Enhancing stakeholder interaction through environmental risk accounts

Accounting should mobilise growing awareness of environmental degradation into harm mitigation strategies by representing humanity's relational existence with nature. Catchment-oriented accounting directs attention to the harm inflicted by unsustainable practices by integrating measurements of the multiple causes of degradation into meaningful accounts. We propose a semi-qualitative risk matrix to enhance stakeholder participation in the construction of these accounts: our matrix allows lay-stakeholders to use their lived experiences to socialise expert measurements, and thus embark on a journey of learning socially about sustainable living. An irrigation case-study is used to evaluate the extent to which irrigators displayed the following social learning capacities through their contribution to the construction of risk accounts on the impact of irrigation on their catchment: awareness of each other's competing-and-interdependent goals and perspectives, shared problem identification, appreciation of the complex issues at hand, motivation to work collaboratively, trust and the creation of formal–informal relationships. Four of seven irrigators displayed many of these capacities as they contested unsustainable values embedded in conventional irrigation discourse, and articulated less harmful priorities. The remaining irrigators took advantage of the analytical-deliberative spaces (provided by our matrix and accounts) to better appreciate the environmental impact of irrigation.

► This paper considers how accounting could contribute to the sustainability debate.
► Beck's risk thesis is the platform for our social construction of risk accounts.
► Our accounts help people learn about sustainability's uncertainty-complexity.
► A case study shows irrigators learning to manage water cycles via risk accounts.
► Social learning is a vital part of this realisation.