TRASCENDER, CONTABILIDAD Y GESTIÓN

Through these definitions that, although they have notbeen many over time, it is possible to appreciate thevalue that different authors have tried to give to theconcept of carbon disclosure, since it is a phenomenonhighly related to change climate due to its emphasis oncarbon emissions, but it is understood how businessresponses to the constant pressure of institutions,investors, shareholders and customers, mainly todecarbonize the world economy in order to help societyin general (He et al. , 2021).

The importance of carbon disclosure varies dependingon the approach in which it is viewed. It is importantfrom the economic point of view mainly because theliterature mentions that it can significantly impact thevalue of companies due to present and future costs oncompliance and carbon mitigation can mean liabilitiesnot accounted for by companies (Borghei, 2021; He etal., 2021), as well as it can help companies to obtaingovernment subsidies, as may be the case when it is inmandatory information regimes about carbonmanagement such as the Emissions Trading Scheme ofthe European Union (EU ETS) (Stechemesser &Guenther, 2012; S. Tang & Demeritt, 2018).

Another reason why carbon disclosure is important isbecause it allows indirectly observing the behavior oforganizations with respect to the information theydisclose, since it can be used as a transparencymechanism to influence the decision-making of certaintarget actors, due to the fact that carbon disclosure isunderstood as an effective way of governance (Pattberg,2017), as well as to observe managerial discretion on thecontent and form that companies decide to report certainnon-financial information on a voluntary basis (Hahn etal., 2015), which may have comparability, reliability andveracity problems.

Finally, from the social point of view, corporatecarbon disclosure takes on special importance since it is

a practice aimed at mitigating emissions of

which

is highly related to climate change, whose consequencesare known worldwide (e.g., increase in globaltemperature, lower levels of precipitation, extremeweather events; droughts, floods, fires, among others)and it is a multidisciplinary phenomenon (Stechemesser& Guenther, 2012).

For this reason, it is important to observe howcompanies are helping to contribute with lower carbondioxide emissions to meet the objectives proposed bythe Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol. Just as it isimportant to know if the actions carried out bycompanies are effective, or if they are only a strategy toavoid scrutiny and continue in search of their ownbenefits and not that of society.

Carbon Related Concepts

Carbon and its related topics have been the subject ofmultiple studies in recent years, however, in theliterature it can be found that there are terms thatcontinue to be confused with each other since they areused interchangeably, such as carbon accounting, carbonreporting, carbon performance and carbon disclosure(Kolk et al., 2008; Pattberg, 2017; Velte et al., 2020).

Carbon performance

The concept that has caused the least inconveniencebecause it is more limited is the concept of carbonperformance. Carbon performance quantitatively detailsthe GHG emissions of the companies, as well as themeasures and strategies contemplated to reduce theirlevel. The most common way to measure carbon

Vol. 7, núm. 21 / septiembre – diciembre del 2022

Cumpean, J., Briseño, A., y Zorrilla Del Castillo, A. L.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36791/tcg.v7i21sept-dic.178Pp. 143-165