Author: ECOadmin

Workshops on Environment, Sustainable Development and Religious Engagement, Co-Sponsored by G20 Interfaith Forum, Brazilian Center for Studies in Law and Religion, Federal University of Uberlandia. Manaus Brazil June 17-21, 2024

The Relevance of Indigenous Knowledge and Rights of Nature for Responding to Climate Change

Workshops on Environment, Sustainable Development and Religious Engagement June 18, 2024. G20 Interfaith Forum

I’d like to welcome you all this morning with a deep breath and a stretch and thank the IF20 organizers for inviting me to participate and to introduce myself and the work that I am doing with the Pacific Theological College on resilience and ecological accounting.

Last week, the Pacific Festival, the largest celebration of indigenous Pacific Islanders, took place for the first time in Hawaii. In a side event, the Protecting Oceania conference took place, addressing issues around militarization, indigeneity, and struggles against extractive industries, resource depletion and neoliberal privatization. It was organized by friends and colleagues, including PTC, Pacific Theological College.

I was planning on addressing the Pasifika issues here, but I suspect that in the context of the Amazon, you will already know them. Even though I am in a different place with a different name, I think it is the same struggle against the same face.

I am the director of Intemerate Earth, a non-profit that is addressing national accounting issues from the perspective of ecological economic accounting and local data sovereignty.

People ask what is Intemerate? What is intemerate accounting? I’ll talk about this more later, but the word intemerate means sacred or sacrosanct, and I chose that world because of its association to describe immaculate conception and the miracle of the virgin birth. Intemerate is something you cannot put a monetary price on, and this is how we should value nature and our ecological biodiversity, treating it as sacrosanct.

I am also a curriculum writer and teaching at the Pasifika Communities University in Fiji. This course is part of an accredited degree program in the School of Sustainability and Resilience Development, and it intersects community consultation with indigenous and customary Pasifika epistemologies deeply rooted in decolonization and self-determination. This program was developed to prepare graduates with a professional degree that will help transition Pasifika economies towards Resilience and Sustainability.

I’ve been asked to talk about the Rights of Nature, Ecological Accounting, and its Relevance to Indigenous Knowledge. 

In yesterday’s “paths to prosperity” panel was excellent in that there was a recognition of the need of data and its relationship to the bio economy. Patricia Gomes said it was impossible to have investment without data, but my presentation demands that we recognized who the stewards of this data should be. So, to some this presentation might be very disruptive. And if it is, I hope this presentation expresses why it should be.

National accounting systems influence global economics, yet activism against these systems has been minimal. The UN Statistical Division’s lack of Global South representation must change.

Historically, national accounting evolved to justify the expansion of Empires; it was national accounting that justified the oppression of women, slavery, and genocide. National accounts were used in trade statistics, currency valuation, war statistics, weapons development, and it should be common knowledge by now that those who control national accounting systems control the global economic system.

What I propose is that by integrating well-being, environmental sustainability, and social equity into national accounts, we can transform both ecological and economic systems. How we account for our ecology is as much about ecological justice as it is about economic justice.

This realization was a revelation. It underscored the profound influence of national accounting systems on global power dynamics and social injustices.

Yet, despite the critical importance of these systems, there was not a lot of activist campaigning directed at the UN System of National Accounts where this system is harmonized.

PTC and the senior advisor at Pacific Island Forum Secretariat both responded to this accounting disconnect and we began developing this program. At that time, the ecological accounting program was central to the development of the Blue Pacific Framework. However, shifts towards neoliberal data accumulation have since emerged.

PTC and the Pacific Conference of Churches that really embraced this work and included it in the Reweaving the Ecological Mat program, and it was through a series of intensive discussions with regional and community leaders that this work was supported.

They published my book Ecological Economic Accounts: Towards Intemerate Values, which I plan to rewrite to include the village consultations and the curriculum.

In one of the remote village consultations we discussed the value of ancestral bones. It was inconceivable that anyone would try to put a value on their bones or try to own them or manage them. Bones are sacred, they have an intemerate value. Recognizing that there is a deep cumulative knowledge—a past, present, and future—going back to their own creation stories with genealogies that are so rich in data that protecting this data had to become the primary focus. 

Losing Indigenous data to data transparency initiatives being written into legally binding trade agreements could lead to over a hundred trillion-dollar theft if we consider that is what the World Bank has valued Natural Capital at. 

When I say a hundred trillion, I must let that sink in. If one trillion is a thousand billion then a trillion is also a million million.  S0 if we consider Natural Capital as being valued at a hundred trillion that is I think a hundred thousand billion, and after that I lose count. And while this number is so big and incomprehensive what happens when we apply this number to debt?  

The United States has a 36 trillion dollar public debt, the combined OECD economies have a 64 trillion dollar debt. The rest of the G77 have a combined debt of maybe 45 trillion dollars and the Africa, Caribbean, Pacific region with the lowest development index have a combined debt of around 4 trillion dollars. These are the kinds of trillions we are talking about and so when it comes to ecological accounting and the value of natural capital, I cannot help but wonder if Natural Capital estimates are being measured against our national debts.

It’s okay if it is, as long as we understand the valuation process, but if we do not know that data accumulation is equal to wealth accumulation, then we are prey to become victim of yet another resource theft.

When we consider that Data, especially in ecological economic accounting, should be entered and counted only once to ensure accuracy and reliability, we must understand that this principle prevents inflation or distortion of values, which is crucial for creating a true representation of ecological and economic interactions.

Double counting can occur when the same data point is recorded multiple times across different categories or sectors. For example, if carbon sequestration by forests is counted in both the forestry and carbon offset sectors, it can lead to an overestimation of carbon sequestration capabilities. So if we do not own our data, and national accounting systems adopt the Natural Capital program, we will quickly be priced out of benefiting from our ecological stewardship and our access to wealth and infrastructure and development capabilities will be no different from what they are now—except worse—because we lost the opportunity to equalize how we value our environmental data. Hence the G20 is precisely the forum to be discussing this.

When we consider the biodiversity of the Amazon, like our own Pasifika region, and the entire interconnectedness of our planet, we see a creation that is wonderfully benevolent, violently robust, and immaculately conceived. Its very existence is the true work of the divine that is measurable but resists monetary valuation. The Amazon rainforest, for instance, is a testament to nature’s ability to create and sustain life in its most diverse and complex forms. Our oceans, covering the majority of the Earth’s surface, are teeming with life and are critical to regulating our climate and supporting marine ecosystems.

How we interact with our environment, recognizing its sacredness and inherent value, is what we must speak and live by. This means advocating for policies that protect and preserve our natural world and rethinking our economic systems to prioritize sustainability and ecological health. It requires a fundamental shift in how we view our relationship with nature, from one of domination and exploitation to one of mutual aid and reciprocity.

Since 1972, the concept of the Rights of Nature has been incorporated into legislation, court rulings, and constitutional amendments in several countries. Ecuador was the first to constitutionally recognize these rights, stating that nature has the right to integral respect for its existence and maintenance of its life cycles.

I’m not an attorney but I often hear about court rulings that favor the environment but that there is a lack of enforcement that renders decisions ineffective, highlighting the need for robust mechanisms to uphold these legal victories. We also hear about binding trade agreements where states can impose sanction power to enforce the rights of corporations over the rights of people and the environment.

So while the Rights of Nature have been recognized legally in various jurisdictions, why is there a lack of enforcement to bring violators to justice? Without governmental commitment and robust enforcement frameworks, court rulings in favor of nature seems to be easily ignored, undermining the very purpose of these progressive laws.

While I want to say that the true potential of the Rights of Nature can only be realized when legal victories are supported by strong, enforceable actions, enforcement will only occur when there is economic incentive, and a pathway for economic justice. The same needs to be said about indigenous people’s hard won right for the legal recognition of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. Until there is a strong enforcement mechanism to bring violators to justice, these rights remain aspirational.

So, how should we understand the Rights of Nature? Are there mechanisms of enforcement that can recognize these rights?  

What if there is an economic accounting equation and financial index that accounted for the interactions of our survival, solidarity, and stewardship, an accounting framework that measures our human interactions?  What if there is a framework that gives value to our knowledge and action, rather than on commodity prices that will create further displacement? What if we could account, manage, and steward our ecological data with our own methodologies and work with indigenous or local auditors to keep our data private, out of the hands of international investment consortiums?  What if we can utilize free, prior, and informed consent to determine how we participate or not participate in trans-local data markets that encourage communities to truly practice mutual aid and assist in the use of financial instruments to assist at-risk communities?

What if there was a bank that underwrote this index and helped to provide a facility where local data sovereignty can become a system for global equity in the Global South as well as an instrument for indigenous, migrant, poor or other at-risk communities to access wealth and infrastructure? What if we could develop and use our own tools to measure, analyze and quantify our data according to our own development priorities rather than rely on expensive surveillance and monitoring technologies developed by Departments of Defense?

While Ecological Accounting opens opportunities for the economies of the Global South, it is not an automatic win, but rather a strategy to level the playing field. Recent revisions to the U.N. National Accounting System have shown that adding or revising aggregates—such as the inclusion of Military Systems, Research and Development, and the Digital Economy, along with efforts to incorporate Environmental and Sustainability Factors into economic measurements create significant economic advantages over the Global South.

To be clear, Intemerate accounting doesn’t seek to disrupt the bioeconomy. What it addresses is the need to revise how we account for our interactions with the environment, against the production, consumption, distribution and exchange of goods and services.

Yesterday, Fabiola Barros gave a wonderful example highlighting the kind of stewardship in her Agroforestry presentation, integrating short-, medium-, and long-term cycles while providing food for markets.

 I made a few copies of the Intemerate Earth White paper that outlines the accounting plan in more detail. We compare what we call Environmental Default Swaps with several other data financing models, like Cost-Based Valuation, Income Approach, Market-Based Valuations, and some others, and hopefully we will soon launch a proof-of-concept program to show how this would function as claimed.

The White Paper addresses how intemerate accounting values Local Data Sovereignty, provides for trans-local and interglobal data markets, collective mutual accounting, how Environmental Default Swaps can integrate with Debt Suspension or Deferment, Mitigation projects, Food and Water security, cross border collaborations, and more. 

What we did was invert the traditional approach of using a baseline as a reference point from which we measure deviations that move away from a given value. Instead, we measure towards this baseline. The baseline represents the target values or the ideal state we aim to achieve. This approach shifts our perspective when it comes to measuring values, because it creates an index where people can plot their own values according to their own needs rather than trying to harmonize variations from a pre-set standard.

From a monetary perspective, it is this baseline that can financialize our interactions with the environment rather than commodify nature within the capitalist mindset of wealth accumulation and privatization. Intemerate accounting—rather the intemerate baseline provides a tangible shift in the way we think about value.

The White Paper also addresses how Insurance issuers like the New Development Bank can underwrite programs—not through conflict models like Lloyds of London, for example—but by aligning with good, practical applications of Environmental and Social Governance and Responsibility, paving the way for a new paradigm in development.

Whether ESG investors will support local practitioners and communities to be the holders of this equity has yet to be seen, but geopolitically, if we are to take seriously our motivations to restore our ecological biodiversity and provide communities to mitigate against climate change impacts on their own terms, environmental markets need coherent and strong regulatory governance, and that is not something that can happen under an accounting framework driven by data wealth accumulation.

In conclusion, as I mentioned in my introduction, our issues are in different places and have different names and different processes, but it is the same struggle against the same face. Together, let us revise the accounting framework by building market solidarity with our own accounting protocols and methodologies. This is the nugget that we hold. It is more valuable than gold, it is intemerate.

“ I want to talk about ancestral bones as more than historical artifacts; something that is cumulative—a past, present, future—something that has cultural and spiritual legacy connecting us to our ancestors, as well as I would argue, to our future generations. Our ancestral bones symbolize deep-rooted knowledge and ecological insight and for some, the bones of our ancestors provide us with a kind of invaluable spiritual guidance. This reverence for our ancestral bones in interfaith parallels the sanctity of religious relics. These are sacred—sacrosanct– and we cannot put a monetary value on them or capitalize upon them in financial markets. How should we approach the pursuit of Natural Capital or Carbon Market schemes that seek to monetize that which is sacred or sacrosanct?” 

So let me begin, In today’s world, where data is often termed the “new oil,” the handling and control of data can significantly influence social, economic, and political landscapes.

However, the governance of data frequently lacks the moral framework that interfaith dialogue can provide, particularly in protecting the interests of marginalized communities.

This oversight can lead to the exploitation of local data without the consent or benefit of the people it represents.

So today’s discussion on local data sovereignty— is about the right of communities to control their data.

This is not merely a technical matter but one of fairness, respecting cultural, environmental, and spiritual values fundamental to these communities.

We reside in an epoch of seemingly eternal warfare driven primarily by geopolitical economic greed. The system of destabilizing countries and exploiting communities for access or resource theft is as much a part of our evolution as a species as supply chains, markets, and governance.

But the world has changed. We have an expiration date on our evolutionary clock, and I believe that we have known this to be true since the atomic bomb. This ticking clock is evident not only with climate change or the collective trauma of our global pandemic but also in the alignment of our military with Big Conservation to perpetuate economies that privilege the worst abuses of capitalist greed with the promotion of Natural Capital schemes as the only solution for financing climate adaptation and mitigation.

Warfare is global, and it takes place in all communities, it is beyond haves and have-nots, beyond the divisions of our cultural or gender identifiers, and the demarcations of indigeneity, settler colonialism, or citizenship. What defines this warfare are not simply the opinions and actions of neighbors and passersby or the banal and incessant dirge of TV anchors and radio broadcasters drowning out the resonant whisperings of animals, plants, and rocks emerging into our collective consciousness reminding us of potential or impending extinctions.

What is in your heart matters. What you value most determines whether your gut is sick or clean. It is the clean gut and clear heart that will empower our collective defense against the disease that emanates from the very pores of privatization and capitalization regimes. Public relations and marketing departments may embrace a kinder and gentler emoji yet perpetuate the very system that remains tethered to genocide, slavery, dispossession, and fraud.

Spiritual warfare is the struggle within individuals and societies between values and principles that promote compassion, empathy, environmental stewardship, and social justice on one side, and those that prioritize hatred, greed, and exploitation of our planet on the other.

This inner conflict reflects the moral and ethical choices we make in our daily lives, as well as the broader societal choices that impact our planet and its ecosystems. It’s not limited to any particular religious or secular framework; rather, it transcends these boundaries to address our core mutual values and behaviors.

Choosing to love over hate and planetary well-being over greed are shared by many who advocate for a more just and sustainable world. Addressing these challenges requires a collective effort that focuses on shared values of empathy, cooperation, and ecological responsibility.

Addressing spiritual warfare involves shifting our consciousness over how we value a more sustainable and resilient way of living on our planet, one that recognizes our interconnectedness and responsibilities to each other and the environment. This country—this economy embraces capitalization, and the very industries promoting this are as deaf to the voices of this planet as those promoting genocide, obstruction, and containment.

Our relationship with the natural world has been a topic of discussion and contemplation for thousands of years. In recent times, the urgency of addressing the ecological crisis has brought the need for a more integrated approach to the forefront. Exploring the intersection between economics and spirituality argues that incorporating spiritual values into economic decision-making can lead to a more sustainable and equitable world.

Data Reciprocity and Data Localism address the urgent issues of data sovereignty, privacy, and equity in the digital age. It recognizes the need for a radical transformation of our economic and social systems in order to achieve these goals.

The ecological crisis is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today. Climate change, habitat destruction, and the loss of biodiversity are just a few of the many problems that threaten the survival of countless species and the well-being of the planet. The root cause of these problems is often traced back to a human-centered worldview that sees the natural world as a resource to be exploited for human benefit.

Economics, as a discipline, is primarily concerned with the allocation of scarce resources to meet unlimited human wants and needs. However, the current economic system often prioritizes profit over other values such as social and environmental well-being. This has led to a number of negative consequences, including income inequality, environmental degradation, and the depletion of natural resources.

Spirituality, on the other hand, offers a different perspective on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Many spiritual traditions view the natural world as sacred and see humans as part of a larger, interconnected whole. This worldview emphasizes the interdependence of all living beings and the importance of living in harmony with the natural world.

The integration of ecology, economics, and spirituality offers a path toward sustainability by incorporating both scientific and spiritual perspectives on the relationship between humans and the natural world.

One of the key benefits of this intersection is the creation of a more equitable and sustainable economic system. Data measuring our well-being, for example, can be a tool addressing our spiritual values such as compassion and cooperation, and result in economic decision-making guided by a deeper sense of purpose and responsibility. This can lead to a more equitable distribution of resources and a greater emphasis on environmental protection and sustainability.

Throughout history, the spiritual exchange of goods and markets has played a significant role in many cultures and civilizations. In ancient times, bartering was a common practice, where goods and services were exchanged without the use of currency. This exchange was often guided by spiritual beliefs and values, such as the belief in the interdependence of all living beings and the importance of mutual support.

In some indigenous cultures, the concept of the “gift economy” was central to the exchange of goods and services. In these societies, resources were shared freely and individuals were encouraged to give generously to those in need. This was seen as a way of building community and strengthening social bonds and was often guided by spiritual beliefs about the interconnectedness of all living beings.

Religious markets, such as the Suq in the Islamic world, have also played a significant role in the exchange of goods and services. These markets were often a hub of economic activity and served as a place for merchants and traders to exchange goods and services. They were also a place for religious and cultural exchange, where individuals from different backgrounds could come together to exchange ideas and goods.

The concept of “fair trade” and provenance in supply chains has emerged as a way of incorporating more holistic values into an economic exchange. Fair trade is based on the idea of creating a more equitable and sustainable economic system by ensuring that workers and producers in developing countries receive a fair price for their goods and services.

Data Reciprocity and Data Localism

Data Reciprocity and Data Localism recognize that data is a valuable resource that has the potential to empower communities and individuals, but that this potential is often exploited by large corporations and governments. Therefore, any solution to these global challenges must prioritize the rights and needs of people over the profits of a few.

A 21st-century economy integrates the intrinsic value of data and its role in shaping our lives. We must acknowledge the rights of individuals and communities to control and benefit from the data that they produce and shift from a paradigm of surveillance and exploitation to one of transparency and reciprocity.

• Prioritize data localism. We must empower local communities to take control of their own data, and promote decentralized systems that allow for greater autonomy and self-determination. This includes advocating for open-source software, community-owned data centers, and community-led data governance structures.

• Foster a culture of data reciprocity. We must recognize the importance of mutual exchange and collaboration, and promote systems that allow for fair and equitable sharing of data. This includes advocating for data cooperatives, data commons, and open data initiatives that benefit all members of a community.

• Prioritize data privacy and security. Individuals and communities have the right to control how their data is collected, used, and shared and that this data is protected from unauthorized access and misuse.

• Prioritize education and awareness. All people have access to accurate information about their data and are empowered to make informed decisions about their impact on the digital landscape.

• Recognize and honor the interconnectedness of data and our lives. Break down the false dichotomies of data versus privacy, and individual versus community, and realize that we are all part of a larger, interdependent web of data.

• Recognize and honor the potential for data to create positive social change. Promote data justice and equity and ensure that data is used to facilitate social and environmental sustainability, rather than perpetuating systemic injustices.

Data Reciprocity and Data Localism recognize the urgency of the global crises we face in the digital age.

An integrative approach to ecological economics and spirituality is the creation of a more holistic understanding of our interactions with ecological biodiversity. Translocal markets recognize the importance of protecting the natural world not just for its own sake, but for the well-being of all living beings and for future generations.

The intersection between economics and spirituality offers a path toward a more sustainable and equitable world. By incorporating spiritual values into economic decision-making, we can create a more holistic and compassionate economic system that prioritizes the well-being of all living beings and the planet as a whole.

Expressing the failure of COP 27 is neither a pessimistic avowal that global climate policy is incapable of meaningful change, nor is it a nihilistic admission that the restoration of our planetary capacity to survive has moved beyond the tipping point. The failure is the systemic disconnect between the rich industrialized economies of the Global North and the inability of the Global South to advance an alternative multilateral system that can operate in parallel with the rich countries. As long as a unilateral network of dependency is enforced, one without the option of access and infrastructure, developing countries will remain tethered to corporate interests and the investment regime.

The pronouncement of success at COP 27 is that vulnerable countries will now be able to access funds to tackle loss and damage. The reporting of the details remains vague, but we should already be prepared to challenge this initiative as a backdoor investment scheme. The pathway for this fund appears to be dependent upon commercial industries investing in our most vulnerable countries. The debt-laden governments of the Global North will be unable to sustain a loss and damage fund and it will thereby fall upon the commitments of private sector interests that can afford the insurance policy to cover the risk of loss and damages, particularly as they will be the ones to profit from their “future anticipated losses.”

New Accounting Standards

To really appreciate the obtuse justification for these new accounting standards, I recommend following the hyperlinks as they illustrate just how different financial standards are between the OECD countries and the rest of the world. In 2021, new accounting standards were adopted by the Federal Reserve to mitigate “current expected credit losses” (CECL), estimating allowances for that loss. In the 2008 UN SNA (Chapter 12: The Other Changes in Asset Accounts), those losses are reported in national accounting aggregates not as liabilities, but as assets that can contribute to how the too-big-to-fail financial institutions would report this to national statistical offices. However, the only ones that would benefit from such convoluted designs, are the very countries and economies that have the ability to make these spurious claims and get away with it.

The BIS (Bank for International Settlements), has addressed how to account for risk and losses, and in 2020, published a paper that forecasted the time-varying probability distribution of future losses due to extreme conditions. Essentially what this means is that insurance companies have an instrument with which to predict and account for climate-based catastrophes in the most vulnerable countries, countries that will also be most receptive to attracting corporate industries like Big Ag, aquaculture, R&D, tourism, and nature-based investments like water (now a Wall Street traded futures index), marine energy, ecosystem management, waste, and renewables. Private industries are easily poised to pay multi-million dollar insurance premiums, particularly when they are structured so that future “anticipated losses” will cover the risk. The only real benefit that might come to these host countries will be new tax revenue, but that will be dependent upon the terms of these negotiations and whether they accept or reject tax-avoidance conditions by foreign-owned entities.

Other climate fund options that have been devised recently are the blue or green bonds, but these are unsustainable and eligibility for these funds usually comes with a cost that will ultimately boomerang back to the funder.

Transitioning away from capitalist solutions

Finding solutions to our global ecological and economic crisis requires an understanding that our ecological biodiversity is shared between the oldest, largest, youngest, and smallest of our species and the mutual interconnectedness of everything in between. The Anthropocene, the geological recording of humanity’s impact on the planet, locates the very industries that have degraded, depleted, and exploited our health and environments, tracing our residue along geological striations that read like a roadmap to our own extinction. While there is controversy among geology departments over the legitimacy of an Anthropocene, there was also once a group of scientists denying manmade climate change. And even with an abundance of divine oracles and soothsayers distracting us from real solutions while predicting chaos and doom, the causes of our climate crisis have never been a secret to anyone.

Since the 19th century, the captains of industries have rejected the most decent of principles in the name of progress, profit, and nationalism, and have done so under the banner of capitalism. As long as the structures of capitalism are in opposition to the health and well-being of people and the environment, there can be no transition to a just, fair, and equitable economy. But anti-capitalist motivations should also not come at the expense of people gaining access to finance, capital, modes of production, and exchange. What we need to focus on is how we transition from their economy to ours. We cannot rewrite the trajectory of the last 200 years, but we can equitably regulate how capital is exchanged in ecologically based markets by accounting for our interactions with restoring our environments rather than as commodity-based natural capital.

While it is undeniable that the operations of free-market capitalism, liberalized trade policies, and deregulated markets have caused irreparable damage to communities and environments, the answer to the problems of capitalism may not actually be the flow of financial and investment capital itself, but the accounting structures embedded within our current economy that privilege privatization and commodity markets over collectivization and ecological ones.

Behind the Curtain: National Accounting Systems

An overlooked, yet viable action that would transition the global economy towards one that values sustainable development is to reform our national accounting system. This includes the accounting of degradation and depletion as a liability rather than as an asset. Sustainable development includes household work, and rejects the accounting of military systems as a fixed asset unless we can include our ecological biodiversity as a national security issue, and repurpose weapons to be tools for restoration, regeneration, and reparation, repurposing weapons as tools of mass reconstruction.

Where this action needs to be directed is the obscure but highly essential System of National Accounts within the UN Statistical Division, (SNA, UNSD). Currently, the SNA codifies how we measure our national accounts, or GDP, and is dominated by OECD members. The United States is the only major economy that does not conform to the SNA international standard, stubbornly clinging to its ability to liberally and quickly maneuver through its own accounting revisions with NIPA (National Income and Product Accounts). As with much of the international order, it is the SNA that follows NIPA, indicating just how U.S. exceptionalism exploits the rules-based system it claims to uphold.

If we are to restore our ecological biodiversity and reverse climate change, the Statistical Division needs to be more inclusive of developing countries, indigenous peoples, and impacted communities. We achieve this by altering how we account for our interactions with our environment and value what is most sacrosanct in all our myriad and diverse ways. We cannot accomplish a just and equitable economy as long there is a top-down imperative to value environments on commodity-driven initiatives that seek to manage and privatize what we have traditionally stewarded. It is up to us to own our data, value our interactions with our green and blue spaces, and facilitate our own distributive networks of exchange by choosing our own multi-faceted pathways for development.

There are two ways to achieve this. The first is to campaign and petition the SNA to include us in the revision of national accounting systems. That is likely to be a slow and cumbersome process as large economies will bully us with technical jargon that will keep us playing catch up despite the fact that our customary knowledge is far more valuable than their lexicon of obtuse terminology. The second, or preferred option, is to utilize our own tools and methodologies to measure our interactions with the environment and incorporate a regulated exchange of capital with the kind of access and infrastructure necessary to uphold sustainable markets and development.

Our community networks are strong. The intersection of diverse peoples and communities, our spiritual networks, and our local and customary agencies is evident everywhere and nothing should interfere with our mutual interconnectedness. The profit-motivations of market-driven industrial interests are stalwarts for containing and obstructing genuine security and development.

As we step back to really examine our economic interactions, we should be amazed by our protocol and reciprocity. How is it that the governments of advanced economies are the most heavily indebted? If we consider these governments as proxies for industrial self-interest, we would find that the rhetoric of democracy, justice, transparency, and rules-based mechanisms are misaligned with so much hypocrisy that those who define those terms most are the very ones that weaponize those ideals for the benefit of industrial greed.

The Audacity of Debt Repayment

The United States alone currently has a nearly 120% debt-to-GDP ratio, meaning that government taxpayers currently hold about $27 trillion in public debt. For perspective, the combined public debt of the ACP countries (Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific) is ~$1.3 trillion. When you consider that the total population of the ACP is ~1.2 billion, and the population of the United States is ~337 million, the per capita holding of debt in the U.S. is well over 50 times greater than in the ACP. Another way to read this is that each U.S. taxpayer owes ~$80,000 and each ACP citizen owes ~$108. This is a population-to-debt difference of 740-to-1.

So the question we should be asking is how does the proverbial 1% have access to 99% of the debt without any strategy of debt repayment while the ACP countries remain tethered to debt repayments, all while the economies of the Global North continue to degrade, deplete, and exploit peoples and environments? The clearest answer is that the United States has something to leverage to the international investment cabal– the owners of the debt–and that is its military. The United States has 750 bases in 80 countries. No other country has a military presence remotely close and all countries face the threat of destabilization, regime change, and sanctions. The winds of ecological and economic justice will blow when the United States addresses this hegemony and unfurls the sail that will set economies free to engage in multilateral markets of exchange.

The history of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties has been a trajectory where the agenda of the advanced economies, led by the United States– a proxy of the international investment cabal and industrial regimes– has continually asserted its own interests over the security and well-being of people and planet.

Since the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and President Bush’s withdrawal from the COP 3 Protocol in 2000, we have only seen consolidated efforts to destabilize, undermine, and reject sound climate policy. Additionally, with the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals, we have seen tremendous global efforts to create a viable program that seeks to address the 17 goals and the 169 targets. These targets, however, are mostly designed with a pathway for privatizing the management of data through private investment and industry. It is the accounting of that data that the large economies seek to own and use to create a value on nature for the benefit of investors and industries. And since this data cannot be accounted for twice, developing countries, indigenous peoples, and impacted communities will once again be removed from the value chains of our ecological biodiversity and public health.

COP 28: We’ll bring the bread.

In this regard, COP 27 is a ruse. For COP 28, we might want to consider regulated versions of capital exchange where developing countries, indigenous peoples, and impacted communities benefit from our own traditional or customary data sets and engage in a regulated form of market exchange that protects our biodiversity and profits from a growth model that restores our environments, revitalizes our communities, and repairs our histories.

Urgency matters. We may not have time for a picnic at COP 28, but between now and then, consider protocols for exchange and methodologies for valuing our interactions to restore environments. If all we are concerned with is reversing climate change, it may be as easy as surrendering one’s home to private capital and global wealth funds, but what we need to be fighting for is an equitable redistribution of global wealth because this planet and our future belong to all of us.

Deep seabed mining (DSM) is the latest extractive industry threatening the ecological biodiversity in a little known frontier we call the deep seabed. The entanglement of extractive industries in the Pacific is a vestige of its racist and imperialist past when the Pacific was little more than a ripe fruit targeted at being picked, a follow-up to economic interests that degrade, deplete, pollute, oppress and profit from a long history of despair, dispossession and alienation. In the Pacific, DSM will exploit our common heritage while undermining the genuine security of our customary ocean home. Yet, the talking heads of these mining interests asserts that for remote islands and poor impacted peoples, this new industry will generate huge economic windfalls and provide the missing piece guaranteeing sustainable development in the Pacific.

There are about 30 Pacific Island Countries and Territories* with varying political and economic administrations. While there are twelve fully independent Pacific Island countries the rest have populations and economies dependent upon colonial or former colonial metropoles amassing an area approximately 31 million square kilometers (19 million sq miles). Pasifika or the Pacific Continent is a body of water that is about as large as the entire land mass of this planet. And within this vast area is a population of about 11 million people, most of them poor by World Bank standards, with the independent countries classified as least developing or low-performing countries. The territories and occupied nations, however, are an exception since their economies are tied to the advanced economies. The populations of these areas while comprising only about 16% of the total regional population, generally reflects the high GDP of the administering powers.

Indeed, perhaps the greatest obstacle for small developing countries under the current economic system is that there are few options outside of tourism and our fisheries for participating in the global economy. We are classified as underdeveloped or low performing because of poor infrastructure, lack of access, or corruption. Our governments are reminded that we are cursed by remoteness and small size and that we are hindered by a reliance upon a development aid scheme that refuses to recognize or value our inherent wealth, since only our extracted resources have a market value. In this context, one can perhaps see why DSM appears as an attractive option to the developing states of the Pacific.

Consider Nauru, for example, a small Pacific Island state once rich with guano. After having depleted its commodity resource it was close to becoming a failed state, with few available options for viably participating in the global economy. Nauru has since become an offshore tax haven for the rich and a detention center for migrants seeking asylum in Australia. Although the detention centers are closed, this tiny country had become notorious for human rights abuse and global health violations from lack of infrastructure and oversight. Nauru is now the target for DSM, which the government wholly embraces despite the regional protests of Pacific peoples who understand that the promotion of this industry will create conditions that will not only threaten the biodiversity of the region but disrupt the traditional livelihoods that people and communities depend upon.

The proponents for DSM– investment regimes, the military subcontractor Lockheed-Martin, many in the tech industry who greenwash precautionary principles by asserting that the minerals in the deep seabed will lower greenhouse gas emissions–are looking to secure licensing with small island states and are offering what seem like lucrative contracts to fragile Pacific Island governments. The ISA, the International Seabed Authority, tasked with protecting our common heritage of humankind, is ultimately deciding upon the future of DSM. But DSM is not simply another fruit to be picked, a benign nodule that has fallen from a fruit tree to be sold at the market. DSM is an extractive industry predicated upon the inherent racism, degradation and depletion of our human dignity and ecological wellbeing. The heritage of humankind should be measured by our interconnectedness with life, our mutual interaction with people and planet.

Against this seemingly inevitable buildup towards DSM, over the last decade environmental, scientific, indigenous and civil society organizations have all flagged precautions against DSM. People are organizing to resist DSM through a moratorium or ban on mining. The Pacific Conference of Churches have also put forward a spiritual dimension challenging DSM and the further degradation and depletion of our regional resources, arguing that our wellbeing is intrinsic to our interactions with the ocean, our home and our economy.

Framing the Problem: It’s Accounting Stupid!

The question we should be asking is how it has come to be that a territory as vast as the Pacific Continent, rich with culture, traditional practice, and an immense ecological biodiversity has one of the lowest performing measurements of GDP per capita? Pacific peoples should be the wealthiest in the world. with per capita wealth like the fictional country of Wakanda from the movie Black Panther, or at least Dubai.

When advanced economies exclude countries based upon their lack of commodities or resources for exploitation, that is not the failure of small countries, it is the failure of an international accounting regime that has willfully and woefully excluded populations for the benefit of embracing their own industries and profit. This is the institutionalized theft and legalized fraud common to the economics of extraction.

Countries like Nauru with its population of just over 10,000 shouldn’t be cozying up with DSM industrialists just to receive a piddling of percentage points of profits and some infrastructure.  Rather, a Pacific-wide population of 11 million responsible for the ecological stewardship of 31 million sq. kilometers has tremendous value if we were to measure our economies according to conservation systems rather than in extraction, degradation and depletion. Yet there is no inclusion for this data in the current economic accounting system.

Revisions of the UN System of National Accounts (SNA), as far back as 1993, included considerations to account for ecological degradation and depletion. Yet despite revisions and alternative accounting programs, they were continually rejected, accused of being too experimental. On the other hand, the inclusion of military systems and R&D is deemed legitimate because somehow “national security” and “anticipated losses” could be adjusted into GDP aggregates. The accounting of degradation and depletion could have already begun to reverse greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, reduced poverty indicators globally, and provided greater protections to our ecological biodiversity decades ago.

In 2021, the UN Statistical Division did finally adopt a System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA), even though it was far less rigorous than the 2003 manual. With each revision, the influence of industrialized economies readily dismissed the obligations of good environmental governance, until it could mainframe a system that would ultimately benefit corporate investment and privatization regimes.

If we were to charge industrialized economies with an unprincipled, immoral global negligence, the perpetrators would be those who would sacrifice our climate security to ensure that all our natural assets would conform to a market economy. Unless our Pacific leaders can initiate their own regional accounting revisions, small Pacific Island states will never be able to contribute to the global economy on par with other regions. Governments should be lobbying the UN Statistical Division to demand that they explore alternative accounting methodologies that benefits all regions, not just industrialized ones.

Spirituality and Wellbeing are Rightsholders in the Global Economy.

Until we begin the process for revising our national accounts we need an accounting that is informed by our spirituality and wellbeing. We cannot genuinely understand the value of our ecological biodiversity, until we have a principled and moral base with which we can measure our interactions with people and our environments. This is not to say that organized religions should determine an economic value based upon our spiritual practice, rather, that our houses of worship are like divining rods guiding our assessment of what is pure and sacrosanct in the wellbeing of our people. And it is precisely this fostering of our wellbeing that is grossly lacking from our economics.

An organization is challenging this very issue. The IF20, a G20 Interfaith Forum, is promoting a webinar, “Ecological Racism and Deep-Sea Mining in the Pacific.” One of the organizers of this event, Rev Dr Upolu Luma Vaai from the Pacific Theological College in Fiji– at the forefront of addressing ecological issues regionally– forwards that “racism is not just a human issue, it is also an ecological issue,” and it is the very systemic racism inherent in the global economic system that threatens our ecological regional stability.

If the “antidote for ecological racism is to accept and embrace the full dignity and sacredness of ecology,” then the outcome of this meeting should be to identify actionable paths where the anti-racism initiative in the IF20 can influence policy making both in the Pacific and the international community. It is precisely through the actionable path of ecological accounting, that spirituality and wellbeing can begin to repair the damage from commodity driven mining ventures.

Ending the Violence of GDP.

If we are proposing to revise National Accounting systems to be reflective of equity, human dignity and community self-determination, we need to have a much more robust conversation about the international classification of indicators and how we measure and value our economic interactions with people and planet.

Factors of production and consumption, distribution and exchange of our goods and services are economic aggregates, and as such have been used extensively to determine the wealth of our economies. The current global standard is GDP 0r Gross Domestic Product, and certainly since it was adopted as a standard measurement in the post-war era, it has been described as an economic mirror measuring the inputs and outputs of production and consumption and the flow of capital between countries. But for the weight that GDP is given, it provides a very poor measurement of the global economy and is arguably the leading structural deficiency most responsible for climate change, the loss of our ecological biodiversity, and conditions of poverty on our health and wellbeing.

There are historical postwar reasons that GDP was adopted to be the global standard for measuring our economy, and it has not come without cautionary warnings of what an unprincipled pursuit over these standards would result in and the potential negative impacts on the health and wellbeing or our populations. By ignoring the warnings of national accounting requiring comprehensive and considerable adjustment and engagement with global needs, GDP has ceased to be a useful measurement of our economic interactions and has instead become a weapon, a tool for oppression, degradation, depletion and wealth consolidation.

Simply put, economies measure our interactions with each other and environments and if all we are doing is measuring industrial inputs and outputs, then we are reflecting an economic measurement that is as accurate as a house of mirrors at an amusement park fun house.

Towards a Fair and Just International System of Ecological Accounting

For the Pacific, the decision is simply whether the region wants to advance climate objectives on its own, or wait for the industrialized Global North to invent another eco-neoliberal top-down consent scheme that will provide some immediate cash in hand while greenwashing climate objectives for the benefit of the wealthy few. Since GDP has been weaponized and used to justify systemic theft of human and environmental capital, the authority over the 21st century requires that we immediately put into practice a revised statistical accounting system focusing on the three things that GDP has ignored: global wealth redistribution, reversing climate change, and restoring our ecological biodiversity.

Ecological and economic justice issues like climate change, our ecological biodiversity, systemic racism, and wealth disparities should have always been a factor in the way that we measure national economies. The importance of statistical national accounting is to raise the development and engagement of our populations, which means to end poverty, not cause it; to sustain our common heritage, not exploit it for the benefit of the few; to pursue an accounting of peace, not privilege the profits from war and armaments; and to promote health and wellbeing, and recognize that what is spiritual is our planet and the interdependence of life.

We know that ecological accounts can be financialized and self-sustaining, so it is important that the Pacific establishes a regional regulatory framework that accounts for its ecological data on its own terms. How we do that does not necessitate that we throw the global economy into shock, because there are transitional approaches that governments and national central banks can utilize to adjust new statistical inputs and outputs the same way monetary controls are used to prevent inflation.

What most stands in the way, however, are the industries that cling to their share of global wealth and who have primarily benefited from the social instability caused by exploitation, degradation, and depletion. Captains of industries have the means to incentivize all kinds of destabilizing, obstructive, and containment strategies but they also have the ability to cooperate and understand that co-opting or controlling environmental and social governance should not be their sole objective. We are all responsible for our collective future and should work together to shift our statistical global accounts to reflect the needs of future generations. Transitioning our global economy should not be a top-down policy initiative, but a bottom-up peoples approach that is inclusive not exclusive; with benefits that are accountable to all rather than arbitrary and capricious for the few.

Disentangling extractive industries from the Pacific is a moral obligation that speaks to the systemic racism and disregard for our ecological biodiversity. Deep seabed mining is no different from the terrestrial degradation and depletion that has impeded the development of our own ecological and economic interactions. If we are to repair this systemic fraud around national accounting systems, the only action is systemic reparations. If only as an anti-racism initiative, the ISA needs to recognize that the common heritage of our ocean is not simply another fruit to be picked. Our common heritage of humankind is our interaction with people and planet.

_{*Occupied or dependent territories include Christmas, Cocos, Norfolk (Australia), Rapanui or Easter Island (Chile), West Papua (Indonesia), New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna (France), Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau (NZ), American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, Northern Marianas Islands (US), and the Pitcairn Islands (UK).}

A new Wall Street Asset class has emerged with the announcement of the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG). Although there are no details given as to what this is except on their website where they define what “IEG is” and what “IEG is not,” I think it is fairly safe to say that what it is, is a privatization scheme for natural capital that follows the announcement of Wall Street’s Water privatization initiative, devised last year when water entered the futures market.

While no details have emerged (because outside of a hegemonic takeover there is not likely to be any just, fair, or equitable details), I suspect that there are going to be many attempts to throw a lot of money at this to try to build capacity and cooperation with other countries and central banks to allow for private interests to set the value for our environments. Coming from the Advanced economies, the IEG is essentially allowing Colonialism 5.0 to pave a road forward.

If we step back, it is obvious that the Global North’s inaction is a manipulative effort to exploit the desperation of the Global South to race towards programs like citizenship-for-territory, or other aid packages that will buy their allegiance while offering no tangible solution. In the case of the Pacific, large economies can leverage tremendous value from the privatization of maritime resources, particularly if people choose to surrender their territory for citizenship from a metropolitan state.

Whether oceans, forests, or deserts, the value of our biomes are our global commons. We simply cannot treat our ecological biodiversity as commodities, because the less we have the more valuable it becomes for markets. IEG is not a drive to save humanity, this is a fetishized initiative, a kind of “Squid Game” where the last-people standing will be rewarded with inscribing their names on a stone tablet that may never be seen, as there may be no future generation to see it.

It’s these kinds of utilities that appear to check off the environmental sustainability box in ESG reporting, but it does so at the expense of people and their rights to access. So I cannot help but wonder if much of the military base building near aquifers, or the licenses given to industries that contaminate our ground water, inflates the commodity scarcity pricing of water, and if it does, what does that do to how we access water?

As a bulwark to this kind of degradation and depletion, the Intemerate Equation is another kind of index altogether. But rather than it being managed by Wall Street, an intemerate index will be managed by and benefit the very same communities that are doing the work.

This is particularly relevant as the IUCN recognizes the central and essential role of indigenous communities in stewardship and conservation of biodiversity. There is a high potential for creating new financial markets based on the measurement of our interactions rather than on the valuation of commodities, shifting the demand for extraction towards one that values service.

Two papers address this shifting landscape. The first, A Legal Theory of Finance, holds that “financial markets are legally constructed and as such occupy an essentially hybrid place between state and market, public and private;” and that “the law-finance paradox tends to be resolved by suspending the full force of law where the survival of the system is at stake.” The second paper, “Beyond Financialisation:The Need for a Longue Durée Understanding of Finance in Imperialism,”summarizes that under financialization, “we have been living in a new era of capitalism, characterized by a historical shift in the finance-production nexus. Finance has begun to behave abnormally towards production. It has assumed a disproportionate economic size and, more importantly, has divorced from ‘real’ economic pursuits.”

This is the moment to seize. Can the ACP or developing countries use this opportunity to rewrite the global economy to be just, fair, and equitable, or do we allow Wall Street to once again set the terms of how we value our existence.