Accounting for Sustainability

Perhaps the most critical challenge facing business and society generally is to tackle climate change and live within our ecological limits, while continuing to enjoy economic prosperity. Key to addressing this challenge is the need for all organizations, public and private, to embed sustainability into their "DNA". Although sustainability accounting has developed in recent years, relatively few organizations have comprehensive systems and procedures to ensure that sustainability considerations are taken into account fully and consistently in decision-making and reporting. The Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Project has sought to address these issues in three ways. Firstly, through the identification of key principles to help embed sustainability based on discussions with over 150 organizations; secondly, through the development of a decision-making tool to enable sustainability issues to be taken into account more robustly and consistently in decision-making; and thirdly, through its innovative Connected Reporting Framework (CRF). The CRF facilitates the identification of an organization's main sustainability impacts and shows how these impacts relate to and interact with its strategic objectives and operating performance.This book presents examples of how organizations have used these accounting for sustainability tools and principles to embed sustainability into their DNA. Key features include: " practitioner-oriented illustrations of 'connected thinking' between the organization's sustainability agenda, overall strategy and core business activities;" examples of processes that have been followed to enable sustainability issues to be taken into account clearly and consistently in strategic and day-to-day decision-making;" examination of how the embedding of sustainability extends beyond an organization's own boundaries to take into account suppliers and customers;" examples of how to measure sustainability performance and financial impacts and the systems and processes necessary to support the collection of relevant data; and" identification of barriers to embedding sustainability and ways in which organizations have sought to address and overcome these.In-depth cases studies from Aviva, BT, the Environment Agency, EDF Energy, HSBC, Novo Nordisk, Sainsbury's and West Sussex County Council paint a rich picture of accounting for sustainability in practice and a wealth of lessons and examples of both common pitfalls and good practice. This book is indispensible for all business leaders, accountancy professionals and others seeking to embed sustainability into the DNA of their organizations in the pursuit of both better business and better sustainability performance.

Anthony Hopwood is a world-leading academic in the field of accounting. A former Dean and Professor at the Sid Business School of the University of Oxford, he was inducted into the USA's Accounting Hall of Fame in 2008. Jeffrey Unerman is Professor of Accounting and Accountability at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. He has a long standing research record in sustainability accounting. Jessica Fries is Director of The Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Project, on secondment from PricewaterhouseCoopers where she has worked with a wide range of organizations to help them to embed sustainability.