Accounting and Sustainabilty

There are many links between accounting and sustainability including but not limited to the issues around reporting, relevance, risk management and compliance, measurement, auditing and stakeholder theory of sustainable issues. To first understand these links to accounting we need to know what sustainability means in this accounting context. Sustainability in accounting deals with the social and environmental side of accounting. Originally accounting only dealt with the economic side and making a profit. Sustainability deals with the business looking at the issue it faces in society and the environment. I believe the four main links between accounting and sustainability are the reporting, measurement, risk management and auditing issues.
The first link I will discuss is that of the reporting issue. In accounting reporting of sustainability is referred to as triple bottom line reporting. It is reporting for social and environmental issues as well as the standard economic profit of a business. However this is a relatively new concept within accounting and currently there are no standards under the international financial reporting standards on how to report the social and environmental aspects. For accounting to be sustainable and business to be sustainable into the future there needs to be standards around sustainability or triple bottom line reporting. At the moment with no standards reporting on sustainability is susceptible to green washing. Currently the public and social expectations on businesses are that they care for their environment and community. However with no regulation they are implementing legitimacy theory plans to appear like they care with no validity or checks behind what they are actually reporting on. For sustainability to have real traction in accounting and make it not susceptible to green washing there needs to be standards around reporting sustainability issues.
The next link I will discuss is that of measuring sustainability in