Environmental Accounting:One Dimension of Sustainable Development

Accounting is defined as the recognition, measurement and reporting of the financial information to various stakeholders. Environmental accounting is the measurement of costs, liabilities related to the environment. Environmental accounting is conducted at different scales such as national level, corporate level. Moreover, environmental accounting is at the infancy stage in India and gaining attention due to many reasons the most prominent being the statutory obligations. Environmental accounting suffers from various issues due to which a void is present between the theoretical framework and its implementation. Identification and measurement of environmental costs and liabilities has been a problem and till date no standard guideline has been published in this regard. This is a review paper based on secondary information. This paper explores the concept of environmental accounting, benefits, forms of environmental accounting, classification of environmental costs followed by suggestion in the field of environmental accounting. Environmental accounting is a relatively new branch of accounting and requires special attention. Further, the paper tries to build a conceptual framework of environmental accounting.