Environmental Management Accounting for South-East Asia
To make the best decisions and to take the right measures, executives rely on relevant and accurate information. Management accounting is one of the most important tools to identify, measure, accumulaate, analyze, interpret and communicate relecant management information.
ENvironmental issues increasingly influence the economic performance of companies and organizations. Growth in environmental regulations, the demand for information by investors and requirements of business and private customers for environmentall benign products provide serveral important examples. Managers thus need to incorporate environmental considerations into their regular decision-making activities and processes. The financial impact of environmentall related decisions is often underestimated or not even considered at all. One main reason for this is the lack of adequate information. Through conventional accounting processes environmental costs are often hidden as part of overhead costs and are not, or are at best on inaccurately, related to products, proceses and activities.
Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) addresses these challenges. It provides tools and methods to help managers assess the impact of measures taken to improve both corporate financial and environmental performance. EMA systematically integrates invironmental aspects of the corporation into management accounting and decision-making processes.
EMA helps internal management to collect, analyze and communicate environment-related monetary and physical information. In particular, it reveals financial benefits and cost saving potential that can be gained from addressing environmental considerations facing the business.
The "EMA-SEA - Environmental Management Accounting for small and medium-sized enterprises in South-East Assia" project addresses the implementation and dissemination of EMA in South-East Asian companies to promote sustainable business. In terms of content, the project focuses on the creation and continuous application of suitable EMA training materials and on the transfer of know-how and skills in the field of EMA through EMA training sessions and company projects. To support this, the training of people who can multiply the learning process (called 'multipliers') and the implementation and application of easy-to-handle EMA methods in different enterprises will be carried out. The project runs from November 2003 to October 2007. Its target area is the ASEAN region, particularly Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Further Information: http://www.environmental-accounting.org
Posted on June 24, 2005