This paper draws upon an arena study on the accounting and accountability processes used within a business sector, under intense public and regulatory scrutiny in terms of its social, economic and ecological risks. Georgakopoulos and Thomson (2004, 2005) report on an absence of environmental accounting within the salmon farming organizations for management planning and control processes. This paper extends this analysis by attempting to theorise the social and environmental accounting observed by these organizations discharging these accountability duties using insights from the risk society literature. The interviews and documentary analysis revealed the existence of an active accountability network. However, Social and Environmental Accounting techniques did not feature in the engagement processes. We observed the existence of fragmented accountability networks, and evidence of a struggle for domination of a techno-scientific accountability process. Within these discourses, business and cost issues were evident, but they were not formally quantified or systematically integrated. We find that the accountability processes observed in our arena study, were consistent with Beck's (and others) analysis of reflexive modernity and the Risk Society Thesis This paper by evaluating accounting and accountability processes within a specific context, demonstrates the importance of locating social and environmental accounting processes within wider accountability discourses. These societal accountability discourses extend beyond social and environmental as well as conventional accounting practices. It is suggested that all accounting practices should become more reflexive in nature if they are to remain relevant in these wider societal accountability discourses

Ecological Economics

a subsystem of a larger finite global ecosystem. Ecological economists question the sustainability of the economy because of its environmental impacts and its material and energy requirements, and also because of the growth of population. Attempts at assigning money values to environmental services and losses, and attempts at correcting macroeconomic accounting, are part of ecological economics, but its main thrust is rather in developing physical indicators and indexes of sustainability. Ecological economists also work on the relations between property rights and resource management, they model the interactions between the economy and the environment, they study ecological distribution conflicts, they use management tools such as integrated environmental assessment and multi-criteria decision aids, and they propose new instruments of environmental policy.

An input-output based alternative to 'ecological footprints' for tracking pollution generation in a small open economy

The usefulness, rigour and consistency of Input-Output (IO) as an accounting framework is well known. However, there is concern over the appropriateness of the standard IO attribution approach, particularly when applied to environmental issues (Bicknell et al. 1998). It is often argued that the source and responsibility for pollution should be located in human private or public consumption. An example is the "ecological footprint" approach of Wackernagel and Rees (1996). However, in the standard IO procedure, the pollution attributed to consumption, particularly private consumption, can be small or even zero. Here we attempt to retain the consumption-orientation of the "ecological footprint" method within an IO framework by implementing a neo-classical linear attribution system (NCLAS) which endogenises trade flows. We argue that this approach has practical and conceptual advantages over the "ecological footprint". The NCLAS method is then applied to the small, open economy of Jersey

Ancestral genome estimation reveals the history of ecological diversification in Agrobacterium

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is considered as a major source of innovation in bacteria, and as such is expected to drive adaptation to new ecological niches. However, among the many genes acquired through HGT along the diversification history of genomes, only a fraction may have actively contributed to sustained ecological adaptation. We used a phylogenetic approach accounting for the transfer of genes (or groups of genes) to estimate the history of genomes in Agrobacterium biovar 1, a diverse group of soil and plant-dwelling bacterial species. We identified clade-specific blocks of cotransferred genes encoding coherent biochemical pathways that may have contributed to the evolutionary success of key Agrobacterium clades. This pattern of gene coevolution rejects a neutral model of transfer, in which neighboring genes would be transferred independently of their function and rather suggests purifying selection on collectively coded acquired pathways. The acquisition of these synapomorphic blocks of cofunctioning genes probably drove the ecological diversification of Agrobacterium and defined features of ancestral ecological niches, which consistently hint at a strong selective role of host plant rhizospheres

Reconsidering the calculation and role of environmental footprints

Following the recent Copenhagen Climate Change conference, there has been discussion of the methods and underlying principles that inform climate change targets. Climate change targets following the Kyoto Protocol are broadly based on a production accounting principle (PAP). This approach focuses on emissions produced within given geographical boundaries. An alternative approach is a consumption accounting principle (CAP), where the focus is on emissions produced globally to meet consumption demand within the national (or regional) economy1. Increasingly popular environmental footprint measures, including ecological and carbon footprints, attempt to measure environmental impacts based on CAP methods. The perception that human consumption decisions lie at the heart of the climate change problem is the impetus driving pressure on policymakers for a more widespread use of CAP measures. At a global level of course, emissions accounted for under the production and consumption accounting principles would be equal. It is international trade that leads to differences in emissions under the two principles. This paper, the second in this special issue of the Fraser Commentary, examines how input-output accounting techniques may be applied to examine pollution generation under both of these accounting principles, focussing on waste and carbon generation in the Welsh economy as a case study. However, we take a different focus, arguing that the ‘domestic technology assumption’, taken as something of a mid-point in moving between production and consumption accounting in the first paper, may actually constitute a more useful focus for regional policymakers than full footprint analyses

What Are Ecosystem Services?

This paper advocates consistently defined units of account to measure the contributions of nature to human welfare. We argue that such units have to date not been defined by environmental accounting advocates and that the term “ecosystem services” is too ad hoc to be of practical use in welfare accounting. We propose a definition, rooted in economic principles, of ecosystem service units. A goal of these units is comparability with the definition of conventional goods and services found in GDP and the other national accounts. We illustrate our definition of ecological units of account with concrete examples. We also argue that these same units of account provide an architecture for environmental performance measurement by governments, conservancies, and environmental markets.Environmental accounting, ecosystem services, index theory, nonmarket valuation