عوامل تصمیم گیرنده حسابداری مدیریت کربن در شرکت های غنایی Determinants of carbon management accounting adoption in Ghanaian firms

1. Introduction One of the world’s most threatening environmental issues has been the effects of climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 2007; 2014). Following the conclusions drawn by the IPCC that human activity is the cause of global warming, strategies to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions particularly carbon dioxide (
2) have increasingly attracted worldwide recognition as a high-priority issue (Saka & Oshika, 2014). Climate change has negative repercussions on the environment and human health, and constitutes one of the relatively new and sophisticated forms of risk that is being tackled by governments and their citizens across the globe (Woods, Linsley and Maffei, 2017). Population growth, urbanization and land use changes are highly associated with changes in environmental parameters (Duran-Encalada, Paucar-Caceres, Bandala & Wright, 2017). Although GHG emissions is less prevalent in developing countries, there has been calls for a new and more holistic approaches to the prevention and possible minimization of the adverse effects of climate change given its global nature (Bennett et al, 2011; 2013). This is because the risks associated with GHG emissions and other climatic changes are a global phenomenon and developing countries are no exclusion. In addition, the scientific evidence given by the serious risks posed by climate change to mankind has been overwhelming to the extent that the avoidance of its catastrophic effect demands global responses (Clarkson, Pinnuck & Richardson, 2015). Moreover, only a minimal reduction in the total amount of GHG emissions at the corporate level has taken place in some advanced countries and that further increases in the global GHG emissions continues (Zvezdov and Schaltegger, 2015). Although the definition of GHG emissions as given by the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) constitutes six different gases, both scholarly and anecdotal evidence suggest that
2 has a degrading impact on the environment (Cadez and Guilding, 2017). It has been estimated that a significant and rapid reduction of total
2 emissions will be required if the growing environmental, social, and economic threats associated with climate change is to be halted (Meinshausen et al, 2009; Cadez and Guilding, 2017). The level required to avert catastrophic climate change is to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (IPCC, 2013). An even more ambitious target of 1.5degree Celsius bas been recommended by a number of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and scientists in order to stay within safe planetary boundaries (Rockstrom et al, 2009). The achievement of this carbon budget which has been estimated to support a world population of 9.2 billion by 2050 however, requires an annual average per capita emission levels to fall between 2.1 billion and 2.6 billion tonnes of
2 by mid-century. Although emission levels in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) constitute the lowest in the world, the current per capita emission levels ranges between 2.7 billion and 3.9 billion tonnes of
2 when land-use change and forestry are respectively excluded and is higher than the stipulated 2.1 and 2.6 billion tonnes.