Social accounting has never really been part of the traditional orthodoxy of Western accounting theory or practice. It remains, however, both a fertile area of insights and ideas as well as a· potentially important social mechanism in the processes of accountability, control and the development of democracy. This paper (a) reviews the principal themes of social accounting as revealed by Western accounting literature and western organisational practice; (b) attempts to explain what social accounting is and can be; and (c) and to illustrate some of the problems preventing its wider acceptance. The paper then reviews two major and potentially influential themes: first, the notion of accountability and its implications for accounting; and, second, the new demands that the escalating environmental crisis throughout the world is placing upon the accounting process. It is argued that these two issues are the most important and demanding which accounting has had to face and this recent phenomenon of environmentalism has the most profound implications - not just for accounting but also for the survival of the species.