Accounting for Green Infrastructure
Often times, despite its multitude of economic, environmental, and social benefits, green infrastructure is overlooked or an afterthought in major capital allocation and investment decisions. The public sector is in need of a sound approach to accounting for green infrastructure assets. The proposed changes to the Public Sector Accounting Board’s (PSAB) Statement of Concepts and Statement of Principles are an important step in addressing this need.
In our response forwarded to PSAB, GIO offered four recommendations and next steps for future drafts that will help to ensure equitable and consistent management of green infrastructure assets in the same framework as its grey infrastructure counterparts.
These included:
- Including projects addressing inherited natural asset issues on the PSAB Agenda
- Continuing with the planned creation of the “Accumulated Other” component
- Develop a standard for green infrastructure asset valuation
- Develop a statement of recommended practice (SORP) to provide guidance on green infrastructure asset reporting
You can find the entire response here.