Importance Of Iso Standards In Environmental Accounting

Importance of ISO standards in environmental accounting

In order for a company to provide information about its relationship with the environment in which it is immersed, it is necessary to apply rules and principles that guide their activity in search of achieving objectives that generate positive changes in their context.

The International Standardization Organization (ISO) offers an answer to this approach, made up of the ISO-14 series.000, which implies a variety of environmental management standards that an organization, whatever its size or type, can put into practice to generate the least negative impact on the environment, as well as take into account the risks and threats that may reachto suffer the context in each decision made.

A great characteristic that has this set of rules is that they are very dynamic and can be adapted to each organization and coexist along with other standards that are applied within it (such as in those organizations where the ISO 9 standard is used in turn.000 Quality Management).

Specifically, ISO 14 standard.001 is the only certifiable within the series and is the one who offers an application within the organizational management system that reaches all levels and provides specific applications, also offers a framework of activities that are carried out within the regulations that exist tonational level (in Argentina for example, there are laws 24.051 of hazardous waste treatment;and 25.612 Integral management of industrial waste and service activities).

The objective of this standard is to provide organizations with a frame of reference that allows them to protect the environment and respond to changing environmental conditions, in balance with the socioeconomic needs of the community.

In Argentina, the process of application of the ISO-14 standard.001 It must be requested through the national body responsible for certifying compliance, called OAA (Argentine Accreditation Agency).

This application would result in a very positive change for the organization’s accounting, because it would recognize those environmental concepts that would expand the type of information offered to different users.

Accounting segments

Environmental accounting has taken financial accounting as a method and unit of measure, because it is a subjective issue which makes it difficult to assign a value or quantify exactly. Therefore, when using financial accounting, we get much more closer to what is environmental reality.

We can define financial accounting as the accounting segment that, through the orderly and chronological registration of the economic facts carried out by the entities, allows us to provide useful information for decision -making and the control of the resources and economic obligations of the entities.

Its main objective is to prepare financial statements or financial statements. Being its only focus on the economic-financial situation of the entity, it fails to reflect the environmental issues in its financial statements. The fact of not including the environmental assets and liabilities that the entity may have.

At present, environmental information is a risk factor and competitiveness, so it should be reflected in companies accounting.

Three -dimensional accounting theory (T3C)

Accounting has to be suitable to expand its gaze towards a horizon greater than that related to its economic or financial dimension, in order to explore the multitude of situations that occur within the environmental reality. The environment brings with it a problem that must be located within the social and natural dimension;To be able to create a solution in which social and natural studies are intertwined more optimally.

The need to carry out this integration of the different optics in which a cohabitwhich develops a new theoretical design that integrates bio-continuousness, socio-continuousness and economic accounting. This tool guarantees that the information meets the requirements of relevance and completeness, so that with the totality of elements that are necessary, it reduces its uncertainty and can make an adequate decision making, under the purpose of contributing to the accumulation, generation, generation,Integral distribution and sustainability of wealth in all its dimensions.

The accounting recognition process must answer two main questions, which is recognized in the financial statements? And when should a game be recognized in the financial statements? These two questions are resolved by traditional accounting, including the IASB model, from a financial and economic perspective. The emergence of true environmental accounting must answer these questions from social, cultural, historical and environmental dimensions, without ignoring in some cases, but not in all, the economic-financial dimension.

The three -dimensional theory of accounting generates a break with the classical accounting conception;It represents an abandonment of traditional research, demanding new methodologies and purposes in the knowledge construction process. The developments that are carried out require the active participation of accountants and professionals and research­dores of the different branches of knowledge. To face environmental and social crises requires the approach of formal, natural, social and human sciences in the face of the same purpose, also recognizing the value of non -scientific knowledge that is part of the set of knowledge necessary for the construction of sustainable dynamics,centered with respect to life in the broadest sense;Challenge that implies the transit of an anthropocentric ethic to a biocentric character.

One of the disciplines proposedthat excludes the dissemination of the environmental and social negative effects generated by organizations .

Financial Accounting is responsible for monetarily representing environmental wealth without giving importance to sustainability that if the discipline of bio-contribution has. This discipline has its own structure, based on an environmental ethic, aimed at achieving the environmental sustainability of the territories.

Bio-contribution can be applied to any type of organization that aims to have the quantitative and qualitative valuation of the environment in which it develops its activities and has its own accounting state.

A game must be recognized accountably in the bio-contable states if it meets the following conditions:

• .Existence and/or circulation of an environmental wealth
• .That the organization has some control of environmental wealth

Therefore we see a big difference with the financial accounting that it considers are measurable and representable economically and monetarily.

Bio-contribution uses non-monetary measurement units, makes use of extrinsic and intrinsic measurement methods (priority);Through the heterogeneous methodology it uses and presents the information in multiple units of measure without the use of conversion units and the homogeneous or standardized methodology in which all the information is presented in a single unit of measure, through conversion factorsof homogeneous quantitative and qualitative measurements.