EXPLORING THE ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING, AUDITING AND ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE DAWN OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

Jill Atkins, University of Sheffield, UK

Federica Doni, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

Karen McBride, University of Portsmouth, UK

Christopher Napier, Royal Holloway University of London, UK

Editorial Paper for a Special Issue of AAAJ���Exploring the Historical Roots of Environmental and Ecological Accounting, Auditing and Accountability

The Purpose of the Paper

• This paper seeks to broaden the agenda for environmental and ecological accounting research across several dimensions, extending the definition and form of accounting in this field and encouraging research into its historical roots.
• We locate the paper at the intersection of research into accounting history and into environmental and ecological accounting.
• It is the first draft of the Editorial Paper for the Special Issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal on “Exploring the Historical Roots of Environmental and Ecological Accounting, Auditing and Accountability”

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Specific Aims of the Paper

• (i) explore the historical roots of environmental and ecological accounting, auditing and accountability
• (ii) demonstrate that rather than being a secondary, relatively recent development that emerged from financial accounting and reporting, environmental and ecological accounting predated financial accounting by thousands of years;
• (iii) extend the form of environmental and ecological accounting to open new pathways for researchers and;
• (iv) demonstrate the diverse cultural and international roots of environmental and ecological accounting.

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Environmental vs Ecological Accounting

• Environmental accounting practice may not include nature/ecology at all
• Can focus on:
• carbon disclosures
• Water usage
• Waste
• Recycling
• Land use/rehabilitation (nature to some extent)
• Ecological accounting aims to bring nature into accounting
• Bringing deep ecology into accounts
• Broaden the definition of account to include ‘stories’ of nature

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Ecological ‘Accounts’ Research

• Russell et al. (2017) discuss nature writings as illustrations of ecological accounts
• What do we mean by ecological accounts?
• Accounting for externalities and human impacts on nature?
• Accounts of nature?
• Accounts in the broadest form of non-human life, flora and fauna?
• Accounting for biodiversity? Extinction Accounting
• How broadly do we want to define ecological accounting and accounts?
• “What is lost by ruling out these “accounts” (or stories) within our scholarship? Are we bound to study only economic entities and their expressed (and counter expressed) relations to the natural world? And, if so, what are the implications of such conceptions for accounting, accountability and nature?” (Russell et al., 2017, p.1429)

Some Recent Literature in Ecological Accounts

• Solomon and Thomson 2009 – 19^th century account of river pollution
• Atkins and Thomson 2014 – account of a wood
• Dey and Russell 2014 – account of rivers
• Cuckston 2017 – Blanket bogs
• Feger and Mermet 2017 – ecological accounting framework
• Laine and Vinnari 2017 - Finnish activists’ unauthorised, covert filming of the conditions in which pigs and chickens were being kept as visual counter accounts drawing on a longitudinal case study

Accounts by interested parties, externals, stakeholders about ecological issues and ecosystems

• There is a history of academic research into Accounting for Biodiversity
• WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY?
• “…the variability among living organisms from all sources including [among other things] terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part . . . [including] diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (CBD 1992)
• Early papers provided an exploratory framework for effectively ‘auditing’ biodiversity
• Jones, M.J. (1996), “Accounting for biodiversity”, British Accounting Review�Jones, M.J. (2003), “Accounting for biodiversity: operationalising environmental accounting”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal�Jones, M.J. and Matthews, J. (2000), “Accounting for biodiversity: a natural inventory of the Elan Valley Nature Reserve”, ACCA Research Report, London

Accounting for Biodiversity

• Around 10 years ago, academic research began to explore accounting for biodiversity practice
• There has been an increasing quantity of biodiversity-related information reported by companies in their sustainability, and more recently, integrated/annual reports
• Special issue of AAAJ considered the nature and motivation of this reporting
• Consensus: accounting for biodiversity dominated by impression management, with a focus on reputational risk management and to some extent financial risk and internal control
• Jones, M. J. and Solomon, J. F. (2013) “Problematising accounting for biodiversity,” Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol.26, Issue 5.

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Species Accounting: �Rhinoceros Accounting

Extending Ecological Accounting Historically and into Different Forms – Calls from Accounting History Literature

• Some examinations of historical roots of environmental/ecological accounting, with researchers exploring,
• “… how earlier individuals and organisations used accounting to enable, or in some cases ignore, sustainability, and to hold the powerful accountable for their impact on nature” (Carnegie and Napier, 2017, p. 85).
• Calls for further exploration of environmental accounting in a historical context (Parker, 2015; Carnegie and Napier, 2017).
• Research has emphasised a need to widen the notion of the ‘archive’ beyond the traditional ‘obviously accounting-based source materials’ (Carnegie and Napier, 1996, p.31) such as original accounts, business records and financial statements.

18^th century Nature Diaries as Accounts

17^th century account of air pollution

Doctoral Students in Extinction Accounting

• Extinction accounting for panda
• Extinction accounting for hedgehogs
• Extinction accounting for orangutan
• Extinction accounting in Brazil

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Ancient Accounts Literature

• A Sumerian tablet is cited in which are recorded 92 ewes, 20 rams, 22 breeding lambs, 24 spring lambs, 33 she-goats, 4 male goats, and 27 kids which make 158 sheep and 64 goats.
• In the later Mesopotamian period, some systems used some 60 different symbols.
• Ezzamel and Hoskin (2002, p.335)
• “any account involves a particular kind of signs which both name and count the items and activities recorded”.

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• Mattessich, R. (1987). Prehistoric accounting and the problems of representation: an archeological evidence of the Middle East from 8000 BC to 3000 BC. Accounting Historians Journal
• Mattessich, R. (1989). Accounting and the input±output principle in the prehistoric and ancient world. Abacus
• Mattessich, R. (1995). Critique of accounting: Examination of the foundations and normative structure of an applied discipline. Westport, CT and London: Quorum Books.

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Rock Art ‘Accounts’ of Animals, Species, Biodiversity and Extinction

• We extend this prior literature by drawing on rock art as representing the source of the earliest ‘accounts’ recorded by humans at the dawn of human consciousness by members of the human race
• We focus on depictions of animals in rock and cave art
• - because the overwhelming majority of rock art constitutes depictions of animals (Davidson, 2019)
• because this paper aims to explore ecological and environmental accounts rather than social (i.e. human or other societal, cultural depictions)

Rock Art

• “[L]iterally art ‘on walls’, the term is extended to cover prehistoric works of art on any non-movable surface, including blocks, ceilings and floors” (Bahn, 1998, p.288).
• Rock art has been discovered in over 100 countries (Davidson, 2019)
• “From earliest times man has felt the urge to leave his imprint on stones and other objects, cutting rather than merely drawing it in order to give it permanence and show future ages that he has passed that way. In this manner the earliest rock cavings came into being” (Belves and Mathey, 1968, p.68).
• We use the term ‘rock art’ for the remainder of the paper, as, “[R]ock art includes cave paintings and engravings, as well as the art on both open-air cliff faces and boulders” (Whitney, 2009, p.38).

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Earliest Human ‘Account’ – 35,400 years old

• the earliest ecological and environmental ‘account’ is a representation of a babirusa, or pig-deer in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Although first discovered in the 1950s, it has been dated recently at 35,400 years old and is thus by far the most ancient illustration of figurative art in the world. Immensely significant, this finding represents the earliest form of account created by humans, that remains,
• “Hidden away in a damp cave on the “other” side of the world, this curly-tailed creature is our closest link yet to the moment when the human mind, with its unique capacity for imagination and symbolism, switched on”.

About 40,000 years old:�First ecological account?

Other examples of Rock Art ‘Accounts’

• The Lascaux cave paintings represent some of the best known Upper Paleolithic art, located in the French Dordogne and estimated to be around 17,300 years old
• ‘Levantine Art’ refers to over 700 prehistoric rock art sites in the Spanish Mediterranean Basin dating as far back as 8000 BC
• Animal engravings in rock art in the Sahara were mainly created in what is termed the ‘pastoral periods’ between 6,300 BC and 1000BC
• Rock art panels are found in Wadi al-Ajal which runs along the Northern escarpment of the Messak Plateau in South West Libya.

Hall of the Bulls - Lascaux

Deer hunting – Levantine Art

Rock art animal ‘accounts’ in Libya

Rock Art Species Accounting – and Extinction Accounting

• Palaeontologists, archaeologists and anthropologists have started to use rock and cave art as ‘accounts’ of species in order to identify prehistoric distributions of animal species where an absence of excavated remains has left gaps in knowledge
• Wild camel, lesser kudu, African wild ass and aurochs were identified in rock art
• Cave art in Spain represents many species locally extinct in that region such as bison and reindeer as well as those extinct everywhere such as the woolly rhinoceros and mammoth (Markova et al., 2013).
• The Great Hunt Panel in Nine Mile Canyon, in Utah shows the outcome of prehistoric human hunting (Davidson, 2019).

The Great Hunt Panel in Utah _ impact of humans on species from the dawn of human history

Why did Prehistoric People Produce Rock Art ‘Accounts’

• Accounts of past hunting success
• ‘Hunting magic’
• Religious motivation – Totemism, Shamanism
• Amusement/Pleasure
• Symbolic value of the images reason for the production of the accounts as,
• “The high frequency of cattle and giraffe depictions in the rock art undoubtedly related to their symbolic value, rather than their abundance in the landscape” (Guagnin, 2015, p.57).
• Economics/financial/accounting motivation
• “… depictions of camels and horses are likely to [represent] their economic importance” (Guagnin, 2015, p.57).

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Similar Philosophical Strands between Accounting and Rock Art Literature

• Communication and Language - Accounting
• “One particular way in which accounting systems can be understood by reference to their social context is to view them as types of organisational language systems” (Laughlin, 1987, p.481).
• “[accounting systems] are, as language systems, human artefacts which model certain aspects of organisational life whose ‘terms’ and ‘sentences’ …. Find their meanings in their historical, organisational and societal context in which they are ‘uttered’” (ibid).
• Communication and Language – Rock Art ‘Accounts’
• cave paintings and rock art have been thought to be linked to the evolution of language. Indeed, Miyagawa et al (2018) suggest that the earliest African rock art could represent the first expression of human linguistic behaviour.

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Rock Art and Accounting as Text

• Some rock art scholars have viewed the images as ‘texts’
• Tilley breaks the artwork down into grammar and sentences and rock art interpreted as accounts as hieroglyphs, or remnants of a writing method of communication based around images, far predating the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system (Brunius, 1818).
• Substantial accounting literature on Egyptian hieroglyphs (Ezzamel’s work)
• Seems perfectly valid to explore the earliest ‘texts’ of communication contained in rock art as forms of account
• Rock art ‘accounts’ of species and ecology therefore far predate the evolution of ‘financial’ accounts by tens of thousands of years – whereas social and environmental accounting is seen as a recent offshoot from financials……

Impression Management in Rock Art ‘Accounts’?

• Rock giraffe accounts produced due to the symbolic and cultural value of the species linked to their relative “scarcity or seasonal occurrence” (p.59) rather than to a desire to record factual information,
• “The frequency of the animal depictions can be shown to relate to their cultural, spiritual or economic importance to the engraver rather than the actual abundance of the animals in the landscape” (Guagnin, 2015, p.64).
•  This suggests that even in rock art accounts there is evidence of socially constructed accounts and even impression management, creative accounting and possibly misrepresentation
•  “We can only see this environmental record through the ‘artistic filter’ of what the engraver chose to depict, which in turn is a reflection of the engraver’s cultural background, belief system and individual experience of the landscape and environment” (Guagnin, 2015, p.53).

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Extending the Form of Historical Ecological Accounting: Artwork

• Weaving provides a means of communicating artistic representations of flora and fauna evolved in the Far East thousands of years ago.
• Embroidery, the decoration of material by needlework is an art as old as the history of civilisation
• Mosaics were developed as a form of artistic communication in the early Greek and Minoan times.
• African depictions of animals and the environment tended to be primarily in wood carvings.
• Japanese prints became popular in the early 19^th century and frequently depicted animals, birds and nature
• Company accounting for nature. Mary Impey. Colonial art – The East India

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Animals in ancient mosaics - hunting

East India Company Paintings – Accounts of Species and Biodiversity

Other media to explore as Ecological Accounts

• Literature
• Poetry
• Travel diaries and writings
• Music
• Nature diaries and nature writings

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Fieldwork in South Africa 2021�Warren Maroun, co-author, rock art accounting

• Conducted interviews with the San people – as informants
• They assisted in interpreting the South African rock art
• Took photographs
• Also interviewed South African rock art academics and anthropologists

Prehistoric species Accounting: Eland

Elephant

Gemsbok

CALL FOR PAPERS:

• We welcome submissions of full papers that research the following areas:
• Alternative forms of environmental and ecological accounting and auditing, such as nature diaries, travel journals, letters, reports, reviews;
• Aesthetic and creative historical accounts of nature, wildlife, the natural environment and ecology such as literature, poetry, historical reports, etchings, illustrations;
• Comparative accounts across time: the ‘then and now’ of environmental and ecological accounting and implications for the future of accounting and auditing practice;
• Exploration of historical environmental/ecological accounts around the world, such as international illustrations of accounting for biodiversity, or extinction accounting, from the past.

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