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Impact accounting within the context of climate action and the SDGs
Overview
The surroundings of a living being, i.e., the space or sphere in which it operates or functions, is generally referred to as the environment of the living being. Earth, as the home of a vast number of living beings, can be seen as consisting of a vast number of environments. Some of these environments have clear geographical boundaries, but many do not; most of these environments in fact overlap or can be viewed as sub-environments of some larger environment (e.g., a tidal pool can be viewed as an environment on its own, but it can also be viewed as part of the environment of its surrounding shoreline).
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Figure 1: Environments within environments. The blue circle depicts Earth (the "global environment") as a subenvironment of the universal environment (the gray ellipsoid). The slightly transparent, green circles with dashed, brown borderlines represent the infinite number of possible environments of interest that exist within the global environment. The large green circle, populated with pictures of animals, trees and humans, depict one such possible environment of interest. The purple rectangle to the right of the diagram depicts the relationship between the (abstract) discipline of impact accounting and the real world - it intersects with reality, but can never account for reality in its fullness.
The problem of plurality
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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Standards prescribe the content and structure of such claims and allow third parties to assess the veracity of thereof.
Ontology, epistemology and semiology
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Ontology (What are the 'things' that the accounting system should know about? What are the defining properties or characteristics of each 'thing'?)
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Agents
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- unique identifier (identity)
- type (individual or group; if group, what type of group, e.g. organisation, company or movement; auditor)
- Develop or source a schema describing a minimum set of properties by agents type
An agent asserts their identity though digital signatures
Agents provide proofs of their properties through verified credentials
Other parties can verify agent properties and make claims about their methods and results
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Digital signature
Verified credentials
Validation claim by third party
Activities
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- activity class (e.g. IPCC categories)
- activity description including objective(s)
- location
- start time
- end time (possibly)
- agent
- input(s) (e.g. materials and energy; consumables and non-consumables)
- process(es): a process links inputs to products and waste
- output(s) product + waste
objective (experience, create, reduce, destroy, avoid, verify) (optional / not required in all instances)
* An audit is a special type of activity where the input is a claim and the output is an evaluation of that claim.
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Ex ante: An agent asserts their intentions to act in a Projet Design Document (PDD)
Ex post: An agent describe their actions in a Projet Design Document (PDD)
The activity and its results and impacts are documented by the agent at intervals in a monitoring report (MR)
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- unique identifier
Consider a token for an activity that contains all the essential elements in column 1. Such a token must have a time limit and proof of life requirements (e.g. minimum process data feed to confirm it is ongoing)
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- location and temportal extent (either objective or referential)
- definition (in terms of parameters of interest)
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States
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- metrics referring to parameters
- type (actual [measured] or baseline [counterfactual])
*State as in environmental state (not political state)
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Parameters/indicators for states
Parameters/indicators delivered by agents via PDDs and MRs
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- unique identifier
- impact claim per state
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- name
- definition
- unit of measure
- rationale
- calculation
- credibility
(Emission factors are parameters, for example.)
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- unique identifier
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- name
- author(s)
- applicability - type of agent, type of activity, state
- requirements (e.g. reporting requirements, calculation requirements)
- version
- method(s)
- precision
- accuracy / std error
- emission factors (defaults)
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- unique identifier
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The process of impact accounting
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Someone or something evaluates the claim
Epistemology
We know about things through direct participation in them or through representations.
For things we experience directly we do not need any further assurance that they are true.
For discussion: Where do we list the natural processes that lead to climate change? Should there be an event class? An event is like an activity but without the intention of an agent. An accident is an event but it is not an activity.