Event Details

Prof Helen Tregidga, of Royal Holloway, University of London, presents ongoing research on the temporal dimension of environmental accounting.

Climate science and biodiversity loss indicators are just some of the illustrations of the extent to which the environment is in crisis (Dasgupta, 2021; IPCC, 2021; Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015; WWF-International 2020). Contemporary discussions are increasingly framed by reference to the environmental and/or climate emergency (Paterson et al., 2021; Rockström, 2020; UN, 2021). Yet whether we are responding and acting at sufficient scale and pace to the environmental crisis is still up for debate. This has arguably become more evident in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a context within which to consider what it means to respond to a crisis. In this seminar, Helen Tregidga will reflect on the temporal dimension of environmental accounting and its implications, and will structure this in two parts.

First, she will outline the key arguments as set out in Tregidga and Laine (2022). Here, they ask “is it time to rethink long-term environmental accounting?”. They suggest that the construction of environmental accounting as accounting for the long-term, an attempt to contrast it with and overcome the problems with short-term conventional accounting, potentially contributes to the construction of the environment as lacking urgency and potentially enables its marginalisation. They therefore propose that to make the most of accounting’s potential as a constitutive force, capable of participating in transforming preferences, decisions and behaviour in organisations and societies, environmental accounting needs to be about the short-term.

Second, Helen will raise for discussion some of the implications of the arguments in Tregidga and Laine (2022). She will consider how a greater consideration of the temporal dimension of environmental accounting (and accounting more generally) could help to both understand how and why corporations (do not) act in the face of widespread recognition of the environmental emergency, as well as to provide a basis to inform and support more urgent action. She will frame this discussion by outlining current and planned research projects (with Laine) in this area.

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References:

- Dasgupta, P. (2021). The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. HM Treasury: London, UK.

- IPCC, (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press.

- Rockström, J. (2020). Opinion: Why we need to declare a global climate emergency now. Available at https://www.ft.com/content/b4a112dd-cafd-4522-bf79-9e25704577ab. (Accessed 11 March 2021).

- Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F.S. Chapin, III, E. Lambin, T.M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C.A. De Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P.K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R.W. Corell, V.J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, & J. Foley, (2009). Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 14(2), 32.

- Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S.E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E.M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S.R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C.A., Folke, C., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Mace, G.M., Persson, L.M., Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B. & Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 13 Feb 2015, 347(6223).

- Tregidga, H. & Laine, M. (2022). On crisis and emergency: Is it time to rethink long-term environmental accounting? Critical Perspectives on Accounting.

- UN (2021). www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. (Accessed 15/01/2021)

- WWF-International (2020). Living Planet Report: Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss. Gland: WWF-International.