Keystone accountabilities for nature recovery: constructing people-nature relations in the environmental sustainability strategies of Olympic sports

Abstract

Critical accounting scholarship has long exposed the limitations of functional approaches to environmental accountability, yet questions remain as to how alternative forms of accountability might be conceptualised to impel organisational responses to nature loss. This paper advances critical perspectives on environmental accountability by bringing ecological theory into dialogue with social theory. Drawing on the ecological idea of keystone actors, it develops the concept of keystone accountability , formed as an organisation explains its agency to shape social-ecological systems. The paper mobilises this concept in an analysis of the environmental sustainability strategies of the International Federations governing Olympic sports – organisations that occupy keystone positions through dominance of global sporting events, authority over rules and technical standards, and coordination of transnational sporting communities. The analysis reveals marked variation in how these organisations recognise, articulate, or indeed neglect their responsibilities for constructing people-nature relations that advance nature recovery. Keystone accountability reframes responsibilities for nature recovery by foregrounding the diversity and complexity of people-nature relations constructed across organisational life. Critical accounting scholarship can thus become a force for advancing nature recovery by exploring and intervening in how people and organisations account for – and in so doing construct – their relations with, their connections to, nature.