Page 54 - DCOM409_CONTEMPORARY_ACCOUNTING

Unit 3: Environmental Accounting

2. No country has truly comprehensive environmental accounts. Notes
3. International comparisons are important, but not yet possible because of differences in
methodology, coverage, environmental standards, and other factors.

4. For a country to fully assess its environmental impact, it must have.
Accounts for the trans-boundary movement into and out of the country of pollutants
via air and water

Accounts for its major trading partners to calculate the pollution and material content
of products that it imports.

Practices of Environmental in India

1. Very few corporations give adequate information regarding environmental issue. If as
per requirement of applicable law they have to prepare and submit any information
relevant to environment they do so. The Environment Ministry has issued instruction in
this regard to prepare environment statement. It can be observed through their accounts
that mainly the following types of information are given:

What type of devices installed for pollution control.
Steps taken for energy conservation.
Steps taken for raw material conservation.
Step taken for waste water and production process waste.

Step taken for improvement of quality of product and services, process of production,
etc.
2. A study was conducted among 80 executives of different industries by Dr. B.B. Padhan and
Dr. R.K. Bal which revealed that corporate world is fully aware of the requirements of
environmental reporting. They are also aware of the environmental issue. The corporate
executives have also expressed their views in favour of environment reporting by the
industries.

Despite their awareness and consent over environmental reporting by industries is
it very poor.
It is so inadequate that very little information is found in the annual report.
3. In the words of Jong Seo Choi, research studies have examined the extent to which companies
produce social information, of which environmental information would be part. A number
of general themes that emerge from this include the following:
The proportion of companies disclosing and extent of that disclosure are small and
the quantity is low.

There is some variety in disclosure over time, between countries and between
industries. Social disclosure in general and environmental disclosure in particulars
reflects the changing business climate and social, economic and political environment
in which they occur.
However, the total amount of voluntary disclosure stays fairly constant over time
and what changes is the subject addresses in the disclosure.
There is a very definite size effects in those larger companies are more likely to
disclose than smaller companies.

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