Conference on Environmental Management and Accounting in Portugal, VIIth GECAMB 2016

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23 November 2016

Karishma Ansaram is a MSc Carbon Finance student who recently attended the Conference on Environmental Management and Accounting in Portugal, supported by funding from the Business School’s Santander initiative.

The 2016 CSEAR conference is the very first academic conference that I attended and had a poster presentation on “Environmental Management Systems and financial performance: The case of listed companies in Mauritius.” The conference lasted for two days: 3 to 4 November 2016 in IPCA Campus, Barcelos. During the conference, I had the opportunity to experience the borders of environmental accounting and sustainability, enjoy the interaction and interpretation of researchers to theorise on what was going on in the field.

Amongst all the discussions taking place on climate change on an international level, during these two days, as a postgraduate student, I revisited on what is my role as an academic and as a researcher thereby a motivation to write about issues that really matter for sustainability and to make a positive contribution towards existing literatures. I attended a diverse range of presentations by different scholars from Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Columbia, UK, Mauritius and much more. The topics discussed ranged from corporate frauds, blue accounting, greenhouse gas emission to sustainable enterprise theory.

The most motivating part of the conference was the closing ceremony of the conference which was led by a broadcaster from BBC Wildlife and Planet Earth documentaries. Through the session, the latter showed us and made us the feel the beauty of our beloved planet earth and how it needs our help. We were invited to pledge that we shall save our planet earth.

My experience and gain from this conference have not only been in the terms of meeting researchers and looking for potential research topic, rather I have come back with the willpower to make a difference for the planet earth and to promote sustainability be it through academic research or any other way because I believe small steps matter. I would like to thank Santander funding from the University of Edinburgh for having providing me the financial support in attending this conference.

Karishma Ansaram, MSc Carbon Finance. Find more information about Santander funding under Opportunities.