Seminar topic: Navigating Expertise in a Changing Climate

About Tanya:

Tanya is a Scientia Fellow at the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response and School of Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, UNSW Business School. 

Tanya is recognised internationally as a pioneering expert in the field of climate risk accounting and accountability. Her research is interdisciplinary and collaborative and considers the translation and integration of information derived from climate and earth system sciences to accounting values and practice. She has published in leading interdisciplinary and accounting journals, including Nature Climate Change and Accounting, Organizations and Society. 

Tanya engages deeply with industry, standard setters, and regulators, both through her research as well as in an advisory capacity. Her work has been cited in the 2023 Economic Report of the President of the United States, as well as by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.  

Tanya is regularly invited to speak on panels and roundtables both in Australia and internationally, and contributes to the media (ABC News, Financial Review, NYTimes, Bloomberg). 

Abstract:

Mainstream accounting assumptions are being challenged due to new climate-related financial reporting rules. Expertise in this area is still new, and the knowledge needed is constantly changing and spread-out.  

Tanya Fiedler revisits these assumptions by drawing on 34 interviews with report preparers and external auditors of globally listed firms, and accounting standard setting staff and board members from a variety of jurisdictions. Guided by process theory, she identifies two mechanisms by which to conceptualise climate expertise: 1) dynamic, because both the climate and the human systems that measure it are in a constant state of flux and, therefore, so too is our understanding; 2) relational, because of the necessary interconnections as well as tensions between financial and climate scales, teams, decision-making, recognition, reporting, and accounts. Combined, these findings provide insights into the changing face of expertise in the context of complex coupled systems (Liu et al. 2015, 2007) – as exist when humans employ judgement and decision-making to account for nature, including climate-related risk.