SECTION-8 Sustainable Water Resource Management, Policies And Protocols

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
S Jayanthi1, S Mathava Kumar1 and S Arun Kumar1

ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
REPORTING FOR SUSTAINABILITY
INVENTORY APPROACH
SUSTAINABLE COST APPROACH
RESOURCES FLOW THROUGH / INPUT-OUTPUT APPROACH
TABLE 1: RESOURCE FLOW STATEMENTS FOR A CITY (EXTRACT)
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

Sustainable development means restructuring of global and national economies in such a way as to gain increased economic well-being including employment while reducing the impact on the world's ecosystem and natural resources. Corporations/industries have to contribute fully to humanity's attempts to seek a sustainable existence. A strong case can then be made for the development of accounting and reporting systems. This requires monitoring and recording of data that relates to the extent to which an organization is acting sustainably. Practical options are required at every stage so that any organization could adopt and apply a reporting system for sustainability. This paper proposes some practical ways of approaching accounting and reporting for sustainability.

INTRODUCTION: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

The current accounting and reporting activity depends upon four factors.

  • Organization: The organization that is accounted for (the accounting entities are defined in space and time). Events that do not fall within a defined organization are ignored.
  • Economic event: The events which accounting recognizes or which have financial effect on the organization.
  • Financial description: Cash receipts or cash payments generated in the past, present and which will be generated in the future.
  • The users of information: The users (are the management investors), and lenders and their interests.

    • The steps involved in environmental excellence are as follows.

  • Development and publishing of the environmental policy.
  • Preparation of action programmes.
  • Establishment of the organization and staffing - including board representation.
  • Allocation of adequate resources.
  • Investment in environment, science and technology.
  • Education and training.
  • Monitoring, auditing and reporting.
  • Monitoring the evolution of the green agenda.
  • Contribution to environment programmes.
  • Help in building bridges between various interests.

    • These suggestions are largely experimental. Most of them are in current use somewhere in the world. For e.g.

  • Many organisations are finding considerable direct, financial, short-term benefits arising from energy accounting.
  • Rhone-Poulenc, one of the world's major chemical companies is famous for its pioneering work in introducing accounting system for its wastes and effluents.
  • Environmental impact assessment is becoming increasingly a regular fact of organisational life.
  • Cost incurred by the chemical industry in investing in new, cleaner technology received considerable press coverage.

    • Recent developments in reporting are of three categories
    1. General narrative reports. Policy statements and selected elements of hard quantitative data.
    2. Non-financial quantitative and qualitative data. Emission statements and/or reports on environmental audits.
    3. Disclosure of environmental costing information- complete environmental accounts.

    United Nation's Centre of Transnational Corporations summarizes the proposal on environmental accounting as follows:
    1. Financial information: Disclosure of amount spent on environmental matters. Disclosure of environmental contingent liabilities. Disclosure of anticipated pattern of future environmental expenditure.
    2. Non-financial information: Disclosure of organisational activity (in the environmental field) and environmental policy for the organization.

    If the UN is successful in getting all nations to adopt their proposal, the companies can be expected to increase their financial disclosure within the current financial statements. This suggestion represents current best estimates of the ways in which environment reporting could develop methods commensurate with practical constraints on corporations and the demands of environmental accountability.

    REPORTING FOR SUSTAINABILITY first topic previous topic next topic last topic

    Reporting for sustainability must consist statements about the extent to which corporations are reducing/increasing the options available to future generations. This is a profoundly complex, if not an impossible task. Three major ways in which any organisation could try to approximate in a fairly practical and systematic way which potentially lead to reporting are as follows.
    1. Inventory approach
    2. Sustainable cost approach
    3. Resource flow through / input-output approach

    The first two ways are attempts to report sustainability and the third is a move towards reporting for sustainability. The first two approaches and sustainability technology remain experimental until corporations are willing to work alongside researchers with exploratory models. In a broad sense, an utterly democratic approach sees accountability in general and sustainability reporting in particular as part of the dialogue between a society and its organisation.

    INVENTORY APPROACH: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

    This concerns identifying, recording, monitoring and then reporting, probably in non-financial quantities, the different categories of natural capital and their depletion and/or enhancement. The different elements of critical, non-renewable / non-substitutable, non-renewable / substitutable and renewable natural capital thought to be under the control of the organisation would first be identified by the corporation as below.

  • CRITICAL NATIONAL CAPITAL:
    Ozone depletion
    Tropical hardwood
    Greenhouse gases
    Critical habitat species
  • NON-RENEWABLE / NON-SUBSTITUTABLE NATURAL CAPITAL:
    Oil and petroleum products: Use comparative figures, plans for reduction / substitute funds / efforts expended to provide substitute.
    Other minerals and mineral products
  • NON-RENEWABLE / SUBSTITUTABLE NATURAL CAPITAL:
    Energy usage: Use details, changes in usage, plans to change efforts towards renewable sources.
    Disposal of waste: Quantity and type of wastes produced, changes and plans, efforts towards discovery and access to new sources of resources - longevity of use, reparability and recycling.
  • RENEWABLE NATURAL CAPITAL:
    Timber products: use harvesting, recycling
    Species exploitation
    Habitat destruction / remedial
    Leisure and visual environment, built environment, water, air, noise, etc.

    SUSTAINABLE COST APPROACH: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

    A sustainable organisation is one, which leaves the biosphere in the same status at the end of the accounting period, as it was at the beginning. The extent of failure can be quantified. For this, organisation must be willing to work alongside researchers. The four steps involved for sustainable costing are

    1. Use of critical natural capital
    2. Renewable aspects of biosphere
    3. Level at which resources can be harvested (sustainable harvesting)
    4. Life-cycle assessment

    These are major practical problems, and there is a real need to explore them in corporations. For example, a spreadsheet for innovative system for co-disposal of organic fractions of municipal solid waste and domestic sewage.

    RESOURCES FLOW THROUGH / INPUT-OUTPUT APPROACH: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

    This is the third and final suggestion for approaching the problem of reporting for sustainability. This is derived from methods - well-established in economic and an approach used in many environmental audits. It is based upon a system conception for the organisation and attempts to report the resource flows of the organisation, which focus on the resource use. Table 1 is a tentative outline illustration of how solid waste is generated in a city.

    The summary would need to be backed up with details, which analyse each of the categories, and each category would need quantification in weights and measures or in financial numbers. The major problems are:


    1. It is cumbersome
    2. It is unacceptable to the organisation on the grounds of confidentiality
    3. Organisation could use for internal reporting and it does fulfil the requirements of transparency and allowing society to make choices about resource use. By informing the public and allowing the society to decide, the new-consumer approach is clearly not reporting sustainability but reporting for sustainability. These three broad suggestions represent the full extent of the methods for reporting sustainability.

    TABLE 1: RESOURCE FLOW STATEMENTS FOR A CITY (EXTRACT) first topic previous topic next topic last topic

    Source

    Inputs brought

    Loss/theft

    Breakage

    Leakage

    Emission

    Wastes

    Output

    Carried
     

    Non- Consumable

    Building

    Fixtures

    Furniture

    Furnishings

    Crockery

    Deterioration

    Deterioration

    		    

    Building

    Fixtures

    Furniture

    Fittings

    Furnishings

    Crockery

    Residential

    &

    Commercial

    Repair

    New Crockery

    		    

    Packaging

    Packaging

    		  
     

    Consumables

    Food/Meat/vegetables/ groceries

    		    

    Packaging

    Garbage

    		  
     

    Canned food

    Canned drink

    		    

    Packaging

    Scraps

    Packaging can

    Aluminum cans

    		  
     

    Milk

    Bottled drink

    Cleaning materials

    Electricity

    Oil

    Gas

    Car mites

    Laundry, paper etc.

    		    

    Sewage

    Heat gases

    Heat gases

    Heat gases

    Water

    Plastic bottles

    Industrial

    Varies with type of industry

    Vary widely

    		      

    Hospital

    Medicines

    Equipment

    Drugs

    Furniture fixtures

    Deterioration

    Deterioration

    Stream

    Biomedical waste

    Energy from

    Incinerator

    SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

  • Although environmental reporting and reporting for sustainability are clearly related concepts, there is a quantum difference in scope, focus and impact.
  • The proposals for reporting for sustainability are embryonic and research and experimentation are critically needed.
  • No organisation has approached or is likely to approach reporting for sustainability in the immediate future.
  • A substantial regulatory initiative will be necessary.

    • BIBLIOGRAPHY: first topic previous topic next topic last topic

  • Owen, D., Gray, R. and Maunders, K., 1987. Researching the information content of socially responsible disclosure: A comment, British Accounting Review, Vol. 19, No.2, pp. 169-176.
  • Owen, D.L., 1990. Towards a theory of social investment: a review essay. Accounting organisations and society, Vol. 15, No.3, pp. 249-266.
  • Owen, D.L., 1991. Green reporting: The challenge of nineties, Chapman and Hall, London.
  • Pearce, D., 1977. Accounting for the future, Printed in O'Riordon and Turner., Vol.9. pp. 365-374..
  • Pearce, D., 1985. Resource scarcity and economic growth in poor developing countries. Vol. 10, pp. 440-445.

    • ADDRESS first topic previous topic

    1.) Government College of Technology,
    Coimbatore - 641 013