Towards 9 Billion: Infinite economy on a finite planet · Towards 9 Billion: Infinite economy on a finite planet University of Surrey, Centre for Environmental Strategy. 1st November

Towards 9 Billion: Infinite economy on a finite planet

University of Surrey,

Centre for Environmental Strategy.

1st November 2012

Joss Tantram

Partner, Terrafiniti LLP

Overview

• The future that is coming

• The challenge of the real world

• The challenge of the Unreal world

• Towards 9 Billion – a positive vision

• It’s all about price

• Hacking the price function – Towards 9 Billion Value & Design Principles

Making business sense of sustainability

“When it comes to the baddest sonfabitch on the block, nature wins every time.”

Joe R Landsdale

The future that is coming

• 9 billion people are coming.

• Resource scarcity and price volatility – in energy and water but also rare metals and natural production.

• Larger and more unpredictable changes to ecosystem function.

• Increased social unrest due to inequity and economic disenfranchisement.

• Continued system-wide inertial impacts and risks.

However....

• We are capable of great things...

“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.”

H G Wells

The challenge of the real world

• Dynamic and complex, capable of rapid change.

• Determined by physical conditions.

• Have no absolute “right or wrong” states.

• Have varied hugely over time, hospitable conditions for species are not guaranteed.

• Only partially understood, vastly more complex than human models are able to map.

• Capable of being affected by and affecting human activity.

Ecological systems are:

The challenge of the Unreal world

• Lack strategic social and ecological intent.

• Find valuing common goods and the productive capacity of underlying systems challenging.

• Discount rather than compound future value.

• Are only partially based upon the nature of physical reality.

• Tend to value activity at any “cost”.

Economies and markets:

“What rational business would, on the one hand, make plans for growth in the production and supply of products and services whilst on the other hand building those technologies and services using resources that are not abundant or safe enough to meet these growth targets?”

Towards 9 Billion – Valuing Abundance

Towards 9 Billion...The Vision

Towards 9 Billion...The Strategy

• To align the common interests of organisations with those of citizens to produce innately sustainable outcomes, and:

• To make small but significant changes to the way that business, economics and finance operate to embed sustainable value in economic price.

Towards 9 Billion...two goals

Over the next 40 (ish) years to deliver:

• 9 billion capable citizens.

• Healthy and thriving ecosystems.

Towards 9 Billion - dimensions

Citizens capable of making economic choices and economic plans.

They would:

• have access to advanced education

• be highly connected

• be equitably rewarded for the use of their lives in other people’s employ

• be able to raise children without fearing for their future

• be capable of contributing to and accessing commercial and public services

• make conscious and informed decisions about what they buy.

What are capable citizens?

Towards 9 Billion - dimensions

Healthy and thriving ecosystems:

• Have properties that are greater than the sum of their individual constituents

• provide varied ecosystem services

• have the capacity to absorb disturbance – resilience

• are diverse – exhibiting multiple redundancy.

What are healthy & thriving ecosystems?

Towards 9 Billion

• Requires us to value the future as highly as we value today.

• To align common interest and self-interest.

• To assess economic behaviour as likely to either support or undermine that future and use this to determine the value of that behaviour.

• To have a shared goal for economic activity.

• To re-engineer how we define price.

Achieving the vision:

It’s all about price

• Price is a fundamental component of our economic and financial architecture.

• Price is a concept arising from a combination of supply and demand, statistics and sentiment.

• But price is not the same as value.

• Price values the present as more valuable than the future.

• Price struggles with the priceless – human wellbeing, healthy & thriving ecosystems.

Hacking the price function

• Value abundance rather than scarcity - scarce things are only of marginal utility in a world of 9 billion capable citizens . Either natural (e.g. biologically based) or managed (e.g. through closed loop stewardship) abundance is inherently more valuable and sustainable in this context.

Towards 9 Billion Value & Design Principles:

Hacking the price function

• Preserve & Grow Natural vitality - making use of the planet’s natural restorative and productive abilities (Restorative services) and learning from and utilising natural production techniques (Vital technologies) as the basis for our technological and industrial models.

Towards 9 Billion Value & Design Principles:

Hacking the price function

• Value and Balance interdependence - nothing happens in our modern world without the involvement of others.

We need to recognise and balance this interdependence so that our quality of life is not bought at the cost of someone else’s and that our quality of life is not at risk if others we depend upon decide to withdraw their subsidy.

Towards 9 Billion Value & Design Principles:

Abundant Assets & technologies...

“Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

Email: [email protected] Towards 9 Billion Blog: www.terrafiniti.com/blog Web: www.terrafiniti.com

Further information

Making business sense of sustainability