Social impact of environment and environmental accounting

The concept of Green Accounting can be viewed as an extension of the original concept of national economic accounts formalized in the Standard National Accounts (SNA) framework. In India, public awareness towards the environment has grown tremendously since the ‘70s, when laws for the protection of the environment were passed. Smt. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister felt the necessity of healthy environment and expressed her strong opinion in favor of the environment at the United Nation’s Conference on the human environment in Stockholm, 1972. There is now an urgent need to take steps globally and particularly to formulate the accounting and valuation techniques regarding environmental issues. Mandatory guidelines can be issued in each and every country to incorporate these in the company’s annual report, including environment related legislations, as in developed countries. Hence, it can be concluded that the absence of standardized environmental accounting practices and disclosure techniques, both at national and international levels, and their legal enforcement, necessitates the urgent and pressing need to take steps nationally and globally to formulate these techniques and practices in regard to environmental issues.