Accounting for Sustainable Development: The Challenges in Recording Water Usage in Companies’ Business Activities

Abstract

Water as natural capital for business has its role in contributing to companies’ business activities. Many companies are now trying to record the accountability of using natural capital by disclosing their sustainability report for the purpose of legitimize themselves to stakeholder. However, there is an underlying issue in trying to integrate the information within the report with the management decision making. Hence, the goal of this research is to find the challenges in recording water usage in companies’ business activities by explaining the importance of water and focusing on two different methods of accounting for water that is available for businesses to use. By focusing on these two methods, the author also hopes that it will give companies perspective on how can these two methods can help companies account water in their business records. The author used literature reviews in this study by analyzing various scientific journals and books to finish the thesis. In addition, the author also uses field study to find research that tries to implement the two methods as a comparison to give a clearer picture of how does these methods are used in reality. The author hopes that the findings and conclusion of the research could help companies by giving them a clearer picture of accounting for water and also help future research for accounting for sustainable development.