in the attachment file there is a video link according to that video we need to make a report of 1500 words and have to cover these two questionsas well and need any five referencesmeans academic...

Introduction
There is a paradigm shift in the recent times with regards to the underlying importance being
accorded to the environmental and social factors in the society in wake of the adverse
implications that corporate actions have caused over the years. Additionally, there is growing
political commitment to the achieving sustainable development in the form of various goals
which have been agreed internationally (Adams, 2014). In this background, there is a wide
consensus that the corporate sector also needs to play a more active role in achieving the goal
of sustainable development by ensuring greater sensitivity to social and environmental
concerns. The aim of this report is to analyse the role that accountants can play in achieving
sustainable development. Additionally, the report also dwells on the concept of integrated
eporting coupled with its importance in the Australian context.
Sustainable Development & Corporate Accounting
The performance of an organisation is appropriately reported through corporate accounting.
Traditionally, the focus of the corporate reporting was only to list down the financial
measures of performance, but with the growing emphasis on sustainable development, there
have been alterations in the corporate accounting as well. Since there is difficultly in direct
measurement of sustainable development, hence the companies tend to use various indicators
such as energy efficiency, waste water released which tend to reflect limited performance in
social and environmental sphere (ICEAW, 2004). Besides, there has been a dedicated
eporting framework known as GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) which has been put in
place. This framework tends to measure the performance of organisations using 97 indicators
where the majority of the indicators are reflective of the environmental and social
performance. While there have been certain organisations which have voluntarily adopted
GRI but these organisations are only limited in number and no major headway has been made
in this regard (ICAEW,2013). Further, for the organisations that have gone ahead to adopt the
GRI, it has not been complete with companies representing only a few of the indicators. As a
esult, it is apparent that corporate reporting needs to evolve so as to cater to the altering
needs of the modern investors (DUBS, 2016).
Role of accountant to sustainable development
Contrary to popular beliefs, accountants have a significant role to play in sustainable
development. In this regards, it is essential to realise their global reach due to the nature of
their profession. In this regard, one of the leading organisations of professional accountants
i.e. IFAC (International Federation of Accountants) opines that accountants have a critical
ole in accounting for sustainability (IFAC, 2015). One of key manners in which this could be
accomplished is identify the key trends prevailing in the industry and analysing the impact of
the same on the underlying business model, performance and growth strategy. The
accountants can potentially make the management aware of the relevance of the social and
environmental issues and hence ensure that these are built in the decision making process
adhered to by the company. They could potentially highlight to the management the
advantages of addressing certain social and environmental concerns in terms of enhanced
profitability especially in the long run (Adrain, 2015).
Further, since accountants tend to rely on internal processes associated with recording and
eporting of transactions, hence it is likely that in wake of greater sensitivity of socio-
environmental concerns, there may be appropriate mechanisms designed to capture the
performance in these aspects. Also, by highlighting the improvement of efficiency, the
accountants can enable the management to focus on energy efficiency and waste
management. Besides, the information produced from the implementation of various
initiatives is also validated by the accountants and converted into form of numbers which can
thus be highlighted to all the stakeholders so as to differentiate from the other companies
(ICAEW, 2013). Moreover, accountants can play a vital message in delivering this key
message that for business sustainability, it is essential that society may be safeguarded as the
adverse impact of the same could be self-destructive (Adrain, 2015)..
In addition to the above, one of the most significant roles of the...