Innovating for Authentic Sustainability Accounting and Multicapitalism in the World

UN Calls For Authentic Triple Bottom Line Accounting

The United Nations is now openly advocating for context-based accounting in a report issued by UNRISD in late 2022, entitled: Authentic Sustainability Assessment: A User Manual for the Sustainable Development Performance Indicators. Largely based on Context-Based Sustainability, a rigorous and distinctive approach to sustainability measurement developed by CSO Director Mark W. McElroy in 2008, the UN report is the first international effort to specify a multi-bottom-line range of context-based indicators for use by organizations around the world.

Generally Accepted Integrated Accounting (GAIA) Principles

CSO is very pleased to share its proposal for the world’s first articulation of Generally Accepted Integrated Accounting (GAIA) Principles. Just as financial accounting is grounded in GAAP and IFRS, so must there be a set of generally accepted principles for integrated and non-financial accounting – sustainability accounting, too. No such formal principles, however, exist. A full presentation of our thinking can be found here.

Time to Declare a Planetary Accounting Emergency!

As if the Planetary Climate and Coronavirus emergencies were not enough, we now have a Planetary Accounting Emergency to contend with – a chronic and widespread failure of performance accounting in the public and private domains. See this important article on the subject in the journal Solutions (Dec. 2020), co-authored by CSO Director, Mark W. McElroy: Time to Declare a Planetary Accounting Emergency

Thresholds, Allocations & the Carrying Capacities of Capitals

Having originally hosted, starting in 2005, our Founding Director’s development of what today is regarded as best practices in sustainability accounting – the specification of thresholds, allocations and the carrying capacities of capitals – we are pleased to share Dr. McElroy’s synthesis of his thinking in these areas, the intellectual history that preceded them, and a commentary of his own on current events in the field: Thresholds, Allocations and the Carrying Capacities of Capitals: Core Principles in Sustainability and Integrated Accounting

Rights, Duties and Corporate Social “Kantracts”

CSO is pleased to announce the introduction of Corporate Social “Kantracts” (CSKs), a cutting-edge evolution of integrated accounting developed by its Founding Director, Mark W. McElroy. As Dr. McElroy explains in Rights, Duties and Corporate Social “Kantracts”, CSKs address the implicit normative foundations of performance accounting by making them explicit, and in a way that also brings Kantian ethics into play.

Say Hello to Certified Triple Bottom Line Organizations

First came Certified B Corps and Benefit Corporations, now come Certified TBL Orgs, a new credential for organizations whose managers systematically measure, manage and report their Triple Bottom Line (TBL) performance using context-based tools. We are very pleased to announce that we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Social Accountability International (SAI) to help develop and implement this program (see press release), and that pilots are now underway!

What is Context-Based Sustainability?

If you’re new to Context-Based Sustainability (CBS) or just a little rusty on the subject, take a look at this short tutorial: The Essence of CBS, and also this Wikipedia page that explains CBS in more detail.

Think Pies Not Doughnuts!

While the Doughnut Economics concept has attracted much well-deserved attention over the years, we’ve long felt that certain improvements to it were needed. We’re pleased to announce, therefore, an alternative graphical reporting tool that we call Pie Slice Accounting. And unlike the Doughnut Economics program, which literally prohibits organizations from using it (the Doughnut), we welcome them. So Think Pies, Not Doughnuts. And bon appétit!

CSO Submits Comment Letter to IFRS Foundation

CSO is pleased to have submitted a comment letter to the IFRS Foundation on December 31, 2020 regarding its proposal to create a new Sustainability Standards Board (SSB) for sustainability reporting.

Report Released on New National Well-Being Index

After a 3-year embargo, we are pleased to announce the results of a pilot application of the Aggregate Capital Sufficiency (ACS) methodology, a tool created by CSO as an alternative to GDP for assessing the sustainability performance and well-being of whole countries. Initially applied on a project funded by Ernst & Young in 2017, ACS – a variant of the MultiCapital Scorecard – was successfully tested in four countries.

CSO Launches World’s 1st Below-1.5°C Carbon Metric

December 22, 2018 – CSO is pleased to announce the release of its newly updated, well-below 1.5ºC Context-Based Carbon Metric for organizations, the first of its kind in the field of corporate sustainability – freely downloadable for end-user application here.

Introducing Certified Sustainability Zones

We are very pleased to announced the launch of our latest new initiative, Certified Sustainability Zones (CSZs), the first certification program to recognize whole populations (e.g., municipalities) for their commitments to sustainability and their cutting-edge use of context-based, Triple Bottom Line performance accounting tools.

MultiCapital Scorecard Endorsed for B Corps

B Lab has endorsed the MultiCapital Scorecard (MCS) as a 3rd-party standard for measuring and reporting the performance of B Corps. The MCS is the world’s first and only context-based Triple Bottom Line accounting system and is specifically adaptable to the reporting requirements of Benefit Corporation statutes in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Introducing the Von Carlowitz Project

We and many others sometimes speak of the need for a kind of Manhattan Project in sustainability, a go for broke initiative aimed at transforming commerce from its currently unsustainable form to a new more tenable one. For us, multicapitalism provides exactly the sort of vision we need, and The Von Carlowitz Project can help us get there from here!