Environmental issues present a number of challenges for companies. One particular aspect is the disclosure of the issues to a variety of groups. This is particularly true, in the light of growing pressure from stakeholders (such as, investors, customers and shareholders) on companies to improve their performance in this area. This in turn increases the importance of environmental
disclosure, especially elements which report on the financial impacts of environmental matters. The need for consistency has provided a motivation for international organisations to provide frameworks to improve the reporting of environmental issues. It has become a requirement for companies to address environmental issues in order to comply with regulation in some countries, maintain customers, and thrive in an ever more critical global economy.
A number of international organisations have made efforts to help the development of social and environmental disclosures such as, CC (1999), AA1000 and AA2000, GRI 2000, BS7750, ISO 14000, and EMAS. Despite all of these efforts, there are still no generally accepted rules and principles concerning many issues. These issues include what should be the contents of environmental reports, which indicators should be used in reporting, as well as, the problems of collecting and analysing environmental data, other concerns include how verification of environmental reports should be carried out, the absence of professional standards and finally guidelines for environmental reporting. All these drawbacks actually provide companies with an excuse to avoid environmental disclosure. Therefore, there is a need to achieve coherent and integrated efforts to achieve a generally accepted framework of environmental reports by cooperation between accountancy bodies, academics and practitioners
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