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Accounting for Sustainability is bringing organisations together to develop practical tools to enable environmental and social performance to be better connected with strategy and financial performance, and thereby embedded into day-to-day operations and decision making.
Three main areas of work for 2008/09 are summarised below.
1. Connected Reporting
They are developing and promoting tools to help organizations integrate sustainability into mainstream reporting.
Main areas of focus are to:
Update the Connected Reporting Framework (CRF) guidance, provide worked examples which both better demonstrate the link to strategy and include social impacts, and collate examples of where principles of connected reporting have been applied by different organisations around the world
Extend use of the CRF amongst companies internationally
Develop connected reporting for use by the UK Public Sector
Identify opportunities to convene and collaborate with others to promote adoption of connected reporting by standard setting and regulatory bodies.
2. Embedding sustainability
We are researching and sharing approaches that organizations have adopted to connect sustainability considerations to economic and financial operations.
Main area of focus are to:
Conduct research into how organisations have linked financial and sustainability performance with decision-making processes
Prepare case study material and guidance on how to engage CFOs and both financial and commercial accountants, through linking sustainability and efficiency programmes.
3. Accounting for Sustainability Forum
We have created an international network of accounting bodies and other organizations to contribute to the development and promotion of better accounting for sustainability.
Main areas of focus are to:
Launch a set of Principles for the Accounting for Sustainability Forum
Prepare an update report which sets out A4S's vision, the current state-of-play and challenges / responses from key groups, building on Forum events, recent reports and survey findings
Convene, influence and educate investor, corporate and accounting communities through regular communications and meetings, work with business schools and others, and through the main annual Forum event
Raise the profile of our work through presentation at relevant events in the UK and internationally.
As His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales said at the launch, "to help ensure that we are not battling to meet 21st century challenges with, at best, 20th century decision making and reporting systems."
"There was a time when we could say that there was either a complete lack of knowledge, or at least room for doubt, about the consequences for our planet of our actions.
That time has gone. We now know all too clearly what we are actually doing and that we need to do something about it urgently. Better accounting must be part of that process."
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