Accounting Forum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Accounting Forum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/accfor

The logics of biodiversity accounting in the UK public sector

Kenneth Weir
University of Leicester, Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy, Ken Edwards Building, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, United Kingdom

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: The scope of biodiversity accounting has continued to grow in recent years. This has attracted the
Biodiversity accounting attention of researchers that have mostly explored biodiversity accounting in the corporate
Institutional logics context. However the pressure to account for biodiversity, and loss, is not just limited to cor-
Public sector porate entities. This paper therefore examines the use of contemporary biodiversity accounting
practices in the public sector. The paper does so through an examination of semi-structured
interviews with participants across four UK councils, and by applying an institutional logics
framework finds that attempts to develop biodiversity accounting are affected by the presence of
competing institutional logics. In this specific case, the paper highlights the economic/ecological
value conflict in council biodiversity accounting.

1. Introduction

As global environmental crises intensify, biodiversity loss is positioned as a major contemporary challenge. Often defined as the
variability of all life on earth (Heywood & Baste, 1995:5), biodiversity is crucial for the effective functioning of global ecosystems and
the management and organisation of life (Büscher, Dressler, & Fletcher, 2014). This becomes an important problematic for ac-
counting scholars as business-led biodiversity loss is estimated to account for a significant proportion of current habitat and species
loss (Cuckston, 2013; Jones & Solomon, 2013; Williams, McDonnell, & Seager, 2005). Consequently, there is an opportunity to
account for ecological impact and to reverse (Jones, 2014b) or to mitigate against further loss (Weir, 2018). Earlier environmental
accounting studies recognised the detrimental impact of humanity and sought to elucidate potential accountings for the betterment of
nature (Gray, 1992; Jones, 1996; Milne, 1991). And this spirit has been renewed through recent considerations of how accounting
might be positioned to promote practices that account for the corporate and human impact on nature (e.g. Jones, 1996; 2003). This
alignment between accounting and biodiversity attempts to encourage a discharge of accountability in the management or stew-
ardship of the planet, and forms a significant part of biodiversity accounting (Boiral, 2016; Jones & Solomon, 2013; Jones, 2014a).
Within this literature, however, research on biodiversity accounting is relatively new, though fast-growing. Much of it is con-
centrated towards an analysis of corporate biodiversity disclosures and reporting practices (e.g., Rimmel & Jonäll, 2013); albeit some
smaller tranches do exist around issues such as the valuation of ecosystems and nature (e.g., Freeman & Groom, 2013; Cuckston,
2018a) or in promoting alternative accounting measures of nature and biodiversity as capital (Jones, 1996; Jones and Solomon, 2013
Siddiqui, 2013).
The pressure to account for biodiversity, and loss, is not just limited to corporate entities. Indeed, a variety of initiatives and
policies are applied to a range of reporting entities including governmental and not-for-profit organisations. Yet the same emphasis in
public sector organisations (PSOs) is not as widely researched in the existing biodiversity accounting literature (Gaia & Jones, 2017:
1616; Weir, 2018). The paper therefore seeks an original empirical contribution by exploring the deployment of biodiversity ac-
counting practices in the public sector.

E-mail address: khw11@le.ac.uk.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accfor.2018.09.005
Received 28 July 2017; Received in revised form 25 September 2018; Accepted 26 September 2018
0155-9982/ Crown Copyright © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Weir, K., Accounting Forum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accfor.2018.09.005
K. Weir Accounting Forum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

The case for exploring ecologically-aligned accounting in PSOs has been made elsewhere (Adams, Muir, & Hoque, 2014; Ball,
Mason, Grubnic, & Hughes, 2009; Thomson, Grubnic, & Georgakopoulos, 2014), and primarily focuses on interrogating the role of
accounting in promoting ecological accountability against the local specificities of public service delivery, as well as emphasising the
key organisational or institutional tensions this can bring to the fore. Accounting in public sector settings can house a range of
different logics and justifications for organisational action (e.g. Anessi-Pessina & Cantù, 2017; Ezzamel, Robson, & Stapleton, 2012),
where contradictory or competing logics may co-exist. The existence of such logics is also documented in specialist ecological
accounting technologies in both PSOs and for-profit entities (Contrafatto & Burns, 2013; Gaia & Jones, 2017; Narayanan & Adams,
2017; Thomson et al., 2014) and are an important facet of the interaction between accounting and nature. Although institutional
frameworks have not yet been applied to biodiversity accounting, attempts to account for biodiversity are likely to be influenced by
institutional contexts, and multiple logics may mediate the accounting of human-nature relations (Russell, Milne, & Dey, 2017:
1430); hence the paper applies an institutional logics framework to further guide analysis and makes another contribution to that
end, demonstrating an economic/ecological conflict in applications of biodiversity accounting.
The motivation of this paper is to explore the implementation of biodiversity accounting in the UK public sector, paying particular
attention to how practices are conducted, and the logics that interact in shaping these biodiversity accounting practices. The paper
does this through a sustained analysis of semi-structured interviews with a range of preparers and users of biodiversity accounting
within four UK councils.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section presents the theoretical frame of the paper, and draws out
attendant concerns within the existing literature that the efficacy of biodiversity accounting may be compromised through the
presence of economic logics. The research method and design of the paper is presented in Section 3. Section 4 draws out the links
between biodiversity accounting and visibility, while Section 5 concerns how certain elements of biodiversity accounting reflects
institutional logics, and how such logics can alter the visibility of biodiversity. Section 6 highlights the key problematics and im-
plications of biodiversity accounting in light of the findings, but also traces two possible, and encouraging, paths for progressing
biodiversity accounting. The paper then closes with the conclusion that summarises the key contributions of the paper and an avenue
for future research.

2. Literature review and theoretical frame

2.1. Institutional logics and accounting

Whilst no attempt has yet been made to probe the underpinning logics of biodiversity accounting in organisational settings, there
is reference to divergent and conflicting logics in existing studies, which suggests their persistence in organisations. To that end, the
implementation of biodiversity accounting within organisations may be shaped by the tensions between the contextual competing
and contradictory logics. Recent contributions to institutional theory have demonstrated that multiple logics can simultaneously
reside in an institutional field (1; Lounsbury, 2008); a view further refined through studies of institutional logics (e.g. Thornton,
Ocasio, & Lounsbury, 2012). Institutional logics act as taken-for-granted assumptions that guide behaviour in organisational settings
(Scott, 2001), which comprises of both formal and informal rules of action that ‘guide and constrain decision makers’ (Thornton &
Ocasio, 1999: 804) - whereby decision-making processes and organisational practices shape attitudes and perceptions, and conse-
quently focus the attention of social actors upon a particular logic of action. In these cases it is entirely possible for actors to behave in
historically variant ways. In earlier institutional logics articles, actors do make alternative decisions due to perceived shifting in-
stitutional logics. Under these circumstances there may be threats to organisational legitimacy in the institutional environment and a
different set of assumptions and beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behaviour arise (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999: 805). Decision-
makers are then nudged by the institutional logic to find solutions that are consistent with the logic through, for instance, the
alignment of rewards or legitimacy with the prevailing institutional arrangements (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). A classic example from
earlier studies demonstrated that executives in the higher education publishing industry moved away from an editorial logic to a
more commercial-oriented market logic because of competitive changes in the industry, which shifted attention to market issues such
as growth, new acquisition and resource competition (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999).
In accounting, institutional logics perspectives have been utilised to trace how accounting systems respond to multiple, and even
competing, institutional demands. In these, accounting is able to recognise the co-presence of competing or contradictory logics, and
often incorporates these logics into accounting system design. Sports organisations, for example, can position the accounting system
to capture performance information relating to divergent objectives such as sporting performance and financial performance, and
operate performance indicators that respond to the competing demands for sporting and business logics (Carlsson-Wall, Kraus, &
Messner, 2016). In PSOs, studies demonstrate how the emergence of new logics within the institutional field enter decision-making
processes through budgetary control practices (Ezzamel et al., 2012), and how accounting can be mutated to accommodate specific
policies and to make decision-making processes more consistent with traditional logics (Anessi-Pessina & Cantù, 2017).
In situations of multiple and competing logics, accounting may be deployed to actively manage, promote or delimit conflict
(Busco, Giovannoni, & Riccaboni, 2017; Contrafatto & Burns, 2013: 195), wherein the remit of traditional accounting techniques is
extended to absorb some of the competing demands (Contrafatto & Burns, 2013; Ezzamel et al., 2012). For Ezzamel et al. (2012), the
introduction of newer budgeting practices in local education authorities in England were implemented and shaped by the interactions
between professional logic (stressing the teaching practices, norms and values), a governance logic (denoting the bureaucratic control
processes linked to accountability) and a business logic (the newer logic promoting efficient resource allocation). This resulted in
budget surpluses being recorded and used in differing ways – instances where business logics were stronger saw surplus carry-

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forwards as a necessary element of prudent financial planning, comparing to the professional logic that viewed these surpluses more
negatively as depriving students of resources.
Logics are also influential in cases from sustainability-oriented accounting research where accounting systems can mediate be-
tween the tensions of different objectives and measurements by constructing common points of reference and influences the selection
of goals and objectives (Thomson et al., 2014). Järvenpää and Länsiluoto (2016) analyse the institutional mechanisms and justifi-
cations for environment management accounting change. For them the control logic of an individual organisation may be different to
the industry, and the collective identity or strategic orientation of the organisation may stress different behaviours to the intended
control systems. In their case study, the design of newer measures sought to pair a responsibility for environmental performance with
an over-arching financial focus, as the institutional logic was based on a dominant profit-driven collective identity (p.162). En-
vironmental management accounting practices therefore shifted to finding cost savings and profits, as financial measures had more
power in setting standards and rewards for decision-makers. This mirrors findings from institutional studies where assumptions about
profits become institutionalised and constrain how sustainability effects daily practices and routines (Contrafatto & Burns, 2013).
Moreover, in the public sector Ball (2005) narrates the case of a sustainability development unit at one UK council and traces how
the use of environmental accounting measures were part of a process of deinstitutionalisation. In this sense sustainability employees
responded to direct governmental pressure to adopt a sustainability agenda by placing a number of performance indicators into the
main management control system of the council. This move, at first, appeared as though there was a mainstreaming of sustainability
accounting into the heart of management control at the council, which would pose a significant challenge to the strongly-held and
traditional paternalistic values of the council. Prior to this, environmentalism was a short-term consideration mostly concerned with
filling pot holes (p.357). However, orienting the performance and management systems around longer-term ideas of sustainable
resource use led to sustainability accounting creating political dissensus, and an erosion of institutionalised organised activities in the
council. The main decision-makers in the council reacted by re-asserting the paternalistic values of delivering environmental services
to families on a cost-efficient basis, and taking steps to disentangle the new sustainability indicators from the systems.
What is notable in Ball (2005), Contrafatto and Burns (2013) and Järvenpää and Länsiluoto (2016) is the strain between following
longer-term ecological initiatives through accounting, and short-term environmental programmes that do not challenge the economic
ideals guiding organisational activity. A clear distinction, and an emergent tension, arises in these cases between ecological and
economic logics; a tension which is also documented in the extant ecological accounting literature.

2.2. The logics of ecological accounting

The potential role for accounting in delineating measures and responsibility for promoting biodiversity is based on an in-
tensification of existing governance schemes by providing performance targets. Biodiversity is often represented through crucial
performance indicators that are used to set benchmarks for ideal conservation levels, and often extends to the continuous monitoring
of wildlife and habitats as captured (Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Gaia & Jones, 2017; Jones, 1996; Siddiqui, 2013; Thomson,
2014; also Russell & Thomson, 2009). In such explorations, habitats and species are included on a listing basis that categorises species
by region and population size (Jones, 2003) and are encapsulated as a means to account for usage of natural assets and demonstrating
a measurable impact upon biodiversity at both regional and national levels. Hence, the specificities of accounting practice attempt to
render biodiversity visible through numerical representations (cf. Russell & Lewis, 2014: 214) which facilitates biodiversity per-
formance evaluation. This, in turn, cultivates accountability for biodiversity loss, which is often achieved when organisations disclose
their performance in relation to stated benchmarks (e.g, Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017).
However, this also promotes the calculative visibility of biodiversity in monetary and non-monetary forms. Methods for valuing
the total number of species present in a particular ecosystem, for instance, are also linked to biodiversity and conservation (Freeman
& Groom, 2013) particularly as part of a broader national catalogue of recorded species that accrete to an overall picture of a nation's
natural capital (Siddiqui, 2013), thus providing benchmarks for stabilising existing levels of biodiversity. In natural inventory ac-
counting (Jones, 2003; Siddiqui, 2013) the geographic distribution of species and conditions of habitats are recorded as snapshots in
time and serve as a base for conducting longer-term trend analysis of the condition, abundance and distribution of species within
given habitats or ecosystems. This latter practice mirrors much of the efforts of biodiversity calculation in ecological and conservation
professions, where conservationists and ecologists stress understanding and calculating threats to conservation (Berg, Fürhaupter,
Teixeira, Uusitalo, & Zampoukas, 2015; Mace & Baillie, 2007; Penman, Law, & Ximenes, 2010).
However, in accounting, the valuation of nature tends to be focused around either an instrumental value or an intrinsic one (Van
Liempd & Busch, 2013), as accountants appear to favour an anthropocentric approach to understanding ecology and ecosystems that
is grounded in ‘counting’ nature (Russell et al., 2017), which lends itself to a problematic reframing of nature as a financial value
(Cuckston, forthcoming). This, in turn, produces monetary quantifications of nature and standardised financial values of nature
(Sullivan & Hannis, 2017). Such a reframing can miss the point of ecological accounting (cf. Sullivan & Hannis, 2017: 1460), and
pushes human actions toward decisions made on increasingly financial grounds. A move that Russell et al. (2017: 1435) see as not
halting ecological damage.
Within this, measurement bases reflect a more capitalist orientation (Milne, 1991; 1996) or anthropocentric view (Gaia & Jones,
2017; Jones & Solomon, 2013; Weir, 2018) that maintains a nature-man or even a nature-society dualism that treats ecology and the
environment as separate from business. A view that, in the context of biodiversity, worryingly may entreat the conditions of species
and their habitats within a capitalist logic of accumulation (Sullivan, 2009) and could thus render ‘biodiversity’ as a free good to be
utilised for profit (Jones, 2014a). In theoretical terms, calculative technologies may not appropriately or sufficiently capture bio-
diversity - and species - in scientific or realistic enough detail (Freeman & Groom, 2013) and might further imply that practical

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measures can even distort the visibility of biodiversity (Jones & Solomon, 2013; Russell & Thomson, 2009). In such instances,
biodiversity reports stress the economic benefit of conservation practices and espouse a strong financial justification for engaging
with protection schemes, rather than signalling engagement with deeper ecological motives (Gaia & Jones, 2017).
Here the presence of an economic logic grounds biodiversity accounting along monetary lines, and encourages an instrumental
mindset towards nature (Weir, 2018), one that crucially frames biodiversity as a source of financial value and perpetuates an eco-
nomic view that detaches humans from nature (Cuckston, forthcoming). The logic of an economic visibility, thus, is one that limits
the potential visibility of biodiversity, specifically as biodiversity accounting renders nature in local notions of ‘economic benefit’ that
lacks fungibility across different contexts (Ferreira, 2017: 1580) – here the calculative practices reflect local orders of worth and
codifies nature within them. This over-arching economic logic therefore prevents a wider take-up of biodiversity accounting because
the local inflection of worth prevents the travel of practices across jurisdictions, meaning that biodiversity accounting practices do
not institutionalise in the same way that more empty indicators of performance might (Ferreira, 2017; Russell et al., 2017).
Consequently, accountability can also obscure the more stringent demands of sustainable governance (e.g. Ball, 2005; Spence,
2007). In turn this obviates or dilutes any ecological logic, specifically as ecological motivations are downplayed in face of difficult
financial circumstances (Norris & O’Dwyer, 2004). It is this tension between the ecological and the economic that has been located
within some existing biodiversity and conservation practices (Cuckston, forthcoming; Ferreira, 2017; Gaia & Jones, 2017; Sullivan &
Hannis, 2015; Sullivan, 2009; Weir, 2018) which can act as a barrier to the development of a progressive form of biodiversity
accounting (e.g. Jones & Solomon, 2013). Subsequently we might see the economic logic of biodiversity accounting as incompatible
with the ecological logic, which may manifest as competing institutional logics.

2.3. Ecological and economic logics in biodiversity accounting

The extant literature has thus far highlighted the monitoring of biodiversity centred on flora and fauna species (Schneider,
Samkin, & Davey, 2014), with dedicated focus on species-specific monitoring practices in the UK and Germany (Atkins, Grabsch, &
Jones, 2014), Denmark (Van Liempd & Busch, 2013), and Sweden (Jonäll & Rimmel, 2016; Rimmel & Jonäll, 2013) among others.
Fundamental to these is a recognition of the human, and business, impact in stimulating global and national biodiversity loss. The
aim of making biodiversity visible through accounting is to entrench some notion of accountability for this loss (Jones, 2014b) and
hence to promote governance of visible species in order to mitigate against further loss; equally protection schemes that result in
gains in biodiversity are ex post rationalised as being the lynchpin of promoting recovery (Boiral, 2016).
As the literature has progressed, accountants and reporting entities are becoming engaged in attempts to account for conservation
and species at-risk of extinction. These developments explicitly concentrate upon establishing forms of corporate accountability for
loss. For example, how Scandinavian companies disclosure their attempts to protect bee populations in Sweden through annual report
narratives (Jonäll & Rimmel, 2016), and similarly how integrated and sustainability reports of the largest 40 companies on the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange can promote accountability for species loss (Maroun & Atkins, 2018).
However, concerns over legitimacy and impressions management prevail. In these cases, accountability for biodiversity loss
becomes stuck in schemes deliberately designed to leverage organisational legitimacy (Boiral, 2016) or to reframe species loss as
necessary to preserve or conserve land (Samkin & Schneider, 2010: 270-1). Equally biodiversity reports can be used to maintain
legitimacy by companies dealing with pressures from stakeholders (Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017).
Moreover, these studies concentrate on the corporate context, with a lack of case-based or field research examining questions
relating to the production and consumption of biodiversity accounts. Consequently there is a neglected focus on whom biodiversity
accounting and reports are for (Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Tilt, 2015) which becomes worrying given the acknowledged
importance posed by threats of biodiversity loss, and the suggested impact it has on business and accounting (Jones, 2014a).
The wider institutional context of biodiversity accounting in the UK public sector is multi-professional involving ecologists,
chartered environmentalists and accountants. The Society for the Environment (SocEnv) holds jurisdiction over reporting, acting as
an umbrella body responsible for co-ordinating ecological stewardship to environmental professions including the (CIEEM) which has
over 5000 members drawn from UK local authorities, academia and the surveying profession. Equally the Department for
Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has promoted a number of policy documents, reporting frameworks, and a series of
biodiversity indicators for measuring the role of human activity in stimulating biodiversity loss.
DEFRA's guidelines comprise two broad aims: firstly to monitor the distribution and threats to biodiversity throughout the UK;
secondly to promote governance and increase public awareness of biodiversity (Thomson, 2014). Hence a strong strategic focus is
placed on monitoring and the surveillance of existing species (DEFRA, 2015, 2011) which feeds into national and regional policies on
biodiversity management and governance. Recent moves here indicate a commitment to biodiversity on both a national and inter-
national scale (Burch, Berry, & Sanders, 2014; Thomson, 2014) and specific applications such as using accounting data to monitor
regional abundance levels of species threatened with extinction in the UK (e.g., Weir, 2018). But, as above, ecological accounting is a
site replete with different institutional demands and logics.
The general response by UK councils to new institutional demands - imposed by central government - for biodiversity accounting
has resulted in the proliferation of a number of contradictory, and unresolved, values. Gaia and Jones (2017) examine 143 local
biodiversity action plans of UK councils from the period 1998–2015 and identify 14 categories of biodiversity value, which shape the
construction of council reporting. Further, these 14 biodiversity values fragment neatly into two over-arching value systems: in-
strumental value (comprising 12 biodiversity values) and non-instrumental value (2 biodiversity values). Council biodiversity re-
ports, therefore, reflect an interplay between different values, suggesting that councils are interacting with institutional demands in
the presence of multiple logics.

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Yet, for their divergent pulls on biodiversity accounting, both logics appear to co-exist in practical settings, implying that the
logics and justifications for implementation become multiple. Ecological decision-making in the UK public sector often pairs eco-
logical goals with financial benefits, on the grounds that this can lead to socially-desirable outcomes (Thomson et al., 2014: 469), or
be used to develop models for governing complicated conservation practices such as offsetting (Ferreira, 2017). Studies have started
to recognise that the multiple demands placed on PSOs by different stakeholder groups will affect the rationality and objectives of
biodiversity reporting frameworks and practices (Barut, Raar, & Azim, 2016; Gaia & Jones, 2017; Weir, 2018) – this further points to
the possible co-presence, and resolution, of multiple and competing logics in existing biodiversity accounting practices in the UK
public sector.
However, logics, conflict and their resolution have not been studied in the context of public sector biodiversity accounting,
specifically as the literature has been relatively silent regarding the use and consumption of biodiversity accounting to date. To that
end, we know little about how institutional logics might shape the implementation of biodiversity accounting practices, specifically
how and why biodiversity accounting reflects the presence of multiple logics, and how these impact upon the efficacy of biodiversity
accounting. Councils are uniquely placed to consider these questions, as councils have a fiscal obligation to taxpayers to engage in
cost effective ecological service provision (Ball, 2005), but also a legal obligation to protect biodiversity. Under these conditions we
might expect to observe how the economic/ecological conflict manifests, and how it is resolved in the arena of biodiversity ac-
counting. Following institutional logics studies elsewhere, the paper explores how tensions between these two logics are shaping the
biodiversity accounting systems within councils and, in so doing, the paper makes a significant contribution to the extant literature
on biodiversity accounting.

3. Research method and design

3.1. Research design

Following existing studies in the UK public sector, councils were selected as the main empirical site owing to their placement as a
testing ground for environmental accounting policies (Ball, 2005: 353-4; Thomson et al., 2014), and as chief preparers of biodiversity
reports (Gaia & Jones, 2017; Weir, 2018). Embarking upon an institutional logics framework necessitates a more interpretive re-
search method, and since the study is more exploratory, semi-structured interviews were selected as the dominant research method
(Contrafatto & Burns, 2013; Ezzamel et al., 2012; Järvinen, 2016). The choice of site and method permits establishing the common
use of biodiversity accounting across each council, and provides flexibility to explore how institutional logics shape practices.
Interviews were conducted in 2016, with 27 participants in total who are engaged in varying levels of biodiversity accounting,
including council employees, decision makers, regional planners, and members of the public. Adopting an approach utilised in case
studies of councils (Ball, 2005; Thomson et al., 2014) interviewees were drawn from a broad range of familiarity with biodiversity
accounting in order to capture a range of different experiences and insights regarding use of accounting, and to facilitate a primarily
exploratory line of questioning designed to encourage reflection on specific organisational processes and accounting practices in each
council. An outline of these participants is provided in Table 1.
Interviews lasted, on average, 70 min and were conducted in person. Interviews were recorded and later transcribed allowing the
researcher to return to each transcription, compare transcripts against each other and to update emergent interview themes ac-
cordingly. In keeping with exploratory research in sustainability accounting (e.g., Jones & Solomon, 2010), and the use of coding in
institutional logics research (see Contrafatto & Burns, 2013: 353; Carlsson-Wall et al., 2016), the analysis of interview data followed a
two-step process. Transcripts were analysed firstly using a grounded theory approach - the results of which are presented in Section 4
- allowing themes to emerge from interviewees’ experiences of biodiversity accounting. Here transcripts were arranged in chron-
ological order and codes were applied to respondent narratives to detect common themes (Carlsson-Wall et al., 2016) and experi-
ences.
Secondly these codes and common themes were updated through the institutional logics framework. This, in particular, high-
lighted economic and ecological logics in discussions pertaining to how the use of biodiversity accounting information led to conflict
between objectives and how compromise was facilitated.

Table 1
List of Participants.
North Council: Participants East Council: Participants South Council: Participants Scottish Council: Participants

Volunteer 1 Volunteer 3 Volunteer 5 Volunteer 6

Volunteer 2 Volunteer 4 Finance Manager Finance Manager
Sustainability Manager Sustainability Manager Sustainability Manager Environmental Officer
Environmental Officer Environmental Officer Environmental Officer Local Accounts Manager
Regional Planner Regional Planner Regional Planner Biodiversity Officer
Assistant Finance Manager Wildlife Trust Member Wildlife Trust Member
RPSB Member 1 Local Accounts Manager
RPSB Member 2 Environmental Manager

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3.2. Research site

Four councils in the UK were chosen; all being representative of a local city or county council currently engaged in joint-park and
nature space management with UK wildlife trusts. Scotland Council is a county-wide council in central Scotland. North Council is a
county-wide council located in Northern England. The East council is a city council located in the East of England, and finally South
council is a city council located in the South of England.
North Council features around 70 parks and 5 local nature reserves, and tasks mostly consist of woodland and habitat man-
agement. East Council comprises of over approximately 80 parks, over 10 local nature reserves and is responsible for overseeing the
management and stewardship of over 350 ha of regional nature space. South Council has the smallest jurisdiction with around 50
parks; the current operational drive pertains to overseeing the management of inner-city green spaces, in addition to protecting
animal and flora species in local parks. Scotland council is the largest of the four but is the most under-funded, routinely im-
plementing budget squeezes in order to maintain and govern biodiversity over 90 key wildlife sites composed of upland, farmland,
woodland and wetland ecosystems; of these approximately 50 are sites of specific scientific interest.
Interview questions were designed to encourage participants to reflect on how practices are used, the rationale and motivations
for adopting practices, and to elicit discussion of the particular challenges and opportunities of implementing biodiversity accounting
in each council.
In this respect, questions with environmental officers and sustainability managers, all of whom are directly involved in biodi-
versity accounting and reporting, centred around the range of biodiversity accounting practices used, and how these are used to
monitor, report on, and manage biodiversity. Focus was also given to what advancements have been made; and how practices provide
information for decision making in mitigating against further biodiversity loss, and promoting conservation efforts. Additionally,
questions with regional planners stressed how biodiversity accounting information can contribute to decision making and planning.
Local wildlife trust organisations frequently liaise with all councils and co-ordinate reporting on a number of local and regional
biodiversity projects. To that end, the study sought to include the views of these representatives with reference to biodiversity
accounting in their projects. Questions were broader here, focusing on how habitat and species data features in joint projects between
trusts and councils. Additionally, a number of volunteers involved in species monitoring in all regions were also invited to participate.
Questions were also broader here to encourage reflection on volunteers’ experiences with biodiversity accounting at each council.

4. Biodiversity accounting and visibility

10 codes were mapped onto interview narratives: practices; personal attitudes; ‘need’ for biodiversity accounting practices;
monitoring as accounting practice; specialist labour; traditional accounting; planning and decision-making; purposes of monitoring
and reporting; biodiversity and accountability; stakeholders; and finally constraints. These codes relate primarily to the varying use
and purposes of biodiversity accounting information, but relate to five major themes where visibility is foregrounded: monitoring as
visibility and the construction of biodiversity mapping and indicators; external visibility and biodiversity reporting; visibility of
species in regional planning; visibility of biodiversity loss and accountability; and visibility of biodiversity in financial management.
Within the first theme, biodiversity accounting entails a range of species monitoring and mapping practices stemming from
adoption of the broad policy approach indicated by DEFRA pertaining to biodiversity. Consequently, there are attempts to bring these
practices to a reporting forum, necessary to achieve levels of regional accountability for biodiversity performance. The third shifts
biodiversity accounting into the nexus of public sector decision making, whereby generated species mapping data feeds into regional
planning. This section considers each of these three aspects of practice in turn, and section 5 discusses the underpinning logics in
more detail.

4.1. Visibility and species monitoring

Turning first to biodiversity accounting as monitoring, a checklist of flora and fauna species and non-human species were pro-
duced and used during routine site inspections. The approach to checklist-based monitoring mirrors a typical approach to species
monitoring found in ecological studies (Penman et al., 2010). Checklists chiefly drew upon DEFRA and UK priority lists in order to
capture sightings of nationally important species. In addition, each council complemented the UK priority species with a number of
locally significant species and habitats (see Table 2).
The logic of local inclusion was predicated on a link between visibility and protection of biodiversity signalling a more obvious
ecological logic:
A need to see what is happening on the ground, so we can develop policies to protect our rich natural heritage (Biodiversity
officer, Scotland).
Mirroring approaches of localism underpinning sustainability and environmental governance in the UK public sector (Ball et al.,
2009; Thomson et al., 2014).
Hence, each council utilised their own respective list of priority species, outlining all UK priority-listed species from the UK
Biodiversity Action Plan (UK BAP) in the region. Correspondingly, these lists fed a number of priority-species checklists that construct
monitoring and cataloguing practices. Additional lists were compiled by volunteer teams composed of non-employees (including
nominated local wildlife trust and charity members), and regional species experts (including biologists, geographers, ornithologists
and academics).

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Table 2
Indicative species identified by council participants for monitoring purposes.
North Council East Council South Council Scotland Council

Species Rationale Species Rationale Species Rationale Species Rationale

House martin Locally important; monitoring Yellow wagtail Nationally important; Lapwing Nationally important; RSPB Mallard National and local importance; RPSB
habitats during breeding season monitoring during breeding concern over falling numbers concern over reducing numbers
season
Hen harrier National importance; RSPB Red Small skipper National importance. Orache Local importance; native in Hedgehog UK-wide priority species; some fear at

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conservation status: endangered National conservation priority habitat local level that species is threatened in
interest urban environment
Lapwing National importance; National Purple small- Locally significant Otter UK priority species; Local Otter UK BAP priority species; some local
conservation interest; specialist reed importance also stressed importance, but no extensive monitoring
monitoring conducted schemes in place yet
European water National importance; Recent rapid European water National importance European water National importance; Recent European water National importance; Recent rapid
vole decline vole vole rapid decline vole decline
Northern dart Nationally important Hedgehog UK-wide priority species; few Hedgehog UK-wide priority species;
specialist measures few specialist measures
Accounting Forum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
K. Weir Accounting Forum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Academic co-operation was sought in Scotland council in relation to bird sightings, and to monitor the chemical levels of a
number of former mining and industrial sites with a view to developing lowland and farmland ecosystems and habitats. This would
fulfil one of the long-term aims of Scotland council by allowing the creation of artificial nesting sites for RPSB-listed priority species.
This is a longer-term approach to ecosystem design and planning that promotes accountability for “the state of dwindling habitats”
(Biodiversity officer, Scotland).
Common to each council was the joint-deployment of both structured and unstructured monitoring programmes - structured
monitoring and surveillance centres on volunteers collating sightings in given ecosystems and recording communities of species
residing in each. Specialists were also invited to conduct specific species monitoring surveys leading to specific taxon-group mon-
itoring. Co-ordination with specialists was deemed necessary for determining satisfactory scaling of distribution patterns, which then
facilitates the creation of targets and benchmarks:
We have internal records from the last round of [specialist] monitoring and that became our benchmark for the next five-year
cycle – that we don’t want to fall below existing recorded levels of species [abundance] in the county… It’s not sophisticated, but
I’d like to think it provides focus, gives us a sense of what still needs to be done [to protect] species (biodiversity officer, Scotland).
Unstructured monitoring extends this by inviting local volunteers to submit data online covering sightings of specific species. For
example, East and North have online data portals that receives data regarding sightings of RSPB-listed protected and non-native bird
species. Visibility at structured and unstructured levels concern the abundance and distribution of species throughout regions, and
reflects an overt ecological logic.
Data on species’ visibility is further collated and used to construct different measures and metrics for species reporting practices.
For instance, East have used metrics that place greater emphasis on canal and aquatic species surveillance including recording
sightings on non-native aquatic vegetation and trends in non-native invasive species that can pose hazards to canal banks and their
immediate ecosystems. While South utilise specific indicators focusing on flora and fauna species, including some attempts to
measure health by disclosing measures of disease-levels in native tree species. But these were critiqued as lacking robust meth-
odologies, which resulted in generic measures of mean variances and trends being used for determining annual changes of protected
species populations.
Accounting imbues an object with properties, which creates visibility, and hence accountability (Catasús, 2008) engendered by
continuous monitoring and surveillance. This underpins general managerial action towards sustainability (Adams et al., 2014) as
accounting abstractions render organisational processes visible, and appeared to be central in the construction of checklists and
monitoring practices. Species lists appear as accounting abstractions enabling a form of ‘countability’ (Catasús, 2008) that recognises,
ostensively, biodiversity through the inclusion of species. This inclusion is used to construct simplistic accounting practices for
councils to disclose, and to report upon changes in the levels of observed biodiversity in given jurisdictions. These represent the most
salient features of visibility within biodiversity accounting, particularly as habitats - an important factor of biodiversity and sup-
porting non-human species - were notably absent from most discussions, save for a few examples highlighting the use of specialist
labour and input in assessing habitat conditions:
There are several metrics and indicators that we could draw on [to assess] habitat condition, such as the Habitat Suitability Index
or Preliminary Site Appraisal, but I can't do this and nobody in my team is qualified enough… We can calculate the final number,
the score and the rankings, but that's all generated by the data collected by other groups, other people… [Habitat] assessment is
important, for sure, but the actual work takes place out of the office… What we do is prepare habitat reports after the fact using
the judgements of ecologists… it gets a bit messy (biodiversity officer, Scotland).
Subsequently, both species and habitats become visible through ecological surveys which are then used as the basis to create
external reports for stakeholder use. The basis for visibility here appears to be closely linked to an ecological logic.

4.2. Visibility and species reporting

Mapping and cataloguing data are agglomerated at council level and provide the content of publicly disclosed online biodiversity
reports. The online reports chiefly detail efforts in achieving ecological sustainability and mitigations against biodiversity loss. Of
secondary concern is providing a degree of accountability for local management efforts on regional ecosystems. In this way, the
reports proclaim to assess biodiversity performance, often stated in relation to planned targets. Performance measurement in these
reports takes the form of a traffic-light indicator system plotting performance in several areas of ecological, biodiversity, bio-regional
and economic categories. These were further split into two areas of short-term monitoring and assessment and long-term im-
provement (see Table 3).
At this level of reporting, the purpose is to echo DEFRA’s (2007, 2012, 2015) broad policy of encouraging local accountability by
publishing reports that discloses biodiversity indicators and performance against stated targets. Reporting therefore attempts to
provide visibility of both locally and nationally important species and purposively has the dual aim of reporting locally, but providing
data for national reports. Yet, there is “relative freedom” (biodiversity officer, Scotland) for councils to choose which indicators to
disclose and hence how to represent, through accounting, the conditions of local ecosystems. This may imply that the meaning of
‘biodiversity’ at local levels changes to reflect local priorities and local strategies (Russell & Thomson, 2009; Thomson et al., 2014).
Indeed this was the case, in that all councils included specific local measures inflecting strategic priorities. In North council,
biodiversity reporting heavily stressed indicators relating to bird sightings and the richness of tree species in woodland conservation
areas and SSSIs. This emphasis was due to an existing, and co-funded, joint-project with RSPB. In East council, by contrast, indicators

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Table 3
Example traffic light indicators, Adapted extract from East Council biodiversity report 2015.
Assessment of change in the level of non-native invasive species in more than 10% of East Council's land area

Long-term (1960-2015) Short-term 2015

(2010-2015)

Freshwater RED: deteriorating significantly RED: AMBER:

invasive Cause: likely natural dispersal from non-native Deteriorating significantly Deteriorating at slower rate but
species population drifts from European waters Cause: increased dispersal of European improvement needed
species; due to warmer climate and waters; Cause: follows attempts to control
minor effects by human transport species in major rivers and canals
Coastal invasive N/A N/A N/A
species
Terrestrial invasive RED: RED: deteriorating significantly RED: deteriorating significantly
species deteriorating significantly Cause: deliberate human introduction of Cause: failure to control knotweed
Cause: likely natural dispersal from non-native invasive species; spread of knotweed exerting a negative impact on
population drifts from Europe; deliberate native species
human introduction of invasive species

relating to the condition of woodland areas were also present, but were de-emphasised in favour of indicators examining native and
non-native species, instilling biodiversity with a greater emphasis on species, and important distinctions drawn to their origin (or
emergence) within the local ecosystem.
In all councils, the chosen metrics and indicators were frequently disclosed separately in the form of stand-alone website dis-
closures. Reasons for this varied, but typically hinged on the co-existing partnerships and conservation schemes where mutual data
would be disclosed on partner websites. In the case of butterfly monitoring, for example, East council collated data from specific
butterfly sighting surveys which was then realised through the database of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme and was never fully
disclosed through East’s biodiversity reports. Equally certain aspects of biodiversity were subsumed by other ecological and sus-
tainable development functions within the councils. Quality of life indicators, including air management criteria (comprising in-
dicators such as percentage of CO2 emissions in local air) were not linked to biodiversity in all cases and were found, instead, in the
broader sustainability function of each council – hence progress towards habitat protection and improving biodiversity is not con-
sistently disclosed and is diffused across numerous different reports. This suggests biodiversity accounting suffers a lack of in-
tegration, or even hybridity (Thomson et al., 2014), with existing accounting and management systems. Targets for improving
biodiversity, therefore, remain separate from the council’s ecological activities, and their disclosure remains incomplete, which
suggests the possibility for different logics to be imposed in local contexts.
Despite the attendant promises of biodiversity reporting there is consistently low integration of indicators into existing sus-
tainability measurement systems (Battaglia, Passetti, Bianchi, & Frey, 2016; Russell & Thomson, 2009) meaning that biodiversity
reporting is disclosed separately, and may not attract as much internal attention as published reports. There is also low engagement
with biodiversity indicators which is inhibitive to advancing ecological decision-making (Battaglia et al., 2016; Thomson et al., 2014)
and does not facilitate transparent accountability (Ball & Milne, 2005). This may point to the competing presence between differing
logics (Lounsbury, 2008) or a stuckness between logics (Chenhall, Hall, & Smith, 2013) as existing accounting systems have not yet
fully integrated the evaluative principles behind the biodiversity indicators.
Furthermore, interviewees cited the prevalence of economic indicators in biodiversity reporting, representing a drift away from
ecological performance of biodiversity and into regional economic prosperity and the benefits of green infrastructure. For instance,
important disclosed metrics included land value of parks and green spaces, and valuations of the monetary regional benefit derived
from ecosystems-based recreation and tourism. Important metrics across all councils included the total number of visitors to regional
parks, the average monetary value per visitor, and narratives were disclosed promising investment in park infrastructure including
maintenance of existing green spaces (South), improving canal paths and the number of birds using canal waterways (East) and
protecting green belt areas (North).
In summation, these measures constrain the efficacy of ecologically-focused reporting towards a perspective of economic pros-
perity gained from effective regional management, implying that the treatment of ecosystems is something to gain monetary benefit
from, and that ‘biodiversity’ is a regional income source. This portrays nature as a regional asset, suggesting an over-riding economic
logic that subsequently shapes the visibility of nature.
Curiously, however, visibility of biodiversity presents a split for councils. On one hand, visibility is linked to indicating and
disclosing ecological performance, and on the other an economic performance is stressed. This presented a variegated perception as
to the usefulness of reporting schemes. Internally, council employees preferred to highlight economic indicators and downplay poor
results elsewhere:
Invasive species indicators are bad, yes, but that's only part of the story. Look at what we're achieving with park management:
visitors are up, satisfaction scores are consistently high (environmental officer, East).
While external stakeholders, such as wildlife trust members and volunteers, perceived reports to be of little worth:
The reports do nothing for me. It's meaningless tables, there’s no admission of what's actually happened and what they [councils]

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are doing about [poor performance]. It's not enough to describe trends, we need to know why this is happening and two sentences
tells me nothing. I feel more confused for actually reading [reports] (wildlife trust member, North).
I can’t see the value in any of this [report]. I just have questions… What is the council going to do about any of this? (Volunteer 4,
East).
Though reporting was intended to promote visibility of regional biodiversity and accountability for loss, the reports failed to
achieve this purpose. Internally the desire to heighten economic performance resulted in indicators being disclosed because these are
required components of the existing biodiversity reporting framework. This stressed the economic logic, and led to a sense of councils
going through the motions (Ball, 2005) regarding non-economic biodiversity indicators. Furthermore, a lack of complementary
narrative reporting was viewed with suspicion by external stakeholders. In both instances, the visibility of biodiversity accounting
was not sufficient to achieve desired actions. This is an interesting difference compared to private sector incarnations of biodiversity
reporting where disclosures encourage companies to take action which is more important than the reporting itself (Jonäll & Rimmel,
2016: 271). This may also signal that different stakeholders hold different values on the purpose of biodiversity reporting (Gaia &
Jones, 2017).
One area where this was further noted concerned environmental planning.

4.3. Visibility and environmental planning

For interviewees, biodiversity accounting advanced the potential for delivering biodiversity gains at the regional planning stage.
Interview narratives suggested multiple purposes by complementing existing traditional management and accounting planning
techniques in developing both urban and rural spaces, as well as expanding the information sources for conservation decision-
making.
A complementary deployment of informal and non-financial metrics and traditional costing techniques was encountered, with
council employees and decision makers using costing analysis to assist ecosystem and habitat assessment. The emphasis of cost
information was initially to supplement data on species distribution, with a view to “improve the numbers” (sustainability manager,
South) in each local site or ecosystem, but another logic was present to enhance discussions over future planning.
Decision makers frequently referred to biodiversity and cost data in short and immediate term planning, considering, for example,
how to encourage wildlife into urban green spaces, and to improve the recorded distribution of both protected and non-protected
species. This, for East, represented the cost of additional food sources for wildlife. And for South and North, habitat maintenance costs
were also key to judgement. For longer term planning, extending between 36–60 months, more financial information and cost data
was emphasised and seen as more useful in decision-making and scenario planning. Each council had a different range of criteria, but
common elements explicitly considered the costs of introducing new plant and floral species, as well as the potential impact on the
value of properties in planned tree planting sites:
We have a public initiative running right now… we’ve asked the public to geotag photos of wildflowers [in the region] so we know
where different species are… this gives an idea about parks and woodlands that might need a bit of a boost… ultimately, though,
the final decision will be the cost [to plant wildflowers] (biodiversity officer, Scotland).
In terms of using biodiversity accounting information to promote regional biodiversity, maps of protected or locally important
species were perceived to feed more directly into regional planning mechanisms than data on wildlife species. In South, the City Tree
Plan attempted to increase both the biodiversity of the region, and the greening of urban spaces, resulting in over 25,000 trees and
over 35 species being planted since 2013. Identification of which species to plant was determined by survey data and internal sets of
heuristics guiding decisions on which species to prioritise.
Heuristics concerning local biodiversity are operated on a rule-of-thumb basis, outlining the extent of new species that can be
introduced within the city. For urban areas, the heuristic denotes that no more than 30% from one particular tree family and a
maximum of 10% from one tree species is to be present in any given ecosystem or urban park. This is to ensure “some degree of
diversity” (regional planner, South) in the appearance of urban environments. Visibility of species, at this level, thus reflects an
attempt to improve biodiversity, but also to beautify the urban landscape, suggesting an anthropocentric core to planning (cf.
Sullivan, 2009), and the way in which accounting supports decision-making regarding nature (see Jones & Solomon, 2013).
This was intensified during discussions on which tree and plant species to introduce. Here the over-riding criterion was the
potential to mitigate the impact of carbon emissions. If a particular tree genus was seen as more adaptable and had a larger capacity
to assist in air pollution control it would be introduced, pending a cost-benefit analysis and existing trees would be identified for
removal. Decisions, particularly in the City Tree Plan, were rooted in what would “contribute to a better quality of experience [in the
city]” (regional planner, South).
This type of functionalist criteria supplanted desires for biodiversity - the desire to reduce carbon emissions, and “transition to a
low carbon economy” (sustainability manager, East) – and dominated interview discussions concerning biodiversity planning.
Furthermore, the absence of wildlife information undermined attempts to promote conservation.
In East, a community-wide project in a rural park was discussed, highlighting the aim of “giving something back for our
grandchildren and their children to enjoy” (regional planner, East). The project, introduced in August 2013, was conceived as a way
of transforming “dead space” into “something peaceful” (Ibid.) through the inclusion of trees and shrubs that could incubate the
growth of several local species of bats and birds, eventually leading to fostering close to 50 different species. However, by 2016, there
was significant mission drift as success became referred to in terms of present tree species, with carbon reduction targets firmly in

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mind:
[in the park] we've planted over 18,000 trees… these will last, and should be around, for 100 years. Minimum. This gives [us] a
huge boost to claimable carbon (regional planner, East).
I think we have over 25, maybe 26 or 27, different birds and other wildlife species [in the park]. I'm happy, I'd consider that a job
well done (sustainability manager, East).
The planning process therefore appeared to narrow what ‘biodiversity’ could mean, and objectives to reduce human impact, vis-à-
vis reducing regional carbon emissions, jarred with notions of promoting biodiversity through conservation.
This position was strengthened by East’s budget holder:
You've got to look at the big picture. [Conservation] costs money, and we need to get returns… we're under strain and under-
funded. I'm making cuts and trees and badgers aren't high on my priority list right now (accounts manager, East).
At this level of decision-making economic governance is taken as a priority over ecological imperatives to protect biodiversity.
Visibility of biodiversity therefore begins to inflect the negative presence of accounting (Catasús, 2008) and conservation becomes
delimited within financial considerations.
Additionally, this impacted upon accountability. Financial accountability for decisions was deemed more important amid dis-
jointed governmental guidance on ecological priorities and protection:
We’re told to do more with less, to protect [regional] ecosystems and habitats, but we’ve to do this while implementing budget
cuts… we’re more accountable for public money than we are for species loss. It sounds horrible, but its’ true (sustainability
manager, South).
This lack of budget slack also impacted upon planning for ecological betterment:
You can’t afford to do everything. You’re forced to choose between plans. Maybe something looks better on paper, but if there’s no
money, it simply won’t be done (regional planner, East).
In summary, the efforts of biodiversity accounting practices and processes were aligned with capturing the visibility of local
protected species, including measures related to distribution and abundance of both native and non-native species. Allying this to
biodiversity concerns, the accounting measures served a dual purpose in reporting respective levels of biodiversity in each region,
and in providing an impetus for bioregional management - albeit the latter purpose was often imbued with economic imperatives.
This is not new, and is explored in more detail in Section 5.

5. Multiple logics affecting biodiversity accounting

This gradual entanglement of instrumental and economic considerations into the biodiversity accounting practices rendered some
aspects of biodiversity invisible within each council; and this is where economic logics were imposed by council accountants. The
absence of accounting records and activities is typically viewed with suspicion (Catasús, 2008), especially in the case of ecological
phenomena (Russell & Thomson, 2009: 237). Hence in two related areas - offsetting and biodiversity loss, and conservation man-
agement - the presence of economic logics shapes biodiversity accounting more prominently.

5.1. Offsetting and biodiversity loss

The first area concerns biodiversity loss and the complications arising from offsetting. A developing practice across councils
entailed schemes to produce biodiversity loss reports - seen as a starting point to promote accountability for damage to local species
and habitats. Motivated by the threat of biodiversity loss, separate indicators and metrics were utilised to catalogue and map species
in local ecosystems.
In addition to the mapping and cataloguing practices, councils used particular acceptance thresholds for the loss of locally
important species, and for UK-wide protected species and habitats. Thresholds are relatively low in comparison to desired levels, and
once a threshold is breached, and crucially disclosed in reports, accountability for losses is achieved. However, baseline values for
habitat conditions and species distribution was difficult to obtain:
There is considerable seasonal variability [in observed species numbers] and we realistically only do a few surveys a year… so, for
example, a survey in breeding season might artificially record a high number of wagtails, and the next year we survey outside of
season [and it] produces a much lower number… It's the same for migration: you get higher or lower numbers of sightings
depending on when on in the migration cycle you do the survey… We have to take, and it's not perfect, take a mean estimate from
the data and that becomes the annual headline figure we use for setting a standard baseline (environmental officer, East).
Target-setting is therefore less reliable if underlying data is uncertain, and measures of biodiversity loss subsequently become
misstated. Equally, it is not always possible to evaluate the presence of all species in a given habitat:
Along canals and rivers we can't always guarantee the presence of freshwater fish so we focus on the protected ones like lampreys
(environmental officer, East).
Plants are easier to track over time. They don’t migrate. Fish, on the other hand, are tricky. It's really hard to reliably monitor

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fish… species like brown trout are relatively common, so we pick them up more [during observations and surveys]… it's definitely
easier to measure abundance or loss of brown trout (environmental officer, North).
I don’t like to admit this, but I do feel we could do more to monitor insects (sustainability manager, South).
Certain species, owing to visibility or priority status, were afforded more attention in monitoring schemes. Mammals and birds,
for instance, warranted greater conservation effort than insect and invertebrate species. Due to this perceived higher value for
ecological conservation (cf. Czech, Krausman, & Borkhataria, 1998) mammalian and avian species attracted more resources and were
made more visible in biodiversity accounting practices. Hence their loss would be adequately recognised. However, species with
lower perceived importance are mostly invisible to existing metrics. Loss of these species is not completely accounted for under
existing practices and disclosed estimates of regional loss are thus incomplete.
The link between visibility and planning discussed above was subverted here through offsetting schemes. As a process, offsetting
attempts to measure the proposed scaling of biodiversity loss – through either loss of species or habitats – in regional planning and
development. The key rationale is to estimate the impact of proposed urban development through measuring the extent of loss of
wildlife and habitats against any proposed gains made once development is complete. Offsetting works on the basis that negative
impacts (in the forms of habitat and species loss) must be compensated for so that the local ecosystem is not worse-off after de-
velopment. During the interview period DEFRA allowed for exchangeability between habitat and species in the offsetting process: if
proposed development includes introducing ‘high value’ and distinctive species, or if poor condition habitats are expected to be
replaced with higher quality habitats.
This was utilised in all councils, explicitly in South council, on a 1-for-1 basis and was central in the City Tree Plan where existing
trees and plants in urban green space were replaced by tree species with higher sequestration rates. To be sure, evaluation of plants
and trees was the major evaluative criteria in constructing offsetting estimates for the city tree project:
We know about nesting patterns, but there wasn't anything to worry about… no priority species, no RSPB red listed species were
[in the park], so we focused our [impact] assessments on the trees and the plants (sustainability manager, South).
Tree species were thus singled out for evaluation, and featured in biodiversity offsetting on reductive bases, meaning that insects
and birds – that would otherwise be present in the surveyed area as a result of the tree species – were not accounted for and remained
invisible during evaluative surveys of sites. Consequently, loss as a result of direct human impact - through destruction of low value
habitats and removal of low value plant species - is not reported fully by councils. While some loss is made visible and is compensated
for, other loss is barely acknowledged. There are, as a result, uncertainties arising from quantification within offsetting schemes
(Cuckston, 2013; Cuckston, forthcoming; Tregidga, 2013; Sullivan & Hannis, 2015, 2017) which raises concerns regarding the ac-
countability and impacts of local activities (Boiral, 2016; Ferreira, 2017). Offsetting also distorts mapping and distribution analysis,
as it can be “difficult” to trace changes in species numbers over time, especially if the area has “significant” ongoing development
(EM, East). Habitat valuations, a necessary component of offsetting, exhibit the same distortive effect due to accreted quantification
of impacts at the local and regional levels:
At the very least we have to maintain baseline figures at distinctive habitats and ecosystems, but everything else [non-distinct
local sites and habitats] across the region can be simplified if there is a possibility to replace existing wildlife or plants with more
significant species that offer a longer-term gain. Plants, you know, that have higher carbon absorbing rates, for example, could, in
theory, replace existing flowers at any non-protected or non-significant site … so long as the recovery and replacement costs are
low and there is no net regional loss, we have a net positive effect across the whole county, then there won't be substantial losses at
local sites (biodiveristy officer, Scotland; emphasis added)
Encouragingly, senior employees and decision makers readily agreed that the extent of biodiversity loss could be obscured by
offsetting and other disclosed statistics, meaning that accountability for biodiversity loss is heavily reliant upon the indicators used by
councils (cf. Russell & Thomson, 2009). Yet, no attempts to overcome such limitations were voiced, giving the impression that
councils were content with existing levels of loss, or at least their lack of ‘measured’ culpability in promoting loss.
This was further exacerbated through self-presentational narratives that presented loss in terms of nature-related events and
effects. In North council, for instance, the narrative followed by the environmental officer attributed falls in observed species to
winter weather. Firstly the weather impinged upon observation schedules and thus affected attempts to account for local species and
habitats, in that the wet winter weather made it “tough to get out there and get reliable estimates” (environmental officer, North).
And secondly, species loss for the entire year was linked to extreme weather events in winter 2015:
This winter has been chaotic… we lost trees to [2015 UK storms], you know the wind and the rain really hit [us] hard (sus-
tainability manager, North).
In Scotland council, disagreement over the metrics used to measure loss on a joint-SSSI survey with academics was also used to
justify a lack of complete survey data:
We wanted to use simple measures, but these academics brought all sorts of expensive-looking equipment and, I guess, wanted to
justify bringing them… we couldn’t process or understand [collected data] with our [existing IT systems]… we went back and
forth to the academics trying to understand all of this [data]… At the end of the day we could only go with what we could process
so, probably, not everything was disclosed (biodiversity officer, Scotland).
In these instances, species loss and its measurement was attributed to extreme and external causes. Hence it becomes difficult to

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achieve accountability for loss because the non-human impact on species population is stressed over the human-impact to the point
that any loss becomes the fault of natural causes such as weather. Though biodiversity loss represents one area of the broad suite of
biodiversity accounting practices, narratives and disclosures such as these above become anathema to instantiating a degree of
accountability for the impact of council-led activities and decisions on habitats and species.
Visibility is crucial to attaining accountability for organisational impacts on the environment and local ecosystems, as visibility
encourages an openness and transparency (Gray, 1992: 415), serving as the platform for an accountability for human impact (Jones &
Solomon, 2013). Hiding loss in offsetting schemes and in external-attributional narratives negates the possibility of a consistent
biodiversity accountability; here the “absence of environmental accounts closes the door to an accountability setting” (Catasús, 2008:
1009) and councils are able to continue daily operations without being held to account over negative impacts they can produce on
local wildlife. Non-inclusion and invisibility of indicators and metrics for biodiversity loss are less likely to be subjected to evaluation
(cf. Russell & Thomson, 2009: 241), and hence the picture of biodiversity loss in the UK public sector is only ever partial.
This sense of invisibility stimulated by the economic logic, therefore, has important political effects in rendering certain species as
not worthy of attention in measuring biodiversity loss; a point further intensified through conservation management practices.

5.2. Economic logic of conservation

One of the key aspects to the council-wide use of biodiversity accounting featured proposed links to the regional planning
function. The use of traditional management accounting techniques, including cost-benefit analysis and scenario planning, were
suggested to "gain a better understanding" (regional planner, East) of implications and outcomes of potential interventions into
conservation activities and planning for sustainable development. However, more traditional techniques of managerial decision
making frequently advance economic value as the dominant logic. This suggests that the main response to broader institutional
uncertainty has been to augment traditional accounting models through the inclusion of biodiversity accounting information in order
to partially compromise against the ambiguities involved in ecological measurements and evaluations (cf Chenhall et al., 2013).
Decision makers and planners in each council, for instance, discussed the use of cost-benefit analysis to underscore interventions
into local ecosystems. East's city tree project offers a compelling example, whereby subsequent scenario planning placed greater
emphasis on the monetary costs and valuation projections of maintenance, tree planting costs and associated monetary gains that
could be made through increased footfall to urban spaces and parks:
there is definitely a willingness to pay to access some of our better parks because those are the ones we've invested in… [visitor]
satisfaction scores are the highest in these parks, we've really made the effort by bedding-in a huge range of plants… it just makes
the park look nicer and any [plant] additions have to add to what we already have [in a given park]. That's the balance: does it
look nice versus how much does it cost. There is a balancing point, but [new plants] has to be cost effective and bring in more
visitors. That's the model we're hoping to move forward with (sustainability manager, East).
Though this is a more extreme account, it is typical of the over-riding economic logic that was imposed upon measurements of
ecological phenomena and eschews inherent logics that address the ecological. Contrary to existing studies (e.g., Contrafatto & Burns,
2013; Contrafatto, Thomson, & Monk, 2015; Thomson et al., 2014; Busco et al., 2017), this suggests that traditional accounting
techniques and practices cannot address multiple interests and objectives as the economic logic is particularly compelling for ac-
countants.
In part this is due to the pressure to satisfy simultaneous economic and ecological sustainability criteria, but long-term actions
were only understood in monetary terms and reflected a stronger economic logic – a council outlook encountered elsewhere (Ball,
2005). Furthermore, frequent links to the contemporary UK public sector context of cost cutting were made; for both sustainability
employees and decision makers this affected the potential for promoting biodiversity in future urban and rural planning. Subse-
quently, long-term conservation has the potential to be positioned as an investment if there are equivalent longer or medium term
financial gains. This might mean that any conflict between conservation objectives and economic ones is defused through the de-
coupling of biodiversity accounting from established or formal accounting systems in each council. In effect, such decoupling would
suggest superficiality in pursuit of conservation goals, and that biodiversity accounting is used to symbolically to abide by the
required institutional pressures (cf. Meyer & Rowan, 1977); here such pressure extends to the protection of species or habitats.
This places biodiversity in a trade-off against public financing that construes economic and ecological goals as mutually exclusive
- at least in the short to medium term. Hence, though biodiversity accounting in the current paper was evinced to protect and promote
the conservation of certain species or habitats, protection mechanisms become deprioritised in the resultant planning functions:
It's a delicate balance - you can't get everything right. You can't try to meet all these [biodiversity and species] targets and do
everything. There's not enough money for it. And besides the [measures] are like a guide and I'm sorry but meeting your targets on
planting new trees means you miss something else along the way, maybe you can't afford to build bird sanctuaries [pause] if you
go for trees, maybe you pull money from water to air quality surveys (sustainability manager, East).
Within this, an economic logic and decision-making framework implicitly appears where ecological value is fragmented along
both pragmatic and idealist parameters, which is then set against an explicitly economic set of values; and though biodiversity is
accounted for, the data allows for an economic (and a use) value to be determined for a range of species in a given ecosystem, and
urban space. This economic value then becomes part of an economic impact assessment for each proposed intervention in increasing
species numbers, improving habitats, or preventing losses in local populations. This is present in the form of repeated cost-benefit and
scenario analyses for each intervention. And alongside this, actions related to promoting a particular species or ecosystem are

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assessed for their potential in economising land management operations or maximising budget efficiency.
The temporality of ecologically-aligned accounting systems is focused more on longer-term considerations than the economically-
focused traditional accounting system. Here the economic logic of managing biodiversity through budgetary control evinces a short-
term orientation. Within institutional theory decoupling mechanisms are likely to fail in the longer-term (e.g. Tracey et al., 2011)
resulting in the advancement of compromising mechanisms (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2001). Instances of compromise might
result in selective elements of competing logics being combined through the accounting system (Busco et al., 2017; Thomson et al.,
2014). In a situation of compromise, one particular logic might be fully complied with, alongside elements of another logic, which
enables an organisation to respond to different institutional demands (Chenhall et al., 2013; also Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). And this
compromise is present in strategies guiding conservation.
Resulting strategies stress inaction, where the minimal aim is to maintain existing rates of species abundance and distribution and
to do so within budgeted costs margins. Even for biodiversity losses the strategy is one of minimal intervention given budgetary and
time constraints:
The [species distribution targets] are valid for five years, but if I can't see the money to introduce water voles, then my hands are
tied and we can't do anything meaningful. Even if we could do something with no money, it'll probably not show up for a few
years (sustainability manager, South).
The lack of available monetary resources created trade-offs within councils regarding which conservation schemes to pursue. In
the case of Scotland council, this occurred during protracted discussions between biodiversity employees and budget holders,
eventually being resolved through cost-benefit analyses:
I want to do everything in my power to approve all of the [conservation] projects suggested, but there has to be tangible results at
the end. We can't do invest and we can protect every single green space in [the county] (Financial manager, Scotland)
We [biodiversity team] presented our case to [budget holders] and we got told, pretty quick, to wait in line and produce more cost
accounts… [financial manager] sees this as a cost, but it's an investment. He knows we have to prioritise ecosystem protection, but
he can't see the investment unless we can show some sort of financial return (biodiversity officer, Scotland)
A position exaggerated through austerity:
There will always be conflict between what we want to do, and what we can do. It's basic budgeting to identify what should be
done to maximise your spending, and their [biodiversity team] cost-benefit analyses were lists of costs, money going out, and not
much quantifiable benefits. It was all money going out, and nothing coming back. Look, the austerity and cuts imposed on us [by
UK government], we have to make cuts everywhere… conservation plans are fair game for spending review (financial manager,
Scotland).
These exchanges were typical of the anxieties shared by budget holders and financial managers in each council, as austerity
became an important consideration that impinged upon conservation decision-making. Public sector budget constraints have pre-
cluded ecological protection and sustainability in the UK previously (Young, Nagpal, & Adams, 2016), and findings herein articulate
these same problems regarding biodiversity loss and conservation. Here, an economic logic constructs conservation as a ‘cost’ or an
‘investment’ and is used to actively close-down possible schemes on the grounds of funding constraints. Austerity is further used as a
justification for inaction with notions that councils “cannot afford” to engage in schemes that would prevent biodiversity loss (Fi-
nancial manager, South).
Though accounting practices appear to be shifting between these economic and ecological logics, again the economic logic is
eventually imposed over the ecological logic, and accounting practices tighten to squeeze out, rather than accommodate, ecological
objectives. While previous studies propose that conflicting logics can be accommodated or mediated by accounting, perhaps through
ad hoc governance and control mechanisms (Thomson et al., 2014) or by redrawing plans to recognise the co-presence of conflicting
logics (Busco et al., 2017), the accounting systems in each council were unable to mediate between the apparent competing interests
of financial management and protecting species or promoting conservation. Indeed the repeated use of traditional accounting
techniques and decision-making tools, such as cost-benefit analysis, signals this by reframing ecological phenomena into financial
numbers leading to decisions oriented around financial implications rather than ecological ones.
In institutional terms, purposive actions create, maintain and modifying surrounding institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006:
216) and acknowledges the importance of creating new institutional arrangements. Yet, the findings herein suggest that any ‘new’
arrangement stemming from biodiversity accounting appears to be mostly symbolic or superficial and geared towards legitimising
existing arrangements. Engagement with a weak commitment to conservation gives primacy to economic logics, and results in
additional cost savings being pursued by councils. Though accounting numbers can exert some form of pressure through the presence
of different non-financial logics (Järvinen, 2016), this has not been the case regarding existing biodiversity accounting practices in
the councils herein. This may indicate just how resistant accounting can be to modification, even when provoked to include wider
forms of accounting representations of ecological phenomena (Ball, 2005; Järvenpää & Länsiluoto, 2016; Russell et al., 2017: 1446).
At the extremes, biodiversity, therefore, becomes absent from biodiversity accounting - itself now composed of financial records -
and species or habitat loss remains invisible to the imperatives of council management.

6. Summary and analysis

If biodiversity accounting represents attempts to calculate human impact on wildlife and natural spaces, by making visible the

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human impact, then findings herein reveal a number of important limitations.

Firstly, the persistent economic logic at the core of council-led biodiversity accounting consequently constructs accountability
regimes in a dominantly financial mode. Accountability is multiple and relational (e.g. Norris & O’Dwyer, 2004), yet the calculative
demands for financial accountability appear to supersede attempts to cultivate accountability for the human impact on biodiversity.
This mirrors existing PSO-led engagement with biodiversity (Gaia & Jones, 2017; Samkin & Schneider, 2010; Schneider et al., 2014),
signifying that the pragmatic and economic approach promotes a narrow version of accountability.
Even when an ecological logic prevailed, there was no push towards enforcing accountability; cases of species and habitat loss, for
example, were framed in a strategic manner that deflected attention away from human-centric issues and interventions, instead
shifting blame to extreme weather events. Thereupon accountability for human-based actions and consequences of ecological (in)
action is not achieved, and the effectiveness of accounting for biodiversity is delimited.
Hence accounting for biodiversity can lead to possible declines in population sizes or thus subvert the intentionality of fostering
accountability by disclosing changes in distribution and abundance of locally important species, and shifts in the conditions of
habitats. Whether this is due solely to the presence of economic logics or to the functionalist and anthropocentric nature of the
calculations is debatable, but what is certain is that accounts of biodiversity loss are incomplete, partial and ineffective.
Specifically, the role of humans played in stimulating biodiversity loss is ignored. This is important as social theorists and
scientists recognise the impact that humanity has on climate change and on ecosystems to the point that deleterious effects are seen as
anthropogenic (see Ellis & Ramankutty, 2008). That attempts to promote recovery of nationally threatened and locally important
species do not recognise this human-induced impact, is to deny that change is stimulated by human activities. This may therefore
curtail the scope of biodiversity accounting in asserting accountability for ecological damage.
The findings further suggest a wide range of heuristics used by decision makers to not only account for species in local habitats,
but to control them. These have also been co-opted by an economic logic, leading to monetary values being ascribed to species and
habitats that supplant intrinsic values. Resultantly, nature becomes preserved only for human or monetary gain and thus enables a
deeper commodification of nature. That protected species and habitats are drawn into this same commodification is worrying as
attempting to sustain or protect species for anthropocentric or economic benefit can lead to a disavowal of a species’ intrinsic value
(Milne, 1991), and species are kept alive only for their potential to deriving economic advantage or benefit from.
There is a noted need for PSOs to focus on the governance of sustainability (Ball, 2005; Russell & Thomson, 2009; Thomson et al.,
2014) and biodiversity (Jones, 2014a; Dey & Russell, 2014; Gaia & Jones, 2017), which enables understanding of the consequences of
unsustainability and biodiversity loss. But governance of adopted biodiversity accounting practices have borne the brunt of political
inertia through budget cuts and financial restraints in the UK public sector. These findings are largely commensurate with those also
noting that the cost-saving motive negatively contributes to poor understandings of sustainability and biodiversity in both private and
public sector settings (e.g, Spence, 2007; Ball, 2005; Weir, 2016).
Moreover, this signals the disabling presence of economic logics – consistent with extant findings that the pursuit of ecological
goals can be damaged by a prevailing economic logic, or the financial benefit discourse (Narayanan & Adams, 2017) as nature is
represented in terms of what economic benefits may be derived from it. If biodiversity accounting is not able to incorporate com-
peting logics in a way that a co-mingling of economic and non-economic objectives preserves any ecological intent, there is a danger
that quantification of biodiversity results solely in monetary representations of nature (Barut et al., 2016; Cuckston, forthcoming;
Gaia & Jones, 2017; Sullivan & Hannis, 2017; Weir, 2018). A move that disables attempts to preserve nature and halt ecological
damage (Russell et al., 2017), and instead offers a regressive agenda for change by punitively viewing nature through calculative
practices rather than promoting the conservation of at-risk species (cf. Maroun & Atkins, 2018; Cuckston, forthcoming), particularly
as the decision-making focus is not grounded in ecological logics (such as reversing biodiversity loss).
In problematising biodiversity accounting (Jones & Solomon, 2013; Jones, 2014a;), and sustainability more generally (e.g., Milne
& Gray, 2013) some have suggested that whilst capitalist deployment of ecological accounts does have deleterious effects on sus-
tainability, that the underpinning philosophies are deeply rooted in an anthropocentric worldview that dominates how practices are
shaped and understood. Subsequently valuations, goals and strategies are constructed to consider, or to maximise economic benefit.
This, in short, precludes the possible inclusion of a deeper understanding of ecological benefit, as attempts to promote ecological
accounting narrowly capture vested economic interests (Gaia & Jones, 2017; Weir, 2018). Furthermore, this suggests that tensions in
ecologically-aligned accounting practices are not simply a contextual factor, but may be inherent to accounting for nature (Cooper,
1992; Cuckston, 2018a; Milne & Gray, 2013; Milne, 1991), and that attempts to account for species may be exposed to the same
immanent problematic (Gray & Milne, 2018; Sullivan, 2009). This may also signal an ontological shift within councils that con-
solidates the view that nature is of best use to humanity as a service provider (Büscher et al., 2014; Sullivan, 2009) and that non-
human species are only of use to humanity as efficient value creators, suggesting an optimal economics that permits extinction of
inefficient species (cf. Spash, 2015: 542-5).
All of this does propose that there is much to be done in proceeding with biodiversity accounting in the UK public sector.
However, these cases present some progressive elements that may be a cause for hope.
Firstly, findings suggest that external stakeholders are engaged in the use of biodiversity reporting, but that their needs are not
currently met. Furthermore, the desire for decision-makers within the councils to expand on the limited scope of existing reporting
frameworks suggests that there may be scope for a more expansive form of biodiversity reporting. The current practices encountered
in councils are narrow, which may be due to the heavy emphasis placed upon using metrics that catalogue singular species in a given
region rather than addressing the causes for changes species distribution and to the underlying conditions of habitats. This constrains
the possibility for accountability as it assumes the main users of biodiversity information are governmental agencies interested chiefly
in regional mapping, which also deprioritises socio-political initiatives. There exists some potential to explore biodiversity accounting

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as a form of socio-political action, explicitly with the consent and involvement of motivated stakeholders (Barut et al., 2016; Boiral &
Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Gaia & Jones, 2017; Kuruppu & Milne, 2010). This may draw upon alternative methodologies and
measures for impact assessments, which go beyond abundance and distribution statistics prevalent in the councils (e.g., Freeman &
Groom, 2013). Such moves beyond mapping is suggested for biodiveristy (Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017) and in extinction
accounting (Weir, 2018). Moreover, narrative reporting on schemes and the management of risks facing threatened habitats and
species are beginning to appear in the corporate context (Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Saravanamuthu & Lehman, 2013) and
recent conclusions offer a collaborative approach across multiple stakeholders (Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Gaia & Jones,
2017), especially if efforts are positioned along ecological logics to prevent species loss and extinction (Maroun & Atkins, 2018).
Explorations of dialogic reporting for sustainability (Contrafatto et al., 2015; Thomson, Dey, & Russell, 2015) might therefore offer a
basis for expanding biodiversity reporting and provide alternative accounts of species and their habitats. This may allow for com-
peting logics that challenge the financial (mono)logic underpinning cost-benefit analyses that depoliticise biodiversity disclosures
and construct loss as an economic variable (cf. Brown & Dillard, 2014). If the stated logic of accounting interventions into biodiversity
governance and management in the UK public sector are grounded on providing visibility, dialogic or multiple stakeholder reporting
may provide this in a way that extends accountability and confronts the socio-political and ethical implications of accounting that are
absent from current attempts to provide visibility to species and habitat loss. There are already attempts to do this with integrated
reporting (Maroun & Atkins, 2018), which offers some hope for the development of biodiversity accounting that is grounded in
ecological objectives.
Secondly, that local reports are compiled and attempt to capture the localism of species and habitats suggests a deeply contextual
nature to biodiversity accounting that respects local factors and influences on local ecosystems. Any subsequent attempts to develop
models of biodiversity accounting may be hindered by the insistence of a standardised system to account for species, especially when
local concerns are accentuated by council accountants (cf. Ferreira, 2017). That the findings herein point to the persistence of locally-
developed measures, albeit with mixed experiences and results, it suggests that biodiversity accounting does have the capacity to
allow for contextual factors. Further entrenching these indicators within a non-economic framework of valuation (see Milne, 1991;
Siddiqui, 2013) may provide a basis for valuation that recognises the ‘local’ as a set of non-economic values; however it is likely that
offsetting practices, which root decision-making in economic values, may be a potential block to recognising biocentric or instrinsic
value at the local level (Cuckston, 2013; Cuckston, forthcoming; Tregidga, 2013; Sullivan & Hannis, 2015).

7. Conclusion

This paper was motivated by the possibility that biodiversity accounting could enhance existing schemes in preventing further
biodiversity loss in the UK by focusing on the role of biodiversity accounting practices and metrics in the public sector. The apparent
motivation for DEFRA in driving the adoption of biodiversity reporting and accounting for the UK concerns the impact of human
activity upon levels of biodiversity. However, in light of the findings, serious concerns on how effectively biodiversity accounting can
report on human impact and, how this prevents further species and habitat loss, persist. Through engagement with an institutional
logics framework, the paper demonstrated that the undergirding economic logic of decision-making often excluded ecological ra-
tionalities and objectives, and led to a mostly financial representation of nature.
These findings suggest a number of problematic outcomes in accounting for biodiversity. It is difficult to reduce a complex issue
such as probing the human impact on non-human species and habitats to a series of generic indicators and accounting measures. This
can intensify underlying issues as indicators can distort measurement because certain species, either not captured or prioritised by
metrics, remain invisible; this leads also to a narrow and metric-led approximation of impact that limits the potentiality for estab-
lishing accountability. The explicit motivation towards accounting for the impact of human activity is to promote ecological ac-
countability, but the purpose becomes obscured when mired in monitoring practices and disclosures that have the power to exclude
acknowledgement of the human role in driving biodiversity loss. Subsequently, accounting for biodiversity loss is only ever partial,
and accountability for this loss is not effectively discharged. The paper offers an original contribution to existing ecological ac-
counting literature by highlighting the central problematic of representing nature through accounting (Sullivan & Hannis, 2017;
Milne & Gray, 2013; Cuckston, forthcoming), and extends this contribution into the fast-growing area of biodiversity accounting.
Existing studies on PSOs have largely evaluated the narratives and content of biodiversity reports (Barut et al., 2016; Gaia &
Jones, 2017; Schneider et al., 2014), but analysis of the motivations and logics of biodiversity accounting are often missing. Councils
are uniquely placed to explore such motivations and logics as these PSOs have a dual role in both promoting conservation, and to
deliver public services in a fiscally responsible manner - hence they offer an opportunity to explore the emergence and conflict
between economic/ecological goals. The paper therefore makes a second and significant original contribution by exploring an em-
pirical case where the rationale for biodiversity accounting is shaped by institutional logics. While studies note the persistence of
instrumental rationality for pursuing biodiversity accounting (Van Liempd & Busch, 2013; Boiral, 2016; Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria,
2017; Gaia & Jones, 2017; Russell et al., 2017; Weir, 2018; Cuckston, forthcoming), the paper refines this by exploring tensions
between ecological and economic logics, and demonstrates an explicit economic orientation to the resolution of conflict when using
biodiversity accounting in PSOs. This develops the extant literature by highlighting the conditions under which the economic/
ecological conflict is manifested in PSOs, and the subsequent impacts on conservation activities.
Although biodiversity accounting is a relatively new venture, it is not yet clear whether the underlying attempts to account for
biodiversity are adequate in accepting accountability for an organisation’s impact on local habits and species. Equally, it is not clear
whether councils (or PSOs generally) discharge this accountability effectively. But the presence of aggravating factors, leading to a
compromise of sorts between the intentions of biodiversity accounting and the results in practice, suggests fairly narrow motivations

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for its use. Consequently, it becomes prudent to issue a broad invitation for future research in this area, to examine whether economic
and functionalist logics lie at the heart of all accounting for biodiversity, or whether this becomes a distortion revealed only in certain
organisational contexts.

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