Are accountants doing enough to save the planet?

ACCA is to spend the next four months speaking to accountancy bodies and industry regulators around the world to assess whether they are taking the issues of sustainable business seriously enough. The findings will be reported in October and will be used at the WSSD meeting in South Africa in September 2002. Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel, Director of the UNEP Industry and Economics Division of Technology in Paris, said: ” At the heart of the WSSD agenda will be a review of progress made by all stakeholders, including the global accounting profession, in the implementation of Agenda 21, which calls for a global partnership for sustainable development. Remaining challenges need to be identified and proposals for actions made.”

Roger Adams, ACCA’s Technical Director, said: “ACCA has probably the longest and richest track record of any professional accounting body in the area of environment and sustainable development. We are immensely proud that UNEP has asked us to prepare this study and we hope an agenda will flow from it which can be adopted by the global accounting profession.

” It is critical that the profession, which is central to world commerce, is seen as being concerned with more than just profit and loss and recognises the impact which business is having on the environment. This project gives the profession the opportunity not only to set down and assess the progress made since Rio, but to develop new, forward-looking measures which will contribute to the aims of the WSSD,” said Roger Adams.