Handbook of Critical Environmental Accountability and Sustainability

Edited by Glen Lehman, School of Business, University of Adelaide and Renée Palmer, University of Adelaide, Australia

‘Glen Lehman and Renée Palmer’s Handbook of Critical Environmental Accountability and Sustainability is a timely addition to our ever-dwindling research resources, offering alternate perspectives. The book explores various variables that impact accountability and its financial management – the interpretivist perspective that guides it helps combine and understand the multifaceted, complex systems that shape the basic institutions of liberal democracies. Accountants, accountability theorists, and researchers from fields as diverse as medicine and public health are provided with a range of different viewpoints that will guide our thinking for years to come.’

• ContentsForeword: accountability, philosophy and the natural environment xviIntroduction to the Handbook of Critical Environmental Accountability andSustainability 1PART I EARLY ACCOUNTABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH1 Early work in environmental accounting 12Renée Palmer, Gordon Boyce and Glen Lehman2 Background and global context 25Gordon Boyce, Renée Palmer and Glen Lehman3 Global and international perspectives on sustainability 45Renée Palmer, Gordon Boyce and Glen Lehman4 Extending accounting through John Rawls’s political liberalism to thenatural environment 58Renée Palmer, Gordon Boyce and Glen Lehman5 Early critical theory work on environmental accounting: environmentalaccounting as instrumental or emancipatory discourse 74Renée Palmer, Gordon Boyce and Glen Lehman6 Legal aspects of environmental accounting: the greening of accounts 99Fraser Bell, Renée Palmer and Gordon Boyce7 From the Brundtland Report to the Global Reporting Initiative 115Renée Palmer, Gordon Boyce and Glen Lehman8 Accountability, sustainability and the art of interpretation 131Glen LehmanPART II THEORETICAL APPROACHES FOR ENVIRONMENTALACCOUNTING, ACCOUNTABILITY AND GOVERNANCE9 Evaluating the integrated thinking research journey 147Dusan Ecim and Warren Maroun10 Corporate socio-economic activity and sustainability: towards a workingmodel considering finance, governance and accounting together 162Michel Aglietta, Nihel Chabrak, Jim Haslam and Jacques Richard11 Critical theory, environmental accounting frameworks, the business case,global sustainable reporting 181Andrea Brunt, Glen Lehman and Renée Palmer12 Interpretive perspectives on the business case and neoliberal accounting 199Renée Palmer, Andrea Brunt and Glen Lehman13 Žižek, environment, crisis, governance (and accounting) 217Mengyuan Feng and Jim Haslam14 Accounting, nature and the common good 222Sheila Killian and Philip O’Regan15 Accountability, closeness and environmental transparency 232Renée Palmer, Andrea Brunt and Glen Lehman16 Environmental accounting: accounting as instrumental or emancipatorydiscourse 248Renée Palmer, Andrea Brunt and Glen Lehman17 Understanding depth experiences: fullness and dearth as a preludeto moving from closed-world thinking to open-world environmentalaccounting 264Renée Palmer, Andrea Brunt and Glen Lehman18 Accounting, secularity and the natural environment: accounting for adisenchanted world 291Rénee Palmer, Andrea Brunt and Glen Lehman19 Accounting and environmentalism: developing a schema to appreciateacademic research about the needed impact 317Jim Haslam, Lina Kloviene and Marie-Theresa Speziale20 Reclaiming the public sphere: possibilities and problems for corporatesocial and environmental accounting 336Glen Lehman21 Conclusions: global accountability, sustainability – research prospects 359Glen LehmanPART III APPLYING ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING THEORY22 Tax, society and the environment 371Jawad Harb and Elizabeth Morton23 Management accounting and sustainability 378Venkateshwaran Narayanan24 The ‘social’ dimension of sustainability: the role of accounts in makingwell-being visible 38725 Gender and the accountability agenda in the Sustainable DevelopmentGoals: non-inclusive accounting of female ‘invisible’ farmers or producers 406Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes26 Asbestos and environmental issues 421Lee Moerman and Sandra van der Laan27 Silent, shadow and counter accounting 426Gordon Boyce28 Counter accounting 441Helen Tregidga, Michelle Rodrigue and Matias Laine29 Accounting’s great retreat: decline of the public sphere and the malaise ofreform accounting 450Glen LehmanPART IV EXTINCTION ACCOUNTING30 Environment: the importance of accounting biodiversity 474Michael John Jones31 A tiger cub in Berkeley Square: a utop(dystop?)-ian account of rewildingand de-extinction 481Jill Frances Atkins and Barry Atkins32 Assessing the potential of the Biological Diversity Protocol to expand theaccounting discourse within the mining sector of Madagascar 486Gareth Chapman33 Integrating rewilding and de-extinction into the extinction accountingframework 511Jill Frances Atkins and Warren Maroun34 Emotion and compassion as a KPI in the extinction accounting framework:compassionate rewilding as a core conservation element 523Mira LiebermanPART V PLANETARY BOUNDARIES, COSMIC ORDERS AND SOCIALIMAGINARIES35 Social imaginaries, part I: global social imaginaries – the background 545Glen Lehman36 Some social imaginaries, part II: for environmental accounting – situatingthe social imaginary in a tentative pedagogic categorisation 558Glen Lehman and Renée Palmer37 Social imaginaries, part III: from subversive to interpretivistenvironmental imaginaries 571GlenLehman, RenéePalmer and PatriciaWalford38 Social imaginaries: critical imaginaries and Habermas-inspiredenvironmental accounting 589Glen Lehman, Renée Palmer and Patricia Walford39 Deflationary realism: social imaginaries, evaluative frameworks and thenatural environment 606Glen Lehman, Renée Palmer and Patricia Walford40 Social imaginaries in a transnational environment 631Glen Lehman and Patricia Walford41 Social imaginaries, accounting, accountability and the role of the state 648Glen Lehman and Patricia Walford42 Conclusion to the Handbook of Critical Environmental Accountability andSustainability 670Glen LehmanIndex 673