RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Field-configuring events and the failure to standardise accounting for carbon emissions
A1 Giordano Spring, Sophie
A1 Larrinaga González, Carlos
A1 Rivière Giordano, Géraldine
K1 Emission rights
K1 Accounting regulation
K1 IASB
K1 Field-configuring events
K1 Carbon
K1 Contabilidad ambiental
K1 Contabilidad
K1 Accounting
K1 Contaminación
K1 Pollution
AB Since the withdrawal of IFRIC 3 in 2005, there has been a regulatory freeze in accounting for emission rights that contrasts with the international momentum of climate-related financial disclosures. This paper explores how different narratives and institutional dynamics explain the failure to produce guidance on accounting for emission rights.Design/methodology/approachThis paper mobilises the notion of field-configuring events to examine a sequence of six events between 2003 and 2016, including four public consultations and two dialogues between standard setters. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of documents produced in this space that investigates how different practices and narratives configured the field's positions, agenda, and meaning systems.FindingsAccounting for emission rights was gradually decoupled from climate change and carbon markets, relegated to the research pipeline, and forgotten. The obstacles that the IASB and EFRAG found in presenting themselves as central in the recurring events, the excess of representations, and the increasingly technical and abstract debates eroded the 2003 momentum for regulation, making the different initiatives to revitalise the project vulnerable and open to scrutiny. Lukes (2021) refers to nondecision-making to express that some issues are suffocated before they are expressed.Originality/valueThe regulation of accounting for emission rights, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, provides some insights into the different narrative mechanisms that, materialising in specific times and spaces, draw regulatory attention to particular accounting issues, which are problematised and, eventually, forgotten. This study also illustrates that identifying interests is problematic as actors shift from alternative positions over a long period. The case examined also raises some doubts about the previous effectiveness of international standard setters in dealing with matters of connectivity between the environment and finance, as is the case for accounting for emissions rights.
PB Emerald
SN 0951-3574
YR 2024
FD 2024-07
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10259/9450
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10259/9450
LA eng
NO Sophie Giordano-Spring and Géraldine Rivière-Giordano are grateful for the financial support by the Autorités des Normes Comptables and the French National Research Agency through the program “Investments for the Future” under reference number ANR-10-LabX-11-01. Carlos Larrinaga is grateful for the financial assistance provided by Spanish Ministry of Science & Innovation (Grant PID2021-122389OB-I00) and FEDER and Junta de Castilla y León (Grant BU029P23).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos
RD 25-dic-2024