The reality and perspectives of environmental accounting in conditions of globalization

• Author: Melnicenco Olesea/Turcan Ludmila, ASEM

"There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud".

M. Friedman

Environmental issues today are becoming increasingly complex and difficult. The public is more aware of industries' environmental performance. At the same time, governments are not becoming increasingly active in attempting to prevent events that harm the environment and to rectifying and indemnifying for events that have already happened. Accounting for the costs of past, present and future environmental activities is becoming increasingly important. Often it is difficult or impossible to predict the actual extent of a newly discovered contamination problem, much less the cost of cleanup.

Although the environmental problem is a world-significant problem, only some countries apply environmental accounting, increase governmental regulation of it and enforce the business to calculate environmental liabilities. In USA the regulatory requirements for cleanup result from several legislative acts: Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) better known as "Superfund," Clean Air Act (CAA) and the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAA), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Clean Water Act (CWA), the Underground Storage Tank Program, and Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA), which requires cleanup of PCBs and asbestos. In Europe in 2004 the Parliament Assembly of Council of Europe adopted a recommendation: "Environmental accounting as a sustainable development tool", which was based on Kyiv Resolution on biodiversity (as agreed to by the European Ministers of Environment and Heads of Delegations of the States participating in the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS) process, is to halt the loss of biodiversity at all levels by the year 2010). The Committee of Ministers encouraged the adoption of an environmental accounting system at all appropriate levels of government, which would permit accountability of decision-makers committed to sustainable development goals, fostering regular environmental monitoring and the integration of environmental concerns into sectoral policies. As it was mentioned in the document, the development of environmental accounting in Europe should build upon the methodologies and standards set out in the United Nations handbook on Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA 2003), and the standards and guidance developed by Eurostat.

Nevertheless, environmental...