A study of the Universidad de Granada highlights the tendency of business companies to the asymmetry of the information provided, highlighting the positive aspects and avoiding the negative facets of the environmental action. In accordance with María Gloria López Gordo´s research work, supervised by professor Lázaro Rodríguez Ariza, of the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting of the Universidad de Granada, “the commitment of the company with the environment responds to reasons of efficiency and legality, and the inexistence of specific countable regulations takes precedence over other obstacles in the supply of environmental information”. The research work also reveals the main deficiencies of the present countable legislation and provides some improvement proposals.
The author of the work intended to analyse the role of accounting faced with the environmental phenomenology, identify the possibilities and limitations of traditional accounting to inform about the environmental action of the bodies and confirm the correspondence between the postulated of Environmental Accounting and the practices followed in the public and private sectors.
“The environmental problems caused by the unsustainable model of economic growth have provoked –according to the directors of the research work—a position taking in multiple knowledge fields including Accounting, which must respond to this situation managing that the economic units supply the necessary information to judge the environmental action suitably”.
One of the main conclusions is that ”the bodies which channel public actions in protected open spaces do not offer a suitable breakdown of the financial information concerning such actions, arranged around the main objectives of nature preservation, public use and socioeconomic development pursued with the juridical protection of these places”. There are several reasons for this situation: the lack of a public countable regulation to deal specifically with the environmental questions, the deficiencies in the systems of public information, the competence complexity of these spaces and the absence of commitment and political interest for such information”.
Further information: Prof Mª Gloria López Gordo.
Phone number. 958 24 83 40 – E-mail. mgloria@ugr.es
Prof Lázaro Rodríguez Ariza. Phone number. 958 24 37 34. E-mail.- lazaro@ugr.es.
Dpt of Financial Economics and Accounting. Universidad de Granada.
