Environmental accounting and reporting practices in Asian countries

This chapter provides a general overview of the recent development and observation of environmental accounting and reporting practices among five Asian countries, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. This chapter is primarily based on the extant literature review of environmental accounting and reporting studies in Asian countries. Such environmental reporting is mainly driven by political and social factors that affect regional environmental accounting and reporting approaches. Governments, investor pressures and local stock exchange requirements in Western countries play vital roles in increasing environmental reporting incidence, while Asian countries tend to develop legal means to support environmental reporting. Companies in Asian countries are required to disclose good-quality, comparable and reliable environmental information in their annual reports or stand-alone sustainability reports. It is assumed that this will ensure that policymakers, regulators and companies are better able to understand how to develop effective policies and practices to improve environmental performance.