CLIMATE CHANGE IN MINING INDUSTRIES

Climate Change in Mining Industries

Abstract

In developing a set of greenhouse gas anecdotes, the NGER Act (2007) requires “controlling companies” to set organisational boundaries that are a factual and unquestionable reflection of the day-to-day operations of the enterprise, and in accordance with its lawful structure, substance and financial truth with the organisation. Organisational boundaries show the operations belong to or controlled by the entity and for which the entity accounts greenhouse gas emission activity. There are a number of approaches identified which could be utilised to set a company's organisational boundary, including equity share approach and operational command approach as set out in the World assets Institute and World enterprise assembly for Sustainable Development (2004) Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A business Accounting and describing Standard (The GHG Protocol) - one of the key references that underpins the methods set out in the NGERS. Given the complexity of tax and accounting structures in corporate Australia this aspect of the NGERS has made for some interesting debates by legal, secretarial, finance and environmental departments of Australian organisations as they attempted to determine organisational boundaries. It would appear to be a “simple” exercise of requesting an organisational structure or a property holding listing from the company secretary. However, controlling corporations seem to have a multitude of companies and holdings companies, either on or off balance sheet primarily set-up for tax and accounting purposes. Difficulties are faced when accountants and auditors attempt to ascertain the underlying physical and thus greenhouse gas emitting assets. This is further complicated by joint ventures and partnerships.

It is broadly accepted that ecological components such as impacts and charges affiliated with contamination (Cerin, 2006; Deegan and Unermann, 2008; Gray, 2006) and carbon emissions have traditionally been externalised from the economic accounts. Upon marking the Kyoto Protocol on 3 ...