Environmental management and regulation: pitfalls of environmental accounting?

PURPOSE: The present paper is aimed at arguing the fallacy of those political arguments when an eco-nomical evaluation of those advantages is implicated. The present analysis will unearth the partisan na-ture of the specific accounting rules and principles to fill up the Italian financial reporting in spite of any environmental sensitivity. The paper attempts to suggest a mediation through a comprehensive view on hegemonic discourses of environmental management and their counter‐evidences of account-ing practices about environmental management. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The discussion is pivoted on the counter‐evidences of the present management tools both at the level of financial report-ing and analytical accounting. FINDINGS: The evidences stress the limits of the accounting regulation, since the categories of costs in the financial report scheme open a few possibilities to distinguish the environmental costs. Those considerations are an obstacle to the “internalization” of environmental ex-ternalities and they do not support the main issue of a pro‐active environmental system. ORIGINALI-TY/VALUE: The present work shows the potential of accounting to make things visible and measurable and the will to take this opportunity to solve the urgency of the environmental problems. In so doing, the work contributes to the present debate on environmental management systems, through a detailed and in‐depth analysis of the accounting loci for environmental issues.