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Environmental Managerial Accounting Initiative (EMA)

Management Accounting

Management accounting is a broad term referring to the process of identification, measurement, accumulation, analysis, preparation, interpretation, and communication of financial information used by management for planning, evaluation, and control within an organization, and for ensuring of accountability for its resources.

Environmental Management Accounting

Environmental management accounting serves as a mechanism to identify and measure the full spectrum of environmental costs of current production processes and the economic benefits of pollution prevention or cleaner processes, and to integrate these costs and benefits into day-to-day business decision-making.

Active Governmental Involvement

While management accounting systems are traditionally viewed as matters internal to a firm, the potential social benefits resulting from widespread use of environmental management tools calls for active governmental involvement in promoting such systems.

Government programmes and policies can play an important role in encouraging and motivating businesses to adopt environmental management accounting systems as an integral part of a firm's management accounting practices, such that all project costs (including social and environmental costs) become clearly articulated, fully inventoried and properly allocated over the life of an investment. How a government chooses to approach such an intervention determines the success in the dissemination of these systems and the willing participation of industry in this process, thus warranting the discussion and study that this initiative will undertake.

This initiative will examine the design and implementation of incentives to promote the adoption of environmental managerial accounting, based on work undertaken in a number of countries.

Additional Information