Km Gibson

Developing Environmental Accounting: Insights from Indigenous Cultures

The view is taken that the study of diverse cultures can contribute to the development of environmental accounting and reporting. The focus is upon seeking to articulate insights from three indigenous cultures: the Australian Aboriginal, the Maori and the Native American. These cultures, alive today, provide relevant insights for those concerned with challenging mainstream and Western practices and seeking to develop alternatives. Attention is focused on these insights and it is hoped that further research will be stimulated.

Accounting as a tool for Aboriginal dispossession: then and now

While the physical dispossession of Aboriginal Australians since European settlement has been well documented, a more insidious role, which has been played stealthily and with little publicity, is that played by accounting practices. Through their contribution to the displacement of social values by economic imperatives, measured by yardsticks such as profitability and financial accountability, these practices have acted to continue the dispossession process. Accounting concepts are examined in the light of a hunter‐gatherer social economy and the unsuitability of modern accounting to provide for a social accountability is highlighted. Examples show that the meaning of today’s accounting concepts is in many instances directly opposed to the understanding of those concepts in traditional Aboriginal societies. More important, perhaps, are the effects of currently popular beliefs that dispossession and injustice are historical, and have been remedied by government and social initiatives. Contrary to this perception, it will be shown that in many cases attitudes remain that hold Aboriginal organisations to a higher level of accountability than other government‐funded bodies. These accountability hurdles, that effectively restrict access to resources, are simply a less overt continuation of the processes of dispossession.

NOTES Courses on environmental accounting

Discusses the arguments for teaching environmental accounting and provides a sample of teaching programmes which have been successfully introduced in Australian and overseas universities. Also includes a discussion of developments in tertiary education overseas, particularly the encouragement and advice provided in the UK by the Toyne Committee and the Common Learning Agenda of the Council for Environmental Education.

Social and environmental accounting in Tasmania - taking it to the world

This paper commences with an overview of the history of social and environmental reporting and accounting followed by a summary of the prevalence of social and environmental accounting education. This leads to the main section of the paper, which includes a detailed discussion and evaluation of an undergraduate coursework subject in Social and Environmental Accounting. Developed by the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of Tasmania, originally for a multidisciplinary undergraduate degree in Natural Environments and Wilderness, the subject is available to all students who have completed first year undergraduate studies in any discipline. The subject is largely designed around a Tasmanian mining industry case study, which students use as a basis for exploring local issues in Tasmanias west coast, and how they affect, and are affected by, global markets and global politics. Developed to be delivered flexibly and freed from the constraints of face–to–face teaching, the teaching and learning pedagogy of this subject makes it accessible and available to any student, anywhere in the world at any time.