Is corporate Asia ready for the green economy?

This report explores the concept of a ‘green economy’, and its relevance in Asia. It explores the roles that policymakers, investors, corporates and accountants need to play to facilitate the transition to a green economy.Publisher PD

Is corporate China ready for the green economy?

This report summarises the ACCA and WWF roundtable held in Beijing on 29 June 2012, one of a series of events addressing sustainability issues relevant to the business community in Asia.Publisher PD

One way forward: non-traditional accounting disclosures in the 21st century

Recent empirical studies (Deegan and Rankin, 1999; Deegan et al., 2000) have indicated that although many corporations have begun to respond to perceived demand for environmental disclosures in published accounts, their perspective of organisational legitimacy is a narrow view, in which information is targeted towards specific stakeholders and not to the general public. This paper considers a range of models (variously called guidelines, standards and charters) which have been put forward by different organisations to aid the development of social and environmental disclosures. In all cases verification and attestation are part of the proposed regimen. The question which the papers attempts to answer is whether any one of the models would be capable of rapid adoption as part of an expanded GAAP, should the professional accounting bodies think that this is desirable. The outcome of our deliberations is cautious support for the use of EMAS and ISO 14000 as the basis for a modified GAAP plus the further development of the GRI 2000 guidelines into a set of standards covering both social and environmental reporting

Private Sector Investment and Sustainable Development: The Current and Potential Role of Institutional Investors, Companies, Banks and Foundations in Sustainable Development

This paper seeks to provide the Financing for Development process with a perspective on the role institutional investors, companies, and foundations can play in the design and implementation of a financing strategy for global sustainability. This will help bridge the terminology and investment approaches of institutional investors, companies, foundations, and governments. The paper highlights ongoing efforts among private investors to increase the impact of their investments. It concludes with a set of key actions facing investors, companies and foundations in their transition towards investment practices that contribute to sustainable development

Sustainability reporting and the professional accountant in Nigeria

We wish to acknowledge the funding assistance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) to conduct this study, to which we are grateful to the Council of the Institute for approving the research grant.Sustainability reporting is increasingly being mandated internationally, including in the emerging markets. The latest effort has been a proposal by International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) to integrate sustainability and financial reporting. Integrating sustainability and financial reporting presupposes the existence of sustainability reporting knowledge. This study seeks to gain an insight into the views, attitude and understanding of the concept of corporate sustainability and sustainability reporting by the Nigerian professional accountant who is expected to play a role in integrating sustainability and financial reporting in the Nigerian environment. Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design and snowball sampling survey, 1, 857 questionnaires were administered among Nigerian professional accountants out of which 860 usable responses were received. Analysis of the responses show that the accountants understand corporate sustainability as the incorporation of social and environmental concern in business decisions to ensure responsible business practices but within the context of shareholders value maximisation as opposed to being about the right thing to do. According to them sustainability is not about accountants helping corporations to internalise the cost of their externality or providing stakeholders with social and environmental accountability information. This is at variance with its original definition which emphasises meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. They are of the view that corporations operating in industries with sustainability concerns in Nigeria may not be motivated to engage in sustainability reporting because of lack of public awareness and the non-applicability of most of the business cases for sustainability. As such sustainability reporting should be predicated upon effective regulation, enforcement and sanctions. However, the accountants are favourably disposed to corporations engaging in sustainability reporting; playing some roles in its reporting chain. They support an accounting standard on sustainability reporting as well as Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) mandating it. There is also evidence that the accountants’ sustainability knowledge derives 65% from international linkages and only 1% from the local accounting profession, with a high 24% claiming no knowledge of sustainability reporting. To this end the study recommends that the accounting profession should intervene to equip its members with the relevant knowledge of sustainability reporting and that the corporate reporting regulatory authorities should mandate sustainability reporting in the Nigerian environment.Final Published versio

Large UK retailers' initiatives to reduce consumers' emissions: a systematic assessment

In the interest of climate change mitigation, policy makers, businesses and non-governmental organisations have devised initiatives designed to reduce in-use emissions whilst, at the same time, the number of energy-consuming products in homes, and household energy consumption, is increasing. Retailers are important because they are at the interface between manufacturers of products and consumers and they supply the vast majority of consumer goods in developed countries like the UK, including energy using products. Large retailers have a consistent history of corporate responsibility reporting and have included plans and actions to influence consumer emissions within them. This paper adapts two frameworks to use them for systematically assessing large retailers’ initiatives aimed at reducing consumers’ carbon emissions. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) is adapted and used to analyse the strategic scope and coherence of these initiatives in relation to the businesses’ sustainability strategies. The ISM ‘Individual Social Material’ framework is adapted and used to analyse how consumer behaviour change mechanisms are framed by retailers. These frameworks are used to analyse eighteen initiatives designed to reduce consumer emissions from eight of the largest UK retail businesses, identified from publicly available data. The results of the eighteen initiatives analysed show that the vast majority were not well planned nor were they strategically coherent. Secondly, most of these specific initiatives relied solely on providing information to consumers and thus deployed a rather narrow range of consumer behaviour change mechanisms. The research concludes that leaders of retail businesses and policy makers could use the FSSD to ensure processes, and measurements are comprehensive and integrated, in order to increase the materiality and impact of their initiatives to reduce consumer emissions in use. Furthermore, retailers could benefit from exploring different models of behaviour change from the ISM framework in order to access a wider set of tools for transformative system change

Climate-Related Investing Across Asset Classes

Responsible investment -- understood as the incorporation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information into investment analysis -- is a discipline that allows investors to:- Better assess long-term risks and opportunities in their portfolios; and- Better align their investment strategies with opportunities to create longterm wealth for investors and society alike.It is a tool for investors who seek to improve long-term financial returns through enhanced ESG analysis. It also appeals to mission or impact investors, who seek to achieve defined social and/or environmental goals while achieving targeted rates of return. In both cases, investors use responsible investment as a tool to improve their ability to achieve their goals.Climate change is among the most important issues addressed by today's responsible investment universe. The physical risks of climate change, the likelihood of major changes in political and regulatory investment environments as a result of climate change, the opportunities associated with a radical global transformation to a low-carbon economy -- these issues create far-reaching implications for investors as they make decisions about their investment strategies, and as they evaluate particular fund managers and investment opportunities. New ideas, products, and methods have entered the market to address the long-term implications of climate change.This short handbook takes as its premise that a climate lens reveals risks and opportunities across all elements of an investor's portfolio. Every asset class offers investors an opportunity to pursue climate-friendly investments, to mitigate exposure to climate risk, and to engage stakeholders to improve climate-related performance across the range of investment opportunities

Accounting for changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services from a business perspective

Biodiversity refers to the dynamics of interactions between organisms in changing environments. Within the context of accelerating biodiversity loss worldwide, firms are under increasing pressures from stakeholders to develop appropriate tools to account for the nature and consequences of their actions, inclusive of their influences on ecosystem services used by other agents. This paper presents a two-pronged approach towards accounting for changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services from a business perspective. First, we seek to analyze how Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) may be used by firms to identify and account for the interactions between their activities and biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES). To that end, we use dairy farming as a case study and propose general recommendations regarding accounting for changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services from a management accounting perspective. Secondly, after discussing the corporate reporting implications of the main environmental accounting approaches, we propose the underlying principles and structural components of a Biodiversity Accountability Framework (BAF) which would combine both financial and BES data sets; hence, suggesting the need for changes in business accounting and reporting standards. Because this would imply significant changes in business information systems and corporate rating practices, we also underline the importance of making the associated technological, organizational and institutional innovations financially viable. The BAF should be designed as an information base, coconstructed with stakeholders, for setting up and managing new modes of regulation combining tools for mitigating BES loss and remunerating BES supply.Accounting, business, biodiversity, ecosystem services, indicators, management accounting, financial accounting, reporting, corporate social responsibility, standards, biodiversity accountability framework.