Description
Executive summary
Requirement of get together, cooperative and collaborative are the 'opportunities' imbibed in climate crisis. These approaches became 'opportunity' since it is well practiced by human civilization through out its history to achieve something good. The very nature of the climate crisis, for achieve solution or get rid of crisis essentially requires cooperation among social systems and between socio-ecological systems.
The current economic system has to undergo urgent revival. It is because of two main reasons, first one is its meager sustainability in the scenario of key resource crunch. Second one is its involvement in environmental degradation, which again imperil whatever remaining sustainability promises by it. Thus it is essential to make the economy to be more sustainable in the future.
Features of the Earth ecosystem (such as its efficiency in resource sharing and utilization, and its strategy to be self-sufficient and sustainable) support a strong belief that the current anthropocentric economic system can be made into a sustainable one by internalizing it within the Earth ecosystem. Here the term internalization refers to the process of embedding ecological values and attitudes into the current economic system[1]. These were acquired and acclaimed by us through learning and networking about the earth ecosystem.
This proposal aims to make ecosystem principle and well being of earth ecosystem as a strong determining factor of economy and its prosperity. It wants to make that influence as matching, augmenting or bypassing other current determining factors such as state, tradition or market. The main aim of this proposal is to make a functional narrative for internalization by emphasizing some of the well known and emerging pillars of concepts, best practices and linkages between them.
To achieve the internalization, I3E proposes a series of interconnected mechanisms to seek the preferred actions. The first action is to improve the connectivity among economic players and establishes connectivity between the earth ecosystem and economic systems for cooperation. The mechanism for these actions are from social networking, sensor web enabling , Internet of things . The second action is to define the ecological footprint and well being of ecosystem. The mechanisms for this action are based on industrial ecology practices and defining social ecological footprint on ecosystem services. The third action is mechanism of internalization by identifying the threshold ecological footprint and economic valuation of ecological footprint with coordination in global level and implementation in local level
What
The economy need to be evolved into resilient to climate crisis. Internalizing the economy into the earth ecosystem is a better way to achieve that. Since human society itself is an integral part of ecosystem and so it's economy also need to be.
Action 1: Generate strong cooperation within social system through accountability, openness on its ecological footprint towards ecosystem and between social and ecological systems through understanding its complexity, dynamics, uncertainty.
Action 2: Stipulate the ecological footprint, resilience and economic growth objectives of local social system towards the contextual dynamic ecosystem condition. Implement action for resilience through cycling and controlling the ecological footprint in socio-ecological sphere.
Action3: Impose the threshold ecological footprint of individual nation to root personal level based on the resilience and economic growth objectives. Monitarization of threshold ecological footprint, coordinate in global level and implement locally.
Mechanisms:
For action 1
envirocloud
Information about ecosystem functionality with respect to local condition, societal utilization, disposal of ecosystem goods and service is essential for the intended cooperation. That information has to be trustful and open accessible to sought accountability in it. Envirocloud envisage to procure that information through social networking, networking of sensors that sensing the functionality of machines running that society and real time fed it in web 2.0. So that the data cloud formed will be encircles the local environment with vital information to cooperation within social system and between social and ecosystem.
For social networking it need to generate awareness about necessity of 'sharing societies perception, observation on environment' and community participation. Education reforms directed to describe the environment, its dynamics in plain language as an aim of education is to be an start for the awareness.
For networking of sensors: All the sensors deployed to get information about environment (earth observation satellites to climate sensors) need to be connected to sensor web and real time information has to be procured pertaining to the local environment.
For networking of machines: Internet of things has to implemented. Log entries of machines working for the society both personal and public has to be real time recorded and fed in envirocloud. It requires paradigm shift in design concept of machines.
For action2:
Institutionalize the knowledge generation and implementation of industrial ecology:
The data collected through envirocloud need to be transformed into meaningful knowledge with considering the phase of dynamism in ecosystem. The local environmental management institution practicing sustainability science will be the nodal agency for the knowledge generation. The knowledge will be about ecological footprint of society towards ecosystem and function of ecosystem, its dynamics at the current context of footprint and climate crisis. Moreover this mechanism has to be another functionality to generate, social consensus among members of society. Based on these ecological footprint the resilience objectives and economic growth objectives need to be revamped temporally.
Localized industrial ecology setup has to be initiated bearing in mind the local ecological footprint of the area. It has to be aligned with aspiration of resilience objective and economic objective stipulated by the footprint of the area. Industries and societies need to be encouraged to innovate the techniques, possible networks (setting up industrial ecology), control measures by considering the local setup, avenues, social consensus for reducing the footpirnt. Centralized control measures such as smart grid based provision of energy such as electricity, gasoline can be practiced. Those initiatives need to be financed promptly by generating the resource from action3.
For action3:
Believe the knowledge and internalize the economy based on that:
From the action1 and 2 trustful and widely acceptable understandings between social and ecological systems will be generated. From that understandings, threshold ecological footprint to thrive an society, its members at a time period has to be stipulated. Economically value those ecological footprint as an non fiscal asset of the society (low ecological footprint means investment high means debt). Transnational governance measures has to be sought for coordinate the action 1-3 in global level and institutional build up in local level.
Vision of the future under this proposal
2025. "Wear your pollution protection mask, don't you remember today's forecast!"
A mother’s morning advice to her children.
The period of informed environment. Deployed sensor networks will update the real time information about our surroundings. It will be the time of applying the adaptive strategies to cop up with calamities of climate change. It will be the high time of learning the ecosystem ‘s way of communication with us.
2055. “Hoorah, my stock price sky rocketed. My company changes it strategic direction of production into services”
Time of service oriented industry is better for economy than production and dump. Start of ecosystem controlling economy.
2062. “Hey where is my top carnivores?”
A wetland’s call to its fellow neighboring human population
Time to hear and respond to the Ecosystem’s communication with us. It will be the time of informed stewardship and ecological engineering.
2075. smart supply chain - energy, resource and economy too.
Centralized decision on consumption and production. Clear delineation of luxury and necessity, thus confluence of north south divide. Giving back to ecosystem will be considered as the minimum requirement of luxury and vice versa will be considered as the violation of rules for well being of global commons. Natural calamities to any locality will be considered as the global emergency.
2100. Equity matters.
Equitable sharing and reaching of energy and resource to the end users of human society and ecosystem will be considered as the prosperity. Economy will be fine tuned annually to achieve equity and ecosystem stewardship.
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