1、1 中文 3550 字 本科毕业 论文 （ 设计 ） 外 文 翻 译 外文题目 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RACTICES IN JAPAN 外文出处 Implementing Environmental Management Accounting, 2005:321-342 外文 作者 KATSUHIKO KOKUBU、 ERIKO NASHIOKA 原文 ： ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING PRACTICES IN JAPAN 1、 INTRODUCTION In Japan two government
2、al environmental accounting initiatives have been the primary agents for promoting, disseminating and producing those practices for private sectors. One is the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) initiative and the other is the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) initiative. The MOE initiat
3、ive emphasizes the application of environmental accounting to communication with external stakeholders, and the METI initiative emphasizes internal applications of environmental accounting, which is environmental management accounting (EMA). The MOE initiative precedes the METI initiative； MOE publi
4、shed an interim report in 1999 and environmental accounting guidelines in 2000, whereas METI published its environmental management accounting workbook in 2002. Therefore, external environmental accounting has been more diffused than EMA in this country. The MOE initiative undeniably influenced envi
5、ronmental accounting information disclosure in the form of corporate environmental reports. As Kokubu et al. (2003) showed, environmental accounting information disclosures in corporate 2 environmental reports were heavily influenced in content and format by the MOE environmental accounting guidelin
6、es. On the other hand, Kokubu et al. (2003) revealed that the use of environmental accounting for corporate management purposes in Japan is not so widespread. They argued that the development of EMA was critically important for corporate management. However, the survey of Kokubu et al. (2003) was co
7、nducted before the publication of the METI workbook. Before the publication, the environmental accounting knowledge of Japanese companies was restricted to the tools and methods discussed in the MOE guidelines, companies had little knowledge of the specialized EMA tools and methods. The purpose of t
8、he paper is to re-examine the Japanese corporate practices of environmental accounting one year after releasing the METI workbook by a questionnaire survey and to analyze some factors to promote environmental management accounting practices. Before discussing the results of the survey we will briefl
9、y explain the two governmental initiatives on environmental accounting. 2 GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES ON ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING 2.1 MOE Initiative MOE started its first environmental accounting project in 1997. It formed an environmental accounting committee and in 1999 published an interim report (M
10、OE, 1999). MOE revised the report and released the environmental accounting guidelines in 2000 (MOE, 2000). These guidelines are not mandatory. Their main purpose is to encourage Japanese companies to disclose environmental accounting information to the public via voluntary corporate environmental r
11、eports. While the guidelines refer to the managerial function of environmental accounting, they place much more emphasis on external reporting/disclosure. The MOE issued revised guidelines in March 2002. The revisions were not major, and were mainly concerned with improving classification and measur
12、ement of environmental benefits. In addition to the environmental accounting guidelines, MOE published voluntary environmental reporting guidelines in 2001 (MOE, 2001). The environmental reporting guidelines set out the information that should be disclosed in an environmental report； 3 environmental
13、 accounting information is one disclosure category. The core contents of the environmental accounting guidelines concern environmental costs and benefits. The environmental costs addressed by the guidelines are limited to environmental conservation costs and do not include either material costs or s
14、ocial costs. Specifically, the guidelines set out and address seven categories of environmental conservation costs: 1 Business area costs: environmental conservation cost for controlling the environmental impacts that are caused within a business area by production and service activities. 2 Upstream
15、/downstream costs: environmental cost for controlling environmental impacts that are caused in the upstream or downstream as a result of production and service activities. 3 Management activity costs: environmental cost in management activities. 4 Research and development costs: environmental cost i
16、n research and development activities. 5 Social activity costs: environmental cost in social activities 6 Environmental damage costs: environmental costs corresponding to environmental damages. 7 Others Regarding environmental conservation benefits, the guidelines classify these into four categories
17、: (1) environmental conservation benefits concerning input resources, (2) environmental conservation benefits concerning environmental impacts and wastes from main business activities, (3) environmental conservation benefits concerning products and services of the company, (4) other benefits. These
18、environmental conservation benefits are, in principle, to be disclosed as a contrast to environmental costs. The economic benefits specified by the guidelines are classified into “economic benefits calculated on a credible basis” and “economic benefits based on hypothetical calculation”. The former includes some savings and revenues from environmental protection activities. The latter includes uncertain benefits such as risk avoidance
