Accountants Get Briefing On Environmental Reporting Requirements

February 13, 2009

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The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has released its second sustainability briefing to help UK accountants deal with new environmental reporting requirements, according to Accountancy Age. The briefing includes advice on new regulations, risk management, and adapting environmental policies into daily financial operations.

Steve Priddy, director of technical policy and research at ACCA, says accountants worldwide have uncertainty and anxiety about carbon, sustainability and green house gas emissions.

Rachel Jackson, head of social and environmental issues at ACCA, says the next significant development for accountancy “is the emergence of sustainability issues within core business practice.”

The greatest barriers to incorporating sustainability into financial strategy include the inability to measure the effects of sustainability on shareholder value (ranked among the top three challenges by 46% of respondents), inability to document the effects on financial performance (37%), and a lack of standard decision-making frameworks that consider environmental factors (36%), according to a report from last year.

But that could soon change. The Global Reporting Initiative’s creation of an extensible business reporting language taxonomy for the many indicators itemized in its sustainability framework, could automate sustainability reporting in much the same way that the SEC believes XBRL will aid the production of financial reports.

EL recently reported on ACCA’s Sustainability Reporting Awards.

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