Agricultural accounting and sustainable development: a comparative study of Russia and France.

Summary This thesis aims to respond to Gray's thesis (2010, p.48), according to which it is rare, if not almost impossible, to find environmental accounting, particularly from the perspective of strong sustainability, i.e. development that respects the physical environmental thresholds characterizing the minimum level of natural capital to be conserved. It shows that, contrary to Gray's pessimistic vision, one can find examples of accounting in the agricultural domain that are true environmental accounts that meet the challenges of strong sustainability. This thesis also shows that agriculture is well ahead of other sectors of the economy in this area of green accounting and social responsibility. It is based on a concrete case study within the Bergerie Nationale de Rambouillet (France) with a comparison to that of a Russian farm, the closed type SA "Selskie zori", and illustrates what could be a real practice of environmental accounting oriented towards a strong type of sustainability. It is in line with accounting research that views accounting as a subjective technique in the sense that it is a function of a subject with power (Richard, 1980, 2012. Tinker et al, 1982 . Cooper and Sherer, 1984 . Tinker, 1984, 1985 . Hopper et al., 1987 . Cooper et al., 1989 . Colasse, 1997, 2005, 2007 .