INTEGRATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE IN ACCOUNTING OF ENTERPRISES IN LATVIA

Climate change is already happening and represents one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet. The European Union and other international organizations are working actively for a global agreement to control the climate change and are taking domestic action to achieve substantial reductions in its own contribution. For example, the Kyoto Protocol requires the 15 countries that were EU members at the time to reduce their collective emissions in the period 2008-2012 to 8% below 1990 level. EU has also offered to increase the reduction of its emissions up to 30% by 2020. [1] The Copenhagen Accord reached in December 2009 represents a step towards such an agreement. Those events with certainty show that world is aware and estimates the impact of economy upon the environment. A combination of growing awareness of environmental issues by the general population and the increased non-governmental organization pressure and activity has led many companies to reflect on and revise their corporate environmental responsibility. One way to disclose social responsibility of enterprises is to introduce an environmental accounting. By force of such important circumstances the aim of this research is to analyse experience of the disclosure of environmental performance in financial statements abroad and estimate options of application of eco-indicators in practice of Latvia. To reach this objective it is necessary to implement the following tasks: to study what is environmental accounting in substance and the historical conditions of its emergence; summarize and analyse treatments on the environmental accounting; to identify the main tips of eco-indicators for disclosure of environmental performance in the financial statements and environmental costs and liabilities of companies; to draft proposals for improvements of financial statements of enterprises in Latvia by supplementing the elements of environmental accounting. This research has used the approach of economic analysis and comparative methods in studying the legislation and practices of international accounting system and environmental accounting in different countries. In the article the monographs of the authors, publications in periodicals and other sources of literature in area of integrating the concept of sustainable development into enterprise accounts and linking environmental and financial reporting through eco-efficiency indicators are also analysed.