Abstract

This handbook is conceptualised as a “knowledge project” where a variety of perspectives and insights have been brought together around five sections. The first section draws together insights around the foundations of environmental accounting as well as the emergence of theoretical, methodological and governance themes, covering both academic scholarship and insights from the accounting profession. The second and third sections of the handbook consider how financial accounting/reporting and management accounting have incorporated environmental concerns. In the fourth section, the handbook moves to a regional analysis, presenting how environmental accounting has evolved in different ways in different places: these different trajectories of environmental accounting are often obscured by a narrow focus on “Western” contexts and concerns. The final section of the handbook takes elements of the natural environment, namely, greenhouse gases, water, biodiversity and non-human animals, and reflects on how accounting has/could/should respond(ed) to the particular challenges found in these domains. In this opening chapter of the handbook, we also touch on the relationship of environmental accounting with social justice concerns, the role of education in environmental accounting, as well as outline academic and practice partners in this academic project. Finally, and perhaps heroically, we offer suggestions for the future of the field.