Accounting approaches and challenges in large-scale afforestation projects: insights from the Billion Tree Afforestation Project, KP, Pakistan

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate accounting practices as intertwined technical, social and ethical mechanisms in a large-scale afforestation project in Pakistan – the Billion Tree Afforestation Project (BTAP). The study examines how accounting mediates accountability, participation and ethical stewardship in environmental governance, as well as the challenges faced and how they are overcome. Design/methodology/approach An interpretive extended case methodology, guided by Carnegie et al.’s (2021) tripartite conceptualisation of accounting, complemented by institutional and stakeholder perspectives, is used. Thematic analysis is used to analyse data from 29 semi-structured interviews, alongside project documentation, archival material and field observations. Findings Accounting in the BTAP operated simultaneously as a technical practice, social process and moral framing. Technically, it enabled monitoring and accountability and supported legitimacy claims, yet it also exposed tensions between bureaucratic demands for precise reporting and field-level realities. Socially, accounting structured participation and trust, but participatory arrangements sometimes became tokenistic when decision authority remained centralised. Morally, religious and ethical narratives helped mobilise stewardship, while at times redirecting attention away from institutional accountability. Together, these dynamics show accounting's performative, contested and potentially transformative role in environmental governance. Originality/value The study extends sustainability accounting theory by theorising how technical, social and moral dimensions interact and generate tensions in practice. It reframes technical accounting as a fragile credibility practice, social accounting as a negotiated arena of participation and power, and moral accounting as ethically charged yet ambivalent. In doing so, it develops accounting as a multi-dimensional social technology that mediates legitimacy, authority and accountability in sustainability governance.