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A globalizalodo es halozatosodo vilagban az ellatasi lancok iranyitasa es a gazdasagi tevekenysegek kornyezetvedelmi, illetve fenntarthatosagi szempontu ertekelese es menedzsmentje egyre inkabb osszekapcsolodik. A tanulmany attekintest nyujt a ket terulet metszeteben letrejovő zold ellatasilanc-menedzsment koncepcio kialakulasarol es fejlődeseről az elmult 20-25 ev tavlataban, ertekeli a jelenlegi kihivasokat es a varhato jovőbeli tendenciakat. Fokuszaba kerulnek a zold ellatasilanc-menedzsment kialakulasaban szerepet jatszo tendenciak, kiemelve az erintettek es a meres szerepet. A terulet kialakulasaban tobb egymassal parhuzamosan fejlődő tendencia is megfigyelhető, ilyen peldaul a kockazati es a lehetőseg fokusz. Hasonlokeppen, a tevekenyseg alapu megkozelites az ellatasi lanc resztvevőinek kornyezeti teljesitmenyjavitasara fokuszal, mig a termekalapu megkozelites a vegtermek – teljes eletciklusara ertelmezett – zolditesere osszpontosit. Ugyan a tanulmany az ellatasilanc-menedzsment kornyezetvedelmi vonatkozasaira koncentral, kitekintő jelleggel bemutatja az előbbinel joval kesőbb megjelenő tarsadalmi fokuszt, illetve az ezek integralasat celzo fenntarthato ellatasilanc-menedzsment koncepciot. Barmennyi kihivassal kuszkodik is a zold ellatasilanc-menedzsment, egy olyan vilagban, amelyet mar nem vallalatok, hanem vallalati halozatok alkotnak, a kornyezetvedelmi elvarasokat is csak ezen a szinten erdemes definialni, ha el akarjuk kerulni, hogy a gazdasagi szereplők a tevekenysegek kiszervezesevel kornyezetvedelmi buborekokat hozzanak letre, mashova tolva at a problemakat. ----- In a globalizing and networking world, supply chain management is increasingly linked with the environmental and sustainability assessment and management of economic activities. This study provides an overview of the evolution and development of Green Supply Chain Management concept in the intersection of the two areas over the last 20-25 years, evaluating current challenges and expected future trends. It focuses on trends in Green Supply Chain Management, highlighting the role of stakeholders and measurement. There are several parallel trends in the development of the area, such as risk focus and opportunity focus. Similarly, the activity-based approach focuses on improving the environmental performance of the participants along the supply chain, while the product-based approach focuses on the greening of the final product throughout its life cycle. While the study focuses on the environmental aspects of supply chain management, the social focus that emerged much later and the concept of sustainable supply chain management aimed at integrating them, are also outlined. No matter how challenging Green Supply Chain Management is, in a world that is no longer based on single businesses but on corporate networks, environmental expectations should be defined at this level, if we are to prevent economic agents from outsourcing environmental impacts, pushing the problems somewhere else.

A globalis klimavaltozassal kapcsolatos aggodalmakkal es a kapcsolodo nemzetkozi szakpolitikaval parhuzamosan alakult ki a vallalati szintű uveghazhatasu gaz, illetve ezen belul a szendioxid-elszamolas. A halozati gazdasag koraban a globalis ellatasi lancok szendioxid-elszamolasa jelentősen tulmutat a kornyezetvedelmen mind gazdasagi, mind tarsadalmi szempontbol kiemelt fontossagu. A tanulmany egyreszt rendszerező jellegű attekintest ad a vallalati szendioxid-elszamolas kialakulasarol, fejlődesi fazisairol es kihivasairol, kulonos tekintettel a vallalatok fizikai hatarain tulnyulo, az ellatasi lancok es a termekek teljes eletciklusanak szendioxid-merlegere vonatkozoan; masreszt megvizsgalja a vallalatokon tulnyulo kibocsatasok elszamolasat a magyarorszagi vallalatok gyakorlataban A szendioxid-elszamolas koncepcionalis hatterenek kialakulasat es fejlődeset a cikkben negy egymasra epulő szakaszra (kornyezeti szamvitel fokusz, kozvetlen szendioxid-kibocsatas fokusz, kozvetlen es kozvetett szendioxid-kibocsatas fokusz, klimahatas-fokusz) bontva tekintik at es ertekelik a szerzők. Ezek alapjan az latszik, hogy a vallalati szendioxid-elszamolasokban egyre nagyobb szerepet kap a kozvetett, a vallalatokon ativelő kibocsatasok nyomon kovetese, amelyet tamogat a tanulmanyban bemutatott, kulonosen a kozvetett kibocsatasok elszamolasanak ternyerese ota egyre komplexebbe valo modszertani eszkoztar is. A magyarorszagi vallalatok elszamolasi gyakorlatanak elemzese alapjan elmondhato, hogy a legnagyobb vallalatok mar komoly figyelmet forditanak a szendioxid-elszamolasra, a kozvetlen (Scope 1) es a vasarolt energiahoz kapcsolodo (Scope 2) kibocsatasaikat nagyreszt szamszerűsitik, mig az ellatasi lanc tovabbi reszeinel megjelenő (Scope 3) kibocsatasok elszamolasa ugyanakkor meg gyerekcipőben jar. ------- Concerns about global climate change and related international policies have led to the development of enterprise-level carbon accounting. In the age of the network economy, carbon accounting for global supply chains goes far beyond environmental protection and is of major economic and social importance. On one hand, the study provides a systematic overview of the evolution, stages and challenges of corporate carbon accounting, with particular reference to the carbon balance of supply chains and the entire life cycle of products; on the other hand, it examines the current practices of Hungarian companies in the field. The article examines and assesses the evolution and development of the conceptual background of carbon accounting in four stages (environmental accounting focus, direct carbon dioxide focus, direct and indirect greenhouse gas emission focus, climate impact focus). Based on these, it appears that the monitoring of indirect emissions is playing an increasingly important role in corporate carbon accounting, supported by the methodological toolkit presented in the study, especially as the accounting of indirect emissions has become more widespread. Based on an analysis of Hungarian companies' accounting practices, the largest companies are already paying close attention to carbon accounting, quantifying their direct (Scope 1) and purchased energy (Scope 2) emissions, while the accounting of their emissions related to the other parts of the supply chain (Scope 3), however, are still in their infancy.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the key themes in the development of carbon accounting and auditing over the past twenty years. The evolution of the field since the Kyoto Agreement of 1997 has been divided into four stages. The need to account for and disclosure of greenhouse gas-related emissions of industrial organizations has emerged parallel to growing concerns about climate change, and international and national policy developments in the field have followed. Carbon accounting is an emerging field of business economics and covers a wide range of activities, including the measurement, calculation, monitoring, reporting and auditing of greenhouse gas emissions at organizational, process, product or supply chain levels. Various initiatives (such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol or the Carbon Disclosure Project) motivate and assist industrial organizations in accounting for and reporting their achievements in the field. Different methodologies of carbon accounting (bottom-up, top-down and hybrid) enable industrial organizations to quantify their emissions; however, some trade-offs emerge when choosing among these approaches. Carbon accounting should not be an isolated task for businesses. On the contrary, there is a strong need to integrate carbon accounting issues into different functional fields in order to achieve both corporate and climate policy goals.

Sustainable energy policy and tackling climate-change-related issues require exploring energy consumption patterns. This paper proposes an integrative methodological approach called grounded survey for understanding behavioral factors behind household energy consumption. The study aims to overcome the restrictions of both quantitative and qualitative studies by combining participatory-systems-mapping (PSM) based focus group research with a quantitative survey. Focus groups were used to highlight common patterns, which helped formulate survey questions specifically into understudied areas of energy-related behavior. The survey helped validate these qualitatively grounded questions, while generating generalizable quantitative results based on a representative sample. Finally, a comparative assessment contrasted the comprehensive qualitative analysis with the survey findings. Two causal loop diagrams of common patterns are employed to illustrate the methodological model. This integrative approach deepens understanding of behavioral factors behind energy consumption and provides policy recommendations to strengthen the relationship between heating-related behavior and heating costs. The grounded survey method can be utilized in studying wicked or paradox problems in which the relationship between behavioral and technical factors are complex and possibilities for intervention are limited. The application of the model is suggested in areas where development can only be achieved through behavioral change.

This study addresses how the sustainability crisis may be overcome by using alternatives to the conventional economic growth paradigm. Based on a literature review, the paper identifies and discusses three alternatives, namely negative, zero and positive economic growth. These alternatives are compared from a feasibility and policy perspective in relation to the transition toward sustainable development. The three alternatives are associated with very far‐reaching sets of policies that have different focal points with regard to how the paradigm shift from the conventional growth paradigm can be realized. All these alternatives, however, challenge the effectiveness of market forces. The shortcomings of the alternatives (resistance to voluntary transition with negative or zero growth, no proper consideration of the rebound effect for positive growth) hinder the transition and must be further addressed by policy‐makers in public and private sectors, as well as by civil society.

The consumption of food is associated with significant environmental impacts, and the disposable incomes of individuals and households play an important role in what food is consumed. It may be assumed that the higher the income, the more food consumed. However, it may also be supposed that people with higher incomes are more likely to lead healthier lifestyles and therefore consume more moderately.This analysis is based on food consumption data from the Household budget and living conditions survey of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, combined with the latest database from the Global Footprint Network. Results show that a higher level of consumption is able to offset a healthier consumption structure. For the upper three income deciles ecological footprints for food consumption are not notably higher, as the individuals in these groups use their higher incomes to purchase and consume more fruit and vegetables. A scenario analysis is carried out along the income deciles to illustrate the changes n...

Considerable progress has been made in Europe towards cutting GHG emissions during the last decade, but this achievement is partly due to the delocalization of manufacturing industries to emerging countries. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the current emission accounting method is production-based and cannot fully capture this effect. The use of such a method is clearly unfavourable for emerging countries and could lead to difficulties in engaging them in climate policy negotiations. The consumption-based approach represents the other extreme in apportioning emission responsibilities. This article proposes the beneficiary-based shared responsibility approach, which outperforms previous methods in terms of scientific justification and political acceptability. Consumer countries benefit from enjoying the product itself, while producing countries benefit from the production process, which provides them with employment, government income, and company profit. Thus, emissions re...

The aim of this article is to draw attention to calculations on the environmental effects of agriculture and to the definition of marginal agricultural yield. When calculating the environmental impacts of agricultural activities, the real environmental load generated by agriculture is not revealed properly through ecological footprint indicators, as the type of agricultural farming (thus the nature of the pollution it creates) is not incorporated in the calculation. It is commonly known that extensive farming uses relatively small amounts of labor and capital. It produces a lower yield per unit of land and thus requires more land than intensive farming practices to produce similar yields, so it has a larger crop and grazing footprint. However, intensive farms, to achieve higher yields, apply fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, etc., and cultivation and harvesting are often mechanized. In this study, the focus is on highlighting the differences in the environmental impacts of extensive and intensive farming practices through a statistical analysis of the factors determining agricultural yield. A marginal function is constructed for the relation between chemical fertilizer use and yield per unit fertilizer input. Furthermore, a proposal is presented for how calculation of the yield factor could possibly be improved. The yield factor used in the calculation of biocapacity is not the marginal yield for a given area, but is calculated from the real and actual yields, and this way biocapacity and the ecological footprint for cropland are equivalent. Calculations for cropland biocapacity do not show the area needed for sustainable production, but rather the actual land area used for agricultural production. The proposal the authors present is a modification of the yield factor and also the changed biocapacity is calculated. The results of statistical analyses reveal the need for a clarification of the methodology for calculating marginal yield, which could clearly contribute to assessing the real environmental impacts of agriculture.

Over the last decade the ecological footprint (EF) methodology has become widely used for estimating the biocapacity and the impact of human consumption in terms of global hectares. Although it represents a very impressive method for calculating the EF and biocapacity of an area, problems can arise regarding the incorporation of ecological factors into the calculation process. In this study we point out some problematic issues with use of the current EF methodology from an ecological point of view, taking as our focus forest biocapacity in Hungary. The EF concept ignores the differences in productivity of different species and forest types and their associated ecological values as well. We argue that the ecological ‘quality' of different kinds of forests and tree species should be reflected in EF calculations in order to obtain a more accurate estimation of biocapacity. The presence of invasive and non-local species may reduce biodiversity and crowd out native tree species. As a result we distinguish between three main forest types (natural, cultural and energy forests) and additionally suggest the introduction of an additional parameter which refers to the ‘naturalness' of the specified forest types. Results show a 15% increase in forest biocapacity when incorporating the naturalness factor.

While climate change policies and negotiations are developing and scientist are urging for more action, in most countries progress remains on a low level and the macro figures indicate that climate change becomes even more critical. As a reaction to this, some advanced business leaders have initiated various actions and projects with their companies, and various regulations have been introduced by governments with varying levels of effectiveness. In this context of a mix of international initiatives, media attention, customer irritation, diverse regulatory changes and partial political lethargy, ever more companies are challenged to identify and reduce their exposure to climate change issues. Whereas the reduction of climate change emissions is an important topic, it has also become obvious that climate change is not just a future risk but is already happening. This invokes adaptation activities in addition to mitigation strategies and measures. A basic requirement to design the corporate climate strategy is the knowledge about the company’s exposure as well as about options, effects and costs of emission reductions and adaptation measures. This is where climate change accounting as a specific kind of environmental management accounting comes into play. This introductory section outlines core questions and approaches.

This volume is devoted to management accounting approaches for analyzing business benefits and costs of climate change. It discusses future directions on carbon accounting, performance measurement and reporting as well as links between climate accounting and business processes, product and service development, supply chain innovation, economic successes and stakeholder relations.Companies are increasingly called on to contribute to combatting climate change and also face the challenges presented by climate-change related costs, risks and benefits. Risks can result from unpredictable weather conditions and government regulations, such as the EU emission trading system and new building codes. Climate change also offers numerous opportunities, such as energy efficiency innovations and carbon neutral products and production.Good management requires that carbon emissions are tracked and climate-related costs, risks and benefits are identified, measured and assessed. As such, research addressing corporate accounting frameworks and tools is of increasing importance when it comes to managing these carbon and climate-related issues.

0959-6526/$ e see front matter doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.12.016 Given the growing evidence and scientific consensus about globalwarming, companies are challenged byamultitude of climate change related costs, risks, benefits, and opportunities which require measures and assessments. Climate change-related risks such as uninsurable risks fromunpredictableweather conditions, as well as newgovernmental regulations, like the EU Emission Trading System, carbon taxes, new building codes and energy efficiency standards can substantially influence competitiveness. Climate

In Hungary the culture for sustainability management is quite diverse. Even large companies are usually subsidiaries or suppliers to large multinational companies and the influence of buyers and owners is substantial. As a result there are a number of different traditions in sustainability management in the country and correspondingly relatively few typical cultural attributes. The impacts of investors and shareholders are given high scores in the survey, while consumers are given a low score in motivating companies to pursue sustainability management. Community also has little influence because community involvement in sustainability management does not have a long tradition in Hungary. Thus two-way communication and participative methods of stakeholder management are less common. The responses show that Hungarian companies manage most environmental issues, especially emissions, more closely than the international average. Sustainability management tools are broadly known and applied in the country, and the general satisfaction with the number and level of tools indicates that there is no need for further development here. Basically, Hungarian companies are more sceptical towards the benefits of the implementation of corporate sustainability. This is especially true with regard to the prospective positive impacts on cost reduction, innovation, employee motivation as well as enhancing and safeguarding corporate reputation. In sum, Hungarian companies have already demonstrated expertise in most fields of sustainability management, but the development of a more participative collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders in sustainability management is still needed.

This paper provides an overview of carbon accounting as a rapidly developing area of sustainability management and this special issue. The global nature of greenhouse gas emissions as well as increasing climate change impacts is a context that demands new, more holistic approaches to preventing and reducing the negative impacts of climate change. This requires improved ways to anticipate and to fulfil new information requirements and to provide guidance on how to use the evolving accounting approaches for transparency, accountability and decision-making in governments, companies, academia and in non-profit organizations. Different types of carbon accounts – scientific, political, economic and corporate, are evolving. They are related but are not properly interlinked in policy or strategic. On the corporate level, carbon accounting can support carbon management with two basic approaches, carbon accounts for un-sustainability and carbon accounting for sustainability improvements. Both approaches play an increasing role for corporate functions such as production, distribution, procurement, supply chain management, innovation, communication, and marketing. Carbon management accounting can support all organizational levels in decision-making, regardless of whether a department is particularly challenged to comply with regulations, to better organize energy and material flows for substantial reduction effects, or is motivated to increase eco-efficiency, product innovation or legitimacy. This paper distinguishes different company-internal areas of application and methods of carbon accounting. To support corporate decision-makers environmental management accounting framework provides a structured overview of methods distinguishing physical and monetary approaches to carbon accounting. With the expanding scope of carbon accounting practices to include supply chains and product life-cycles, researchers are challenged to develop new methods, such as input–output assisted hybrid accounting.

Due to the perceived and expected environmental impacts of climate change there is an urgent need to reduce Greenhouse Gasses (GHG) at each and every point of emission (see World Research Institute, 2010). The ongoing efforts of governments to establish and implement policies include investigating changes in consumer behaviour and attitudes towards sustainability. The often very high costs of measures makes economic analysis necessary in order to find out which technologically feasible abatement options are capable of realizing the largest emission reductions at least social cost (Csutora and Zilahy 1998, Urge-Vorsatz and Fule 1999, Creyts et al. 2007, Stern 2008). According to recent studies there is even space for “win-win” solutions as a number of options exist which can result in huge GHG reductions at a “negative cost”, meaning that those solutions are both beneficial from environmental and economic points of view. However, organisations often ask for external governmental support in order to implement those measures (Zilahy 2004) and individuals also regularly seem slow and inconsistent in transforming their positive environmental attitudes into environmentally aware consumption habits and reducing their levels of consumption (Rubik et al., 2009, Thogersen and Crompton, 2009, Nemcsicsne Zsoka, 2005).

Preceding research has made hardly any attempt to measure the ecological impacts of pro-environmental behaviour in an objective way. Those impacts were rather supposed or calculated. The research described herein scrutinized the ecological impact reductions achieved through pro-environmental behaviour and raised the question how much of a reduction in carbon footprint can be achieved through voluntary action without actually affecting the socio-economic determinants of life. A survey was carried out in order to measure the difference between the ecological footprint of “green” and “brown” consumers. No significant difference was found between the ecological footprints of the two groups—suggesting that individual pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour do not always reduce the environmental impacts of consumption. This finding resulted in the formulation of a new proposition called the BIG (behaviour–impact gap) problem, which is an interesting addition to research in the field of environmental awareness gaps.

Consumer policy approaches regarding green products and solutions can be differentiated by their main focus. “Green positioning” is basically targeted at environmentally aware consumers, while “efficiency-focused positioning” concentrates on the efficiency gain of the product or solution, targeting the whole society, regardless of consumers' environmental awareness. The paper argues that the scope and total environmental benefit can be increased if green products or solutions are promoted in different ways, not only as “green” but also based on other arguments (like cost-efficiency, return on investment, etc.). The paper suggests a model for improving the efficiency of greenhouse gas (GHG)-related consumer policy. Based on the marginal social cost curve and the marginal private cost curve, different (green, yellow, and red) zones of action are identified. GHG mitigation options chosen from those zones are then evaluated with the help of profiling method, addressing the barriers to implementation. Profiling may help design an implementation strategy for the selected options and make consumer policy more effective and acceptable for mass market. Case study results show three different ways of positioning of GHG-related consumer policy in Hungary from 2000 and give practical examples of profiling, based on the latest marginal social cost curve and the contemporary energy saving policy of the state regarding the residential sector.

Interests in and understanding of supply chain management are growing, along with a number of catalysts which include: reduction in trade barriers; development of logistics structures as a counterforce to globalisation; and reduced geographical spread in business. This raises a set of challenges for sustainable supply chain information management which is explored here, including: confidentiality and business records; cost-management and eco-efficiency; socio-cultural distance; complexity; and the need for rapid responses to the situation when a crisis occurs. These challenges lead to a critique of conventional cost management and the need to make sure credible information is provided in the supply chain relationship. A comprehensive Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) framework reveals that the links between sustainability management accounting and different decision settings are not clear in the supply chain relationship. The papers presented in this book provide a guide towards improved knowledge of EMA and supply chain accounting interrelationships, challenges and potential successes.

The paper reports the results of the UNIDO TEST project (De Palma and Dobes 2003) as a consequence of simultaneously introducing environmental management accounting (EMA), cleaner production assessment (CPA). and environmental management systems (EMS) in four countries of the Danube river basin. The implementation of CPA was instrumental in identifying non-product output costs. The analysis of materials and energy flows provided the basis for assessing and comparing the performance of the production processes against the standards defined by the technical specifications of the existing technology and against the standards of best available technology (BAT) or theoretical standards. This categorization showed which part of the non-product output costs could be controlled in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term. On the basis of this analysis, companies were enabled to make strategic decisions such as to phase out products and plan new investments in environmental technologies through a step-by-step approach. Broadening the scope of EMA and developing the necessary information system within the framework of the EMS were immediate results of the project.

Living a happy and satisfied life while staying within ecological limits of Earth is a challenge humanity must face during this century. As spirituality impacts our lives in both material and non-material ways, we may reasonably suppose that spiritual beliefs also have an impact on how one thinks about environmental degradation, how likely individuals will behave in a pro-environmental way and how it impacts one’s ecological footprint. This article explores the links between a value-driven life and ecological impact, both theoretically and empirically. Our results suggest that traditional religious thinking, in-my-way spiritualism and green value-driven atheism are associated with an increased level of subjective wellbeing, while religious people also seem to be featured by a reduced level of ecological footprint. Materialism is supposed to be associated with a high level of ecological footprint and a low level of subjective wellbeing.

During the Communist regime, companies' conflicts with the public were hidden. The public did not have the right to express their objection. Recent Hungarian law, however, supports people's right to influence decisions that have an impact on their lives, but attitudes change slowly. In this article, I show the typical methods of companies' mismanagement of environmental conflicts. The first part of the article concentrates on strategic issues, and the second one emphasizes mistakes in communication with local communities. There are signs that Hungarian companies have already started to learn their lesson, but they also need help to face the new situation of the post-Communist era. Conflict theory and conflict resolution techniques may help them to deal with communication problems and to reach win-win solutions. Although not unknown, facilitation is not a common technique in Hungary yet. This means that there is potential for its development.