Looking beyond numbers is the way to go

ACCOUNTANTS will help save the world.

So goes the bold proclamation by Peter Bakker, president and CEO of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

Value in the financial system needs to be redefined, he believes, and including sustainability metrics within accounting rules will be the way to go.

"Then every company will report in the same way, and every investor can look at the companies in a comparable way," says Mr Bakker in an interview with The Business Times. "Today we can only compare companies using their financial performance, not their environmental performance. You need to have a common language to compare each other."

The WBCSD - a global coalition of 200 companies around the world advocating progress on sustainable development - is now working closely with a number of foundations that want to see the financial system changed, he added. "So in the next three years, I expect a lot of push towards those standards, discussions on how we integrate those standards in accounting rules and what pension funds and financial markets should do to include those standard…