Environmental accounting embodies the Scientific Outlook on Development advocated by China and many countries and regions in the world, that is, it not only measures the performance of social development by GDP, but emphasizes the coordinated development of economy and society. While developing the economy, the living environment and welfare of human beings should also be improved.
Environmental accounting, also known as green accounting, refers to bringing the environment and natural resources related to economic activities into the economic accounting system, making relevant confirmation, measurement and reporting, and providing effective compensation for the consumption of environmental resources [1]. With the deterioration of global environmental and natural resources problems and the improvement of public environmental awareness, environmental accounting and research are on the rise. The author will review the present situation of emerging environmental accounting research and point out the important research direction in the future.
First, the historical background of environmental accounting.
The "Conference on Human Environment" held in Stockholm from 65438 to 0972 can be regarded as the official start of international reflection on environmental issues, and environmental issues have received unprecedented attention since then. 1987 The World Commission on Environment and Development published a long report, Our Common Future (also known as the Brundtland Report), which put forward the definition of sustainable development for the first time. At the beginning of the second chapter of the report, "Towards sustainable development", it was put forward that "sustainable development is a development that not only meets the needs of contemporary people, but also does not damage the ability of future generations to meet their needs" [2] To1June 1992, the unprecedented "Earth Summit" in the history of the United Nations-the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Three framework documents, Rio Declaration, Agenda 2 1 Century and Statement of Forest Principles, were unanimously adopted. Agenda 2 1 Century requires all countries to formulate and organize the implementation of corresponding sustainable development strategies, plans and policies to meet the same challenges faced by human society. It can be said that 1992 summit on environment and development marks the arrival of the era of global environmental movement. With the rise of environmental movement, environmental accounting came into being as a discipline.
Second, the establishment of environmental accounting signs
Any discipline or research field will go through a series of processes of germination, establishment, development and stability. As a discipline or research field, environmental accounting is currently in its infancy, but its embryonic stage can be said to have started in the 1970s. Represented by 197 1 Bi Meng's article "Research on Social Cost Conversion of Pollution Control" published in Accounting magazine and J.T. Marin's article "Accounting Problems of Pollution" published in 1973, the ideological root of environmental accounting can be traced back to A.C. Pigou, the founder of welfare economics. In the book Welfare Economics published by 1920, he proposed that polluters should be taxed according to the harm caused by pollution, and the gap between personal cost and social cost should be compensated by taxation to make it equal. This tax is called Pigou tax. It can be said that this tax is the first economic means to control the environment.
The establishment of a discipline or research field always has certain signs. Considering the characteristics of environmental accounting, its establishment needs not only a representative theoretical breakthrough, but also progress in practical application, and environmental accounting should run through both macro and micro fields. Its establishment should make a breakthrough in these two aspects or at least one of them. Based on the literature retrieval and literature analysis of environmental accounting and related disciplines in recent 10 years, the author puts forward that environmental accounting, as a discipline or research field, was gradually formed in the 1990s, with the following signs:
Environmental accounting 1 editor. H.T.Odum published in 1996. The content of this book is environmental accounting and measurement [5]. In this book, emergy is put forward as a standard for measuring the value of environmental resources for the first time, and a series of mathematical models are put forward for measuring various environmental resources. Because accounting measurement is the core of accounting, the biggest difficulty in studying and implementing environmental accounting is the measurement and accounting of non-market value environmental resources, but it involves complex theories, models and accounting. H.T.Odum systematically discussed this in the form of a monograph for the first time. Although it is theoretical and does not discuss micro-accounting practice, it is ahead of time. After all, this is the first landmark work on environmental accounting, which can be used as a symbol of the establishment of environmental accounting.
2. The first international environmental accounting guide was officially released. 1998 The United Nations Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting adopted the Statement of Position on Environmental Accounting and Reporting at its15th accounting discussion, which is a systematic and complete international guide to environmental accounting and reporting [6]. It can be said that this is an important progress in environmental accounting at the micro level, which provides basic guidance for enterprises to deal with environmental and natural resources accounting problems. Therefore, the author regards it as a sign of the establishment of environmental accounting.
3. The proposal of the United Nations System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) and the promulgation of the new national economic accounting system. The United Nations "Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting System" was put forward in 1992 [7], which represents the highest level of integration of economic accounting and environmental accounting at present. 1993 promulgated the United Nations System of National Economic Accounting, which added the subsidiary framework of environmental accounting-Chapter 2 1 of the book: subsidiary analysis and subsidiary accounts, which made the' 93SNA form the pattern of "national economic accounting core account+satellite (subsidiary) account" [8]. This is the greatest progress in the macro field of environmental accounting at present, and its set of ideas and methods will promote the research and implementation of environmental accounting in the micro field. It can be said that SEEA and 1993 established a preliminary theoretical system of environmental accounting, which is an important symbol of the establishment of environmental accounting in the 1990s.
Third, the analysis of the research status of environmental accounting
At present, the research of environmental accounting includes related disciplines, among which macro-social accounting, social responsibility accounting, environmental economics and the theory of sustainable development as the theoretical basis are particularly closely linked. The author only makes an empirical analysis of the research status of environmental accounting and its related aspects.
From 1994 to April 8, 2004, 492 papers involving publication 134 were detected by China Journal Network. The content discussed in this paper includes many aspects, including 307 general articles on the connotation and implementation significance of environmental accounting; Introduction of foreign environmental accounting; 23 articles on environmental accounting measurement; Environmental accounting information disclosure19; 33 articles on environmental management; 3 1 environmental audit; Other 37 articles. Using the English electronic journal database of SDOS Elsevler and taking environmental accounting as the key word, * * * retrieved 679 qualified papers, involving 95 publications, including the accounting publication International Journal of Accounting. Accounting, Organization and Society, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, International Journal of Accounting, Audit and Taxation, Research on Management Accounting, British Accounting Review, etc. Environmental management, ecology and environmental economics, such as ecological economics, environmental impact assessment, etc. The content of the paper is very extensive, and the paper is generally long, and the main body of the study is generally thorough.
Comparing the domestic and foreign environmental accounting research literature, we can see that there are both theoretical research and practical research in foreign environmental accounting research, and the research scope is very wide, including environmental accounting measurement and accounting, sustainable development theory and welfare measurement, case study of enterprise environmental performance and environmental accounting information disclosure, theory and method of resource product value quantification, environmental accounting report, etc. However, most domestic environmental accounting papers mainly focus on demonstrating the basic concepts of environmental accounting and the necessity and importance of its implementation in China, and there are few case studies, which are in the stage of tracking foreign research. Foreign environmental accounting research is not only a wide range of topics, but also an empirical analysis; However, domestic environmental accounting research is generally normative research.
At present, the hot research fields of environmental accounting, such as the measurement of ecological environment with non-market value, the integration of environmental resources into the national economic accounting system (macro-social accounting) and the theory of sustainable development, are mainly concentrated in environmental ecologists, environmental economists and policy makers. On the one hand, it shows that environmental accounting is not mature as a discipline, and its research has not been widely extended to accounting practice. On the other hand, it puts forward new requirements for traditional accountants and researchers, not only to pay attention to economic growth, but also to the coordination and sustainable development of economy and environment, which also confirms the author's judgment that environmental accounting is in the primary stage.
Four, hot issues and future research direction of environmental accounting
The establishment of an environmental resource management information system with effective feedback from environmental accounting will ensure the rational allocation of social resources and the sustainable development of economy, society and environment. Theoretical and practical research will provide conditions for the implementation of environmental accounting. Mature theoretical research will reduce the implementation cost of environmental accounting. According to the research status and trend of environmental accounting and the characteristics of our country, the following four aspects will become the research focus of environmental accounting:
1. Micro-environmental accounting research. Micro-accounting system includes the theoretical and technical problems of accounting procedures such as confirmation, measurement and reporting of environmental matters. At present, there is little research work in this field, but it is a core issue related to whether environmental accounting can be realized in micro-subjects, so it will become a research hotspot in the future.
2. Research on the present situation of environmental resources and dynamic environmental accounting standard system. Environmental accounting standards are the institutional guarantee for implementing environmental accounting. It includes three aspects: legal norm system, standard norm system and moral norm system.
3. Research on internalization of environmental cost of specific resource products. Internalization of environmental cost is the basic feature of environmental accounting. Only by internalizing environmental costs, eliminating external diseconomy and effectively compensating resource consumption can sustainable development be possible. However, the internalization of environmental costs involves the changes in the price system of many resource products and services in the whole country, and it is related to many industries and families. For example, the internalization of the environmental cost of water resources will bring about great changes in the price system. At present, many areas have moderately raised water prices, and part of the environmental costs of over-quota water use have been included in water prices. Because people's income level is also rising steadily, the impact on people's livelihood is not too great. However, on the whole, the internalization of environmental costs should be carried out steadily, and some resource products should be selected for experiments and then popularized after gaining experience, which needs to be studied first. At present, the research in this field is in the ascendant and will remain a hot research field in the future.
4. Comparative study of environmental accounting in different countries. The comparison of the research status of environmental accounting in different countries, the requirements of environmental matters in accounting and reporting, the theory and practice of enterprise environmental reporting and environmental auditing have important reference significance for the research and implementation of environmental accounting in China, and this research will also become a hot spot.
[References]
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