Comments on: P2P Trendfest (8): Context-Based Sustainability (metrics for the commons ?) https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-trendfest-8-context-based-sustainability-metrics-for-the-commons/2014/08/01 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Fri, 01 Aug 2014 23:41:24 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.14 By: Jessie Henshaw https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-trendfest-8-context-based-sustainability-metrics-for-the-commons/2014/08/01/comment-page-1#comment-827973 Fri, 01 Aug 2014 23:41:24 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=40327#comment-827973 Mike, I solidly agree with the desire for “real value” “commons metrics” metrics that people can understand. I’ve been working on that for years. It comes down to pushing the mind up a little “learning curve”. What people actually understand is money,and that’s what business decisions are based on too, we just don’t understand what money really does in the world around us.

It turns out to be unexpectedly easy to measure, if done the right way. The problem has been the aversion people have to learning how to use money as a unit of measure for their share of the economy’s ESG impacts. That’s what I’ve shown how to do with the “World SDG” metrics, that I presented for consideration to the UN’s OWG and NGO groups working on Post 2015 development goals.

What’s elementally sound environmental economics, and easily understood once you “get it”, is that on average (and that is of critical importance to include) the share of world impacts of any use of money is proportional to it’s share of GDP. Or say more simply, your share of “the impacts of the system” is equal, *on average*, to your share “of the system”. That’s elementary school arithmetic that turns our to be remarkably sound science too, in… average… circumstances. Yes it takes a little further study to tell what the exceptions might be, but the simple answer is that… on average… there are *NO* exceptions.

The upshot is that the “average impacts” of how any business uses money to make money tend to be MUCH larger than the “traceable impacts”, by a factor of 2 to 10 or more. That’s because relying on tracing individual impacts leaves such a large fraction unaccounted for. Whether intended or not, businesses standardized around the accounting methods that count fewer impacts, taking responsibility only for the impacts directly traceable to their operations. Someone would need to WANT to discover how to “follow the money” to understand the true larger scale of outsourced impacts their operations directly request and pay for, obtaining the services they need to operate.

The end result is that measuring shares of the impacts according to shares of the money greatly improves the real accuracy of the measures, the materiality of the data for decision making, and at the same time greatly simplifies the math needed in all but special situations. That’s the benefit of learning to understand what “average” means for “where the money goes”.

The basic science behind “Systems Energy Assessment”(SEA) and links
– http://synapse9.com/SEA

An business balance sheet internalizing all measurable externalities with their economic costs to the future
– http://synapse9.com/signals/2014/02/03/a-world-sdg/

]]> By: Mike Riddell https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-trendfest-8-context-based-sustainability-metrics-for-the-commons/2014/08/01/comment-page-1#comment-827366 Fri, 01 Aug 2014 09:20:27 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=40327#comment-827366 Bill is right. For commercial reasons, corporates must now begin to put purpose before profit. They are desperate to find new ways to align themselves with a common purpose – in other words they are ready to invest but what prevents them from doing so is the lack of a metric that measures the social value generated from their investment.

The three metrics that Bill refers to are all in competition with one and other. He’s missed one out – The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). They’re all expensive to administer and the reports they produce are full of unintelligible goobledygook. Bullshit in other words.

What’s happening is that we the community are devising our own time based metric that measures activities that make our community healthier wealthier and happier. These are activities such as teaching giving and learning.

They all produce REAL VALUE.

Value, and conventional methods of valuation are purely hypothetical, based on old fashioned methodology and don’t see the commons of any value. Hence why its a dumping ground for orgs that want to externalise their costs. That’s why we need to form our own accounting system – one that accounts for real not theoretical value.

A metric that everyone can understand will enable a new incentives system to be created – one that values contribution to the common good – and one that links contribution to entitlement.

This is a market based approach to protecting the commons. I don’t agree with David B’s perspective simply because there is a market for more sustainable behaviour. It simply hasn’t been opened up yet because the means of measuring it have not yet been devised. When that does happen we will enter the realms of new currencies that will i believe compete and defeat the unsustainability of money.

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