The core concepts include an ontology (a view of what exists), an epistemology (a view of how we know things) and a semiology (a view of how things are represented).
We work from the assumption that thinking well about these aspects in the beginning will enable us to develop software, systems and processes that will not easily become redundant. This does not mean that one must be able to foresee every detail of how things could develop in future; it is in a sense the opposite: if the basic structure is comprehensive yet flexible and can incorporate learning and development, the chances of becoming redundant in the future are low.
This means we are not just looking for a description of how things currently are; we are looking for a deeper description of what climate action and accounting are in essence. We are looking for a description of how things could be 100 years from now. We attempt to break the concept of climate action and the process of climate accounting down to their most essential structure and use that as a basis for designing representation thereof in software.
Impact accounting within the context of climate action and the SDGs
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).
The state of an environment refers to the conditions prevalent in the environment. The more favourable the conditions are for sustaining life, the better (more valuable) the state is said to be; the less favourable the conditions are for sustaining life, the worse (less valuable) the state is said to be. Conditions are measured in terms of parameters, such as the amount of CO2 in the environment’s atmosphere, or the average daytime temperature inside the environment.
What differentiates living beings from other objects in their environments is the capacity of living beings to willfully engage in certain activities (such as moving themselves from one location to another, or consuming something); non-living beings do not have such a capacity (e.g., a rock can be moved from the top of a hill to the foot of the hill by wind or water or some other force, but it cannot move from the top of the hill to the foot of the hill by its own will). This means that when a living being is the willful agent of an activity, the living being in question can be held accountable for the impact that the activity in question has on their environment.
To be able to hold an agent accountable in a manner that is fair and just, we need to be reasonably sure how their activities impact their environment – and this is where accounting standards come into play. The impact that the activity of an agent has on the state of their environment is measured and expressed in terms of the changes that the activity causes in the defining parameters of the environment; an accounting standard tells us how to measure these parameters, i.e. which of them we should measure, how often we should measure them and what methods we should use to measure them. Accounting standards also tell us how to determine the boundaries of the environment of interest and what the desired state thereof is. Finally, accounting standards tell us how to verify and report our measurements.
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.
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 an environment.
An agent deliberately engages in an activity.
The activity impacts one or more states of an object that is considered valuable. In our case the planet Earth is the object of concern.
Accounting is the presentation, verification and aggregation of claims about the outcome of the activities and the nature and magnitude of the impact that they had/ve on states that are considered valuable.
A claim is made up of representations of the key aspects and dimensions of agents, activities and states as well as representations about the claim itself.
Some claims are proofs. A proof contains all the information needed to evaluate its veracity. Claims are often constructed from other claims.
Standards prescribe the content and structure of such claims and allow third parties to assess the veracity of thereof.
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. The cred
Ontology, epistemology and semiology
Ontology (What are the 'things' that the accounting system should know about? What are the defining properties or characteristics of each 'thing'?) | Epistemology (How will the accounting system get information about these things and their attributes?) | Semiology (How will each of the things be represented in the accounting system?) | |
|---|---|---|---|
Agents |
| 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 | Digital signature Verified credentials Validation claim by third party |
Activities |
* An audit is a special type of activity where the input is a claim and the output is an evaluation of that claim. | 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) |
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) |
States |
*State as in environmental state (not political state) | Indicators for states Indicators delivered by agents via PDDs and MRs |
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| Indicators |
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| Standards |
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Someone or something gathers data
- observes a phenomenon using some instrument
Someone or something presents data as a claim
- A claim concerns at least one property of an agent or activity or one paramater of a state and is accompanied by metadata (the instrument, agent and sampling frame)
Someone or something evaluates the claim
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.
(Where do impact claims fit in? Standards contain requirements for claims and claims are made up of indicators and assertions)
An impact claim (a state change claim)
- agent
- activity
- "before" state for every every environment and aspect of the state under consideration
- "after" state for every every environment and aspect of the state under consideration
- causal connection between activity and the resultant state (e.g. scope 1 (primary/secondary), scope 2 or scope 3)
- standard followed
For discussion: Where do we list the natural processes that lead to climate change?
(emission factors are indicators)