What’s Wrong With Green Accounting and Auditing Prescription? Selling the Wood as Well as the Trees

Abstract

A number of contributors to the literature have - apparently in the name ofthe green - portrayed green accounting and auditing as problematic. The further mobilisation and prescription of green accounting and auditing are, for these contributors, overly centralist, interventionist and narrowly technicist. Yet, if the potential environmental threat is significant, and if a more voluntarist approach to environmental reporting responds marginally to that threat, at best, the sensitivity and cautions of those contributors who draw upon trends in contemporary theorising may constitute a misplaced emphasis. Indeed, attention may even ironically be displaced from substantive concerns.