- English
In his keynote speech K. Kokubu, professor at Kobe University and project leader at IGES Kansai Research Center stated the importance of environmental accounting not only for environmental conscious management itself, but for corporate management in general. Two initiatives of the Japanese government seem to have caused the change of behavior of Japanese enterprises. The guidelines of the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) on environmental accounting intend to increase the disclosure of information based on environmental accounting to third parties by means of environmental reports. In parallel the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) had launched an initiative, which did result in the development of various environmental management accounting tools. Among these tools Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) is regarded as prospering method in future.
A survey performed by IGES Kansai Research Center has revealed the behavior of Japanese enterprises to emphasize the disclosure of environmental accounting information to external parties. This behavior is mainly influenced by the MOE guidelines. Nevertheless, corporate practices of environmental management accounting can be said to still contain much room for further development and refinement. Therefore Prof. Kokubu raised two important issues as task to be tackled by Japanese enterprises. First, there is the need to further refine the environmental accounting system, which is used to disclose information to external parties. And in this regard Japanese enterprises should take a lead concerning international practice. Second, environmental management accounting should get a firm footing in Japanese corporate practices. In this connection MFCA as a method is regarded to have a potential of development and application that should not be underestimated.
Remarks:
Japanese: http://pub.iges.or.jp/modules/envirolib/view.php?docid=2478
- English
