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Accounting for Sustainability

Many organisations recognise the risks and opportunities that the sustainability challenge poses for their long-term success, but often struggle to find the right tools to respond effectively. Accounting for Sustainability brings organisations together to develop a reporting framework and common 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. As His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales said at its launch, “to help ensure that we are not battling to meet 21st century challenges with, at best, 20th century decision making and reporting systems.”

The Accounting for Sustainability Project was launched in December 2006 and has since involved the collaboration of more than 150 public and private sector organisations. The key findings from the last phase of the Project were published on 12th December 2007 and comprised of:

• guidance and tools to help organisations embed sustainability into day-to-day decision making
• a reporting model, the “Connected Reporting Framework”, to demonstrate how all areas of organisational performance can be presented in a connected way, reflecting the organisation’s strategy and the way it is managed.

During 2008, the project has established the Accounting for Sustainability Forum to take forward development of these tools and the reporting model. One of the unique aspects of the Forum is that we have brought together an international grouping of accounting bodies to actively collaborate, both with each other and with a wide range of other organisations from both private and public sectors. This is a significant first step towards achieving a common approach to accounting for sustainability