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The problem is that humankind has, over the years, created different accounting standards for the same activities and agents, and the differences between them often lead to disagreements between their findings of how and to what extent a certain agent’s activities impact their environment. The solution to this problem is unfortunately not as simple as just choosing one of the standards and getting all of humankind to only use that standard henceforth – each of the standards have their strengths and weaknesses, and the arguments against a specific standard is often just as many as the arguments for that standard. The solution, instead, seems to lie in finding a structured way to compare the different standards – their requirements, their approaches, and what they take into account.
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Figure 2: Different impact claims for activities within a specific environment of interest. The diagram depicts a hypothetical impact accounting case for an environment with four agents (Alice, Bob, Candice and Dennis) and six parameters of interest (the parameters are represented by the geometric shapes).
The three green circles at the top of the diagram depict the environment of interest at three different points in time. The first green circle depicts the environment right before Alice, Bob, Candice and Dennis started with their activities. The second green circle depicts the environment of interest for the period during which the activities were conducted. The third green circle depicts the environment of interest right after the activities had been conducted. The first green circle thus represents the start of the accounting period, while the third green circle represents the end of the accounting period. The blue arrows depict relationships between entities in the environment: R1 highlights the relationships between agents and activities (agents engage in activities; activities do not occur by themselves); R2 highlights the relationships between activities and the environment in which they are conducted
The four purple rectangles represent impact claims submitted by the four agents who engaged in activities in the environment of interest during the period of interest (i.e., during the accounting period). The geometric shapes in the claims represent their correlative parameters in the environment. The geometric shapes on the left side of each claim represent the state of their parameters before the activity in question occurred; the geometric shapes on the right side of each claim represent the state of their parameters after the activity in question occurred. The changes in the colours of the parameters from before the activity to after the activity represent the calculated impact (calculated according to the standard chosen by each of the claimants) that the activity in question had on the parameters. A colour change from green to orange or red indicates a negative impact on the parameter in question; a colour change from red to orange or green indicates a positive impact on the parameter in question. In this hypothetical scenario, Alice submitted an impact claim for her activity of travelling by car, and she took three different parameters (the diamond, trapesium and pentagon parameters) into account; Bob engaged in building activities and also took three parameters (the hexagon, triangle and pentagon parameters) into account for his impact claim; Candice travelled by aeroplane, and considered two parameters (the square and the hexagon parameters) for her impact claim; Dennis, like Alice, submitted an impact claim for travelling by car, but he considered two other parameters than Alice for his claim. Thus, although Alice and Dennis engaged in the same activity during the same accounting period and in the same environment, their impact claims look very different - because they used two different standards to report their claims against. This represents the problem posed by a plurality of impact accounting standards.
Credit: Alfonso Govela (Alfonso Govela)
Generic formulation of the accounting process
Premise: An agent engages in an activity that impacts a statean environment.
An agent deliberately engages in an activity.
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Accounting is the presentation, verification and aggregation of claims about the outcome of the activities and the nature and magnitude of the impact that it they had/s ve on states that are considered valuable.
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For things we experience directly we do not need any further assurance that they are true. The cred
Credit: Alfonso Govela (Alfonso Govela)
Ontology, epistemology and semiology
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