Effect of environmental accounting and reporting on corporate performance

The need for Environmental Accounting has become the concern and focus of nation ‘sand responsible corporate managements. It became one of the foremost issues on the agenda of nations and businesses earlier in the 1990s and the reasons for these were varied emanating from both within and outside of the firm and particularly at the global level (Okoye and Ngwakwe2004220-235). A lot of government enactments, laws and regulations on environmental protection have been made in several nations of the world including Nigeria. In the light of the awakening to environment protection, various laws and regulations such as the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, 1992 and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) Environmental Guidelines and Standards for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria (EGASPIN 2002) were enacted. These require corporate managements to consider the environmental implications of all internal decisions of their managements. Also, all organizations monitored by environmental policy agencies in Nigeria are expected to demonstrate much consideration in decision making. Environmentalists agree that it could be more cost efficient and beneficial for companies to acquire pollution prevention or clean technology than those of pollution clean-up. It is also observed that in environmental regulations, there is a shift from the ‘command and control’ approach to market-driven forms in which pollution prevention alternatives are replacing pollution cleaning approach. It follows therefore, that determining the appropriate pollution prevention approach may lead to additional decisions to be taken by management. Such decisions may include selecting capital expenditures, and in the opinion of Shield, Beloff and Heller (19965), expenditures such ‘as markets for emissions’ allowances development, may require companies to determine whether it is more cost beneficial to buy or sell these allowances, giving the cost of avoiding the covered emissions.