E C O N O M I C &
S O C I A L A F F A I R S
Environmental
Management Accounting
Procedures
and Principles
Prepared for the Expert Working Group on
“Improving the Role of Government
in the Promotion of
Environmental Management Accounting”
United Nations Division for Sustainable Development
In cooperation with the
Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport
Innovation and Technology
UNITED NATIONS, New York, 2001
Environmental Management Accounting
Procedures and Principles
-i-
Preface
The Expert Working Group on Improving Government’s Role in the Promotion of Environmental
Management Accounting was organized as a follow up to informal discussions on the issue at the 1998
session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 6) in the context of
negotiations on environmentally sound technologies. Those discussions indicated that a number of
governments were involved or interested in promoting EMA, but that there had been little or no
communication between the agencies concerned.
The expert Working Group has met three times. The first meeting was held in Washington DC, hosted
by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), 30-31 August 1999. The second
meeting took place in Vienna, 15-16 May 2000 and was hosted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of
Transport, Innovation and Technology. The third meeting was held in Bonn, Germany, 1-2 November
2000, hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and the Federal Ministry for
the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
The fourth meeting is to be held in Tokyo, Japan, 5-7 June 2001, hosted by the Ministry of the
Environment of Japan, and the fifth is planned for Bristol, UK, in February 2002.
The participants in the Expert Working Group are from national environment agencies and ministries,
international organizations, industry, accounting firms, academia, and United Nations agencies