Natural Resources Balance Sheet: Research Progress and Prospects

The preparation of natural resources balance sheet has become an important part of building ecological civilization after the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, and since then an increasing number of relevant studies have been reported. This paper focuses on the connotation and preparation basis of natural resource balance sheet, the content of compilation, the accounting method and the research status of the report system by sorting out relevant literature at home and abroad. After reviewing the existing viewpoints, we define the concept of natural resource assets, natural resource liabilities and natural resources net assets and their corresponding accounting contents. In addition, we also analyze and compare the corresponding accounting methods according to the different natures of the accounting content. On this basis, we put forward a series of advice, including the accounting theory supplemented mainly with statistical accounting methods, ecological civilization building and green political achievements target, and adopting a unified and feasible accounting standard system.