Institutions for Inclusive Stewardship
Being Human on a Global Scale in the 21st Century, and beyond...
Naveen Srivastav recently posted to the Facebook Group Climate Change: Adaptation, Mitigation, Resilience a commentary on the current state of funding for climate action as depicted in this visual:
Naveen went on to issue this challenge:
“Any finance folks want to critique this (and suggest how to fix what needs fixing?)
In issuing this challenge, Naveen cited The Climate Funds Update as published by the Overseas Development Institute at climatefundsupdate.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/CFF2-2019-ENG-DIGITAL.pdf.
Rather than accepting the challenge by responding with the requested critique, I am inspired to follow the guidance of Buckminster Fuller when he tells us:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller
The new model I want to propose is a new institution for inclusive stewardship of where the money is going. I am inspired to propose the phrase “inclusive stewardship” by Dov Seidman of The HOW Institute for Society, who tells us:
“The imperative of moral leadership is more evident than ever before.”
https://thehowinstitute.org/moral-leadership/
I propose that instead of moral leadership, the imperative that must be made evident is inclusive stewardship. On that, more below.
I propose calling this new institution for inclusive stewardship The Bank of Nature, taking this table and concept from Ian Edwards, Executive Director of The Cape Cod Center for Sustainability and its BROTO Art-Climate-Science initiative (broto.eco).
This Bank of Nature as I propose it be designed will hold the powers of size, purpose and time to negotiate that society has entrusted to our Pensions & Endowments as the superfiduciary stewards of society’s shared savings aggregated to form society’s social superfunds.
The mission and purpose of this Bank of Nature will be to lead a global exploration into the constantly evolving answers to these two core evergreen questions for inclusive stewardship by society’s social superfunds when considering the properly prudence use of their powers to negotiate:
WHO should they be negotiating WITH?
WHAT should they be negotiating FOR?
The design concept is for this Bank of Nature to pursue its mission through four primary activities:
commissioning Art-Science Thinkers to explore change, and new possibilities for adapting to change, along the creative edges of The New Frontier of the Human-Nature Partnership;
an Institute for Superfiduciary Superfund Prudence that will provide both technical and existential education and training to individuals who serve as superfiduciaries of society’s social superfunds - our Pensions & Endowments;
creating and sustaining a global network of Peace Cafes as fiduciary places and processes that will be safe places and processes for People Who Are Aware self-selected from the general population of everyday people living our everyday lives to make our own personal and individual contributions to local community engagement in globally curated conversations for articulating the adaptively evolving common sense and common wisdom of intergenerational loyalty and prudence for Pensions & Endowments as the superfiduciary stewards of society's social superfunds for making the money go where we want it to be going; and
Syndicate Management for evergreen superfund investments in evergreen enterprises.
The philosophy behind this proposal for a new Bank of Nature as an institution for inclusive stewardship of where the money is going is BIG, bold, innovative and PRACTICAL. It presents a new way of looking at enterprise, finance, government, prosperity and the social structures of social decision-making that you have not been show, in the spirit of these word for American Jazz Poet Gilbert Scott-Heron, who tells us:
“The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see that there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown.”
The new way of looking at things embodied in the philosophy behind a Bank of Nature includes:
“the Art & Science of data-based standards for global prosperity through social and environmental peace in the conduct of commerce informing the fiduciary common sense of intergenerational loyalty and prudence for the superfiduciary stewards of society’s social superfunds - our Pensions & Endowments - investing directly into the flourish and fade of the social contracts between enterprise and popular choice, as times change, from time to time, and over time, and humanity evolves prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes through inquiry & insight (Art & Science), articulation & conversation (Scholarship, Education & Community Engagement), enterprise & exchange (Business & Commerce), savings & investment (Finance), regulation & enforcement (Government) and accountability to functionality (Popular Choice) as the social structures for social decision making through which a population collaboratively co-creates the world of Human artifacts in which we live that we make for ourselves through our technologies out of the world of Nature into which we all are born, making new choices - and new enterprises - more popular as better fit to changing times, while letting previously popular choices - and enterprises - fade into history as a good choice at an earlier time, to generate adequate cash flows for this generation, and the next, both equally, forever, as they work to programmatically provide certainty against certain of life’s uncertainties, for the direct benefit of the direct beneficiaries of their public trusts, and also for all of us, who support those trusts, and benefit from them indirectly, as citizen-savers, citizen-spenders, citizen-voters and People Who Are Aware”
So, how would such a Bank of Nature pursuing such a philosophy provide financing for climate action?
FIRST, it would take society’s social superfunds out of speculation in the Capital Markets, so-called, and place them into stewardship investing into enterprise cash flows, directly.
It would do that on climate, specifically, by organizing syndicates of superfunds from all around the world to join together in executing a series of so-called “going private” or private equity transactions for taking the largest fossil fuel “super majors” out of public ownership through speculation on share price in the markets for maintaining share prices, and placing them, instead, into evergreen stewardship through negotiated agreements on formulas for sharing in enterprise cash flows that will be prioritized for superfund sufficiency and also for social and environmental long term sustainability = justice = peace in the conduct of commerce.
SECOND, it would break the stranglehold of Corporate Capture on the climate conversation within the public marketplace of ideas, and also on energy policy making within government, by ending now-evergreen “supermajority” funding for both public information campaigns of climate change denial and governmental lobbying for policies to perpetuate the primacy of fossil fuels in our global energy supply strategies; and instead funding public information campaigns of climate change awareness, and governmental lobbying for policies that support prudent stewardship of a globally coordinated managed transition from our present future history of escalating climate conflict to a new future history of creating and sustaining climate peace.
THIRD, it would immediately begin reducing new investment by these now-evergreen “super majors” in promoting and perpetuating fossil fuel combustion as the primary strategy for energy supply, globally, and begin prudently ambitious plans to invest instead in new energy supply choices that will help us transform our Human partnership with Nature from extractive and elitist to interactive and inclusive, winding down energy and cash flow generation from fossil fuels, as they ramp up energy and cash flow generation from this new energy choices.
FOURTH, to guide it in deciding how and when to wind down fossil fueled energy generation and how and when to ramp up new energy choices, this new Bank of Nature will commission various Art-Science expeditions of discovery and exploration of the Human-Nature Partnership to articulate a new vision of how energy cycles through the global human economies and economy, and how those cycles impact weather and climate, and also air, soils and water, food production, urbanization and all the many details of our human way of being in the world, and of being human on a global scale in the 21st Century, and beyond.
These expeditions will be popularized through a global network of Peace Cafes for conversation with People Who Are Aware, from all around the world, self-selected from the general population of everyday people living our everyday lives, to articulate an adaptively evolving common sense of intergenerational prudence in where the money can and should be going to adaptively evolving a global economy of peace in the conduct of commerce; climate peace, and earth peace; peace with ourselves and with each other; peace with our planet, and with our future; the peace of sufficient surpluses circulating sufficiently throughout the populations and across the generations, in patterns that are reasonably inclusive and fundamentally fair, changing over time, and from time to time, as times change, and humanity evolves prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes through inquiry and insight, articulation and expression, enterprise and exchange, saving and investing (finance), rules and regulations (government) and accountability to functionality (popular choice), making new choices more popular as better fit to changing times, and letting previously popular choices fade into history, as a good fit at an earlier time, driving the flourish and fade of the social contracts between enterprise and popular choice through recurring cycles of learning, earning, spending, saving and investing to collaboratively co-create an adaptively evolving future history of more that is better for more.
A New Human Project of creating and sustaining a safe and dignified Home for Humanity on our home planet, Earth.
There’s a lot to unpack in this new vision of climate peace as the first step towards a new prosperity of peace in the conduct of commerce, made possible in large part by a new Bank of Nature as a new institution of inclusive stewardship of this new prosperity of peace.
This unpacking is the work I am beginning through various initiatives, including pvdpeacecafes.org, evergreen core.org, The New Economy Academy at new-economy-academy.thinkific.com and this New Economy Canvass at neweconomycanvas.substack.com.
Your participation will be most welcome, and appreciated!
My own version of the new model that is requested at the beginning of the above article may be found in my 310 page e-book about our social system of macroeconomics "Consequential Macroeconomics". The model itself is also introduced in a 8 page working paper SSRN2865571 "Einstein's Criterion Applied to Logical Macroeconomics Modeling" . Write to me at chesterdh@hotmail.com for a free e-copy of the book and answers to your related questions.