Environmental Disclosure - From the Accounting to the Report Perspective

This paper focus on the environmental disclosure (ED) promoted by firms, due to the strong demand for information and identification of the relevant data that pursuit the new legal requirements. The methodology is separate, by one side, on the theoretical framework based on the disclosure of environmental information (EI) and the true and fair view based on the accounting perspective. Indeed, the paper provides an understanding of the Patten (2002), Clarkson et al. (2008) and Monteiro (2007) researches. And, by the other side, the empirical analysis, at longitudinal and exploratory level, measures the degree of disclosure of the environmental information based on the report perspective. The authors present an Environmental Disclosure Index (EDI) and discuss the increase of the environmental reporting (ER) over the time and disclosure level of items published in the firms’ annual reports listed on the Lisbon Euronext Stock Market, during the period of 2007-2009.