The legislation of environmental disclosures in three Nordic countries—a comparison

Abstract

This paper compares the legislation in Denmark, Norway and Sweden concerning what kind of environmental information firms must disclose. These three Nordic countries have great similarities regarding accounting legislation and standards. However, Denmark has chosen a different way to force firms to disclose their environmental performance compared with Norway and Sweden. Danish firms must deliver separate ‘green accounts’, while Norwegian and Swedish firms are bound to report on environmental issues in the administrative report. The Norwegian and Swedish firms' information mainly addresses the financial consequences of environmental impact and the Norwegian legislation is also found to be more extensive than the Swedish legislation. The information from the Danish firms addresses society in general. The comparison indicates some interesting topics for further analysis, e.g. how the extensive demands in Norway for information about products' impacts when discharged may be fulfilled. As a background for this comparison, an outline of the discussions about voluntary versus regulated environmental information is given as well as an overview of some international standards and recommendations concerning firms' environmental disclosures. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

Public and Private Sector Environmental Reporting

“…This way, in 1993, CICA issued the regulation "Environmental Cost and Liabilities", establishing the accounting recognition and the disclosure of the future expenditures on removal and restoration of sites (environmental provisions) (Li and McConomy, 1999). Norway was the first European country to introduce environmental information on the annual report, through the Enterprise Act of 1989, which required the environmental disclosure in the annual reports of all companies involved in significant pollution businesses (Kolk, 1999;Nyquist, 2003b;Hibbit and Collison, 2004). Spain is also one of the pioneer countries in the EU, in terms of environmental accounting regulations (Criado Jiménez et al, 2008), with the approval of the 1998 Royal Decree 437/1998, of March 20th, concerning the adaptation of the General Accounting Plan to companies of the electrical sector, which made it mandatory for all Spanish companies to present the environmental information in the annual report.…”

“…As a consequence, since 1999, all companies that require environmental licences have to disclose information about the environmental impacts of their activities in the management report (Kolk, 1999;Nyquist, 2003a-b;Sinclair and Walton, 2003;KPMG and UNEP, 2006). In Denmark, since 1996, the Danish Environmental Protection Act requires companies to publish environmental information in the format of Environmental Report ("Green accounts") that should be submitted to local and governmental entities (Bebbington, 1999, Nyquist, 2003b. This legislation was revised in 2001 and 2002 to follow new international developments in environmental accounting and disclosure.…”

Environmental Reporting Regulations and Reporting Practices

“…Many countries use, or consider using, some kind of reporting regulations (Nyquist 2003). Does regulation bring enterprises' environmental disclosure more in line with the characteristics of useful information (IASB 2010;Snavely 1967), or at least ensure a minimum of information?…”

“…Longitudinal studies have shown that the introduction of, or changes in, regulations affect reporting (Criado-Jiménez et al 2007;Fallan and Fallan 2009;Frost 2007;Llena, Moneva, and Hernandez 2007). However, while studies usually consider only one type of regulation, e.g., an accounting standard or a legal requirement (Criado-Jiménez et al 2007;Frost 2007;Larrinaga et al 2002;Llena, Moneva, and Hernandez 2007;Mobus 2005;Vormedal and Ruud 2009), regulation regimes often consist of a heterogeneous set of regulations from various sources (Melting and Tungen 2012;Nyquist 2003).…”

Back Matter

“…Such smaller green manufacturing enterprises can be found all over the world; they care about their natural environment, who they are as manufacturers, and find green initiatives profitable. The second category consists of smaller manufacturing enterprises that initially made a low commitment to green initiatives and found it not interesting to renew [96][97][92][93][94][96][97][98][99][101][102][104][105][106][107][108]7,[12][13]28,47,57 Commitment,12,[19][20]22,[30][31][32][33][36][37][38][39][41][42][43][44][45][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][57][58][59][60][61][71]…”