Environmental accounting: A quick look

Environmental accounting is an emerging concept of accounting. It has many meanings and uses. It can support national income accounting, financial accounting or internal business management accounting. It is a part of corporate social responsibility and attempts to evaluate impact of organizational activities on environmental resources. Environmental accounting helps an organization in reducing costs, improving profitability through better decision-making and enhancing image by meeting social responsibilities. But in order to make environmental accounting successful, it is necessary that various accounting bodies should come up with some specific accounting standard or guideline on environmental issues. A separate accounting standard and/or modifications in the existing standards, therefore, are required to deal with specific accounting issues relating to environment. This paper discusses the term and concept of environmental accounting, its advantages and limitations and analyses the environmental accounting practices at international level.