Abstract:
Environmental reporting plays a major role in respect of effectively communicating the
values of environmental concerns of an organrzatron with its stakehol$ers. Again, it has
come to the prominence due to recent ecological threnodies. The aim of this study is to
find out the extent of environmental reporting on Energy Consumption, Bio-diversity
and GHG Emission varying significantly among banks, diversified financials and
insurance sectors in Sri Lanka.
A checklist based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) were used to collect
secondary data of five banks, twenty diversified financials and three insurance sectors
companies from 2014 to 2018. As a whole, this study considered on hundred forty
annual reports of twenty eight companies for five years of period. Descriptive Statistics,
Cross Tabulation and one-way ANOVA test were used for analyzingthe gathered data.
The results reveals that there is a low level of environmental reporting on Energy
Consumption, Bio-diversity and GHG Emission in banks, diversified financials and
insuranoe sectors in Sri Lanka. The insurance sector practices majority of
environmental reporting on Energy Consumption while banks sector practices majority
of environmental reporting on Bio-diversity and GHG Emission. Further, it verifies that
there is a significant variation in environmental reporting on Energy Consumption, Bio diversity and GHG Emission among banks, diversified financials and insurance sectors
in Sri Lanka.
Based on the findings of this study, it is suggested that, all banks, diversified financials
and insurance sectors companies need to aware about environmental well-being and
emerging with a globally accepted framework for a proper communication with its
stakeholders. Moreover, govefirment of Sri Lanka must increasingly assess the effects
of their policy instruments by collaborating with accounting bodies like Institute of
Charted Accountants of Sri Lanka, showing that public policies have contributed to a
stronger uptake of environmental reporting.
