Intemerate Earth – a movement to restore the climate
The birth of Tethys… birth…is that the right word? Anyway, her help led directly to the formation of the Ocean Stewardship Foundation. Without her, it I mean, I think of Tethys as her…it would probably never have happened. People from all around the world sharing knowledge, experiences, gene stocks, management techniques, all facilitated and supercharged by Tethys. This was helped by the introduction of the eco-currency, EarthCoin and the cooperative eco-investment fund, GAIA. Every one here had their GAIA account credited with 100,000 Earthcoins the day you were born if you were lucky enough to be born after 2050. Together these financial innovations gave a huge boost to the entrepreneurial communities. They helped connect grassroots activities enabling people to work directly with one another, albeit from opposite sides of the planet, on restoring nature and securing their own wellbeing all with the support and assistance of Tethys. If you harmed Earth, you harmed yourself.
- Andrew Merrie,‘Oceans Back from the Brink’
In an open letter published on 13 November 2020 in The Guardian, a group of environmental activists argued that it is no longer sufficient for governments to take climate action aimed at cutting carbon emissions to achieve net zero; rather governments must also act to restore the climate. As such, the authors of the letter “urge activists to start including restoration in their campaigning” and “urge every citizen to do what they can to make the dream of restoration a reality”. How can this dream of restoration be actualised in practice? How can a movement be built around the idea of restoring the climate? How could action by governments and activists alike be incentivised? What values would underpin such action?
The excerpt above from Radical Ocean Futures provides a vision for radical oceans management, of bringing our oceans back from the brink of ecological collapse. Through it, we can begin to identify how a movement for restoring the climate might look, the values underpinning its sociality, and some coordinates for thinking through the possibilities of how crypto-economics can support the restoration of ecological biodiversity. While the vision was developed using science fiction based scenario planning, it is much closer to reality than we may think. Indeed, both the vision and the call for a movement for restoring the climate resonate with small but growing movement (known as Intemerate Earth) which seeks to establish ecological accounting of “intemerate value” in the Pacific, African and Caribbean. The word “intemerate” is defined as undefiled, pure or inviolate, and while we cannot restore the climate to some mythical Nature before man, we can all agree on a baseline to which we seek to restore our climate and ecological biodiversity (for example, 350 parts per million as a safe marker of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).
What is Intemerate Earth?
At the core of Intemerate Earth is an equation. On a first approach, the equation is nothing more than a way of measuring, valuing and accounting for the environmental externalities that global capitalism ignores. It does this by incorporating knowledge of the value of our ecological biodiversity as well as the costs of depleting and degrading our environment into the measure of our economy. Therefore, the equation provides the means for reconfiguring the value of our economies beyond the price-making and profit-taking mono-economy of global capitalism towards the costs of preserving and restoring our ecological wellbeing.
As we engage further with the equation we discover that it also provides the means for equalizing the position of developing countries within the global economy. Yet while the intemerate value equation will contribute to building the national economies of developing countries it is not simply a replacement for GDP nor is it a competitive market mechanism such as the cap and trade approach proposed by carbon markets. Rather it seeks to equalize developing economies with other larger economies through collaboration and cooperation. For example, the equity that developing countries hold will be made based on the costs (labour, technology and infrastructure) necessary for restoring the climate and ensuring (rather than insuring) the resilience of vulnerable communities. This ‘ecological equity’ will enable equal access to financing, infrastructure and technology necessary to build resilience and keep local communities secure in their homes.
Furthermore, the equation harbours the foundations for a global movement to restore the environment. How do we know that our climate is out of balance with the agreed upon restoration baseline? Through statistical data, which can be collected scientifically as much as it can be through indigenous knowledge and practices including story telling, art and dance. As such, from remote ocean atolls to vast mountain ranges, communities can become ‘intemerate activists’ by collecting and auditing data on ecological biodiversity. Therefore the equation at the heart of Intemerate Earth gives expression to what Merrie describes in the vision above as “grassroots activities enabling people to work directly with one another, albeit from opposite sides of the planet, on restoring nature and securing their own wellbeing” by attributing a value that includes labour, stewardship and management of statistical data.
Crypto-economics and Intemerate Earth
Crypto-economics can provide the means by which to bring to life Intemerate Earth. The potential to ‘do economy differently’ that crypto-economics opens up derives from three key factors: decentralised technology, collective sociality, and autonomous financial systems. All three relate directly to the realisation of Intemerate Earth. The excerpt at the beginning of this post provides the basic coordinates for helping understand how this could work.
Firstly, decentralised technologies, such as smart phones, block chain and 5G all provide the tools for enabling peoples living in remote areas of the globe to be connect to Intemerate Earth. By extension then, decentralised technologies provides the means through which to build a new collective sociality grounded in data stewardship for Intemerate Earth. Individually, people will act as ‘citizen scientists’, collecting, reporting and auditing statistical data on ecological biodiversity thereby enabling intemerate value to be generated. Collectively, they will be helping to restore the planet to its intemerate baseline and creating a more equal global economy. That is, the material realisation of the Intemerate Earth movement is through the collective of data stewards and auditors labouring together to restore the planet to the agreed ecological baseline.
Finally, the immediate aim of Intemerate Earth is to enable developing countries to equalise their economies so as to gain fair access to the technologies and infrastructure necessary to build resilience for people to remain safely in their homes in the face of a changing climate. While it may one day be possible to realise the vision for EarthCoin as envisaged in the excerpt above, an interim step may be to develop a crypto-token system that rewards actors within the Intemerate Earth collective as a means to build and sustain the movement. That is, as data stewards, members of the collective can receive crypto-tokens for their labour. As well as helping to build and sustain a movement, this may also help develop local crypto-economies for resilience. For example, in Vanuatu, Oxfam is using Ethereum to provide crypto-tokens to communities following natural disasters to enable access to goods and services across a network of local stores and schools.
Timothy Bryar, PhD is an independent researcher and writer based in Suva. Timothy has worked in the Pacific region for more than a decade, with both non-government and inter-governmental organisations. He has a PhD from the University of Sydney.