Linking Environmental Management Accounting: A Reflection on (Missing) Links to Sustainability and Planetary Boundaries

Stefan Schaltegger

Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, 2018, vol. 38, issue 1, 19-29

Abstract: Environmental management accounting (EMA) is an innovative management accounting approach that covers a large range of tools with the purpose to support different actors in environmentally beneficial decision-making in companies. While the existing literature has been systematised and many EMA tools and case study applications have been discussed in depth, the links to sustainability are mostly rather assumed than explicitly discussed. This article addresses links and missing links between EMA and ecological aspects of sustainability. As its name reveals, EMA focuses on issues of the natural environment. It would thus be inappropriate to harshly criticise missing explicit links to social issues and other non-environmental aspects of sustainability (e.g. as proposed by the UN sustainable development goals). The question, however, remains whether and how exactly EMA links or could be linked to global ecological issues of sustainability. This paper therefore examines EMA links to global environmental issues based on the concept of planetary boundaries as it covers key ecological issues of global sustainability.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1080/0969160X.2017.1395351

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