Environmental Reporting and Accounting

Abstract

This chapter examines the context in which ‘accounting-sustainability hybrids' were constructed in anticipation of the Environmental Reporting Act (ERA) passed in 2015 in New Zealand. Using governmentality perspectives, the researchers consider how the key individuals in local government discursively articulate the ‘sustainability programmatic' – sustainability policies that deploy the Act as a regulative intervention, the mediating instruments (reporting medium), and the hybridisation of accounting and sustainability (accounting-sustainability hybrids). The chapter draws on archival materials and qualitative survey of 90 key individuals from all 78 local authorities. The analysis showed that local mediating instruments were aligned with ERA and sustainability programmatics, resulting in modification of the existing hybrids and the creation of new ones. The chapter demonstrates how legislation facilitates action from a distance.