Environmental challenges like global warming, ozone depletion and sea level rise are the most debatable issues in the 21st century. Inevitably, a great deal of environmental pollution is man-made and generated by industries. Since companies are treated as corporate citizens, they are equally responsible for environmental protection. In most of the countries, environmental accounting and reporting is becoming popular, under which, companies are required to provide environmental information consisting of environmental costs and benefits in their annual reports. In India, progress of environmental reporting is very slow.

Global peace seems to be linked with environmental protection. This conclusion arises from the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the Inter governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) along with former US Vice-President Al Gore. Definitely, industrial development without environmental considerations has threatened the world's ecological balance. Hazardously growing industrialization has been the cause of many environmental problems such as soil erosion, land degradation, deforestation, overexploitation of non-renewable natural resources, loss of bio-diversity, pollution of all kinds such as water, air, marine, noise, etc. It is clear that a large part of environmental pollution is caused by corporate houses. Since companies are treated as corporate citizens, they are equally responsible for social and environmental improvement. In the present business scenario, there is a growing pressure on corporate bodies to account for and report not only the financial performance but also the social and environmental performance. This thinking has given birth to a new concept in the area of financial reporting called `Environmental reporting'.

Environmental reporting is treated as one of the basic constituents of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It is a process of identification, measurement and communication of information on the environmental responsibility of an entity to permit economic decision-making by the users of information. Sefcik, Soderstrom and Stinson have defined, "Environmental reporting is a course that investigates how environmental issues affect traditional accounting sub-disciplines".

Environmental Reporting in India, Tata Steel Ltd, IPCC, Financial reporting, Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmental accounting, Green House Gases, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India , ICWAI, Institute of Company Secretaries of India, ICSI.