Carbon Credit Accounting and Sustainable Development - A Case Study of ITC

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges for sustainable development of the globe. In order to launch India on a path of ecologically sustainable development, the Government of India released the ‘India National Action Plan on Climate Change’ (NAPCC). As a responsible corporate citizen, it is expected that companies in India take proactive action to address the challenging issue of climate change as a part of sustainable development of the company and thereby align to the national ecological agenda also. There are many Strategic Management Accounting (SMA) issues to deal with climate change.. In this context, this paper discusses the relevance and use of carbon credit (Carbon credit is reduction of greenhouse gas emission) accounting for sustainable development, taking a case study of leading Indian company ITC through a peep in the Sustainability Report of the company. The various SMA issues of carbon credit formed the basis to analyze ITC case study. The findings suggest that the company has addressed most of the relevant SMA issues and concludes that more and more Indian companies having negative carbon footprint should address the climate change issue for their own sustainable development and thereby align with national ecological agenda. The Sustainability Reporting on regular basis can help the companies to address this issue effectively.