Global Solidarity Accounting - Documenting the Journey

Introduction

In December 2021, a group of collaborators, initiated by Arthur Dahl, came together. The group comprising diverse backgrounds in environment, economics, finance, business, social and political sciences and spirituality started a conversation about the failure of GDP and other growth measures to truly capture humanity’s well-being, and set out to identify more appropriate ways of measuring progress. This conversation was initiated while planetary and human well-being were rapidly deteriorating even as GDP numbers soared, in fact reflecting benefits only for a privileged few.

The Global Solidarity Accounting project set out to develop alternative ways of measuring well-being inspired by Bahá’í principles, as a replacement for the materialistic financial accounting that dominates the present economic system and development paradigm. As material progress has soared over the past centuries, large swaths of the earth’s population remain untouched by its potential benefits. And excesses in material advancement wrought a toll on the capacity of the earth to sustain its environment and its inhabitants, whether human or otherwise.

The group’s premise was that there is one humanity in all its diversity, in which every human is born as a trust of the whole. As such the moral foundation of the economic order must be to safeguard human well-being for all. Additionally, mutual assistance, reciprocity, cooperation, and the underlying interconnection between all parts of creation, must be the basis to develop a new Global Solidarity Accounting system.

The most recent statement of the Bahá’í International Community, “One Planet, One Habitation: A Bahá’í Perspective on Recasting Humanity's Relationship with the Natural World,” of 1 June 2022, calls for a similar fundamental questioning, including developing budgets centered around well-being or indicators of progress more holistic than gross domestic product. What are the qualities by which a person, nation, or corporation are judged successful? For what are they commended and appreciated?

Thus the initial gatherings of the group placed humans at the center, as the trustees of the world, its environments and its inhabitants. Only through actions and services by all humans focused on the common good of society could it demonstrate how to respect, maintain and improve the common property on a planet that is essential to life now and for the generations that follow.

Some history

When we reflect on humanity’s 300,000 years of history, we clearly are at a different point from where we started. We began as cave dwellers and hunter-gatherers, each person working and serving the family unit or tribe to hunt and gather sufficient food to eat, while protecting their lives from the threats of nature. Over the last five thousand years, humanity has advanced, becoming cultivators of land and livestock settled in a place. Societies became more complex, first in small villages where the labor to provide food and shelter became specialized skills. Then we transitioned from the village to city state and nation state. These transitions occurred during periods of heightened awareness and creativity that brought new and more advanced ideas to the fore. Now we are on the cusp of another major transition. Nineteenth century ideas and creativity in communications and transportation reduced the world to a small planet, yet mentally we continued old paradigms of nation states and competition over finite resources, while learning that human-drawn borders no longer offered protection.

Now in the 21st century, another economic vestige of capitalism converted everything to financial measures with values determined in the market, which has dictated the chaos, waste and pollution of competition for wealth, omitting any costs to humanity that could not be monetarily priced. This ignores all those too poor to compete in the market even for their basin needs, without the opportunity for meaningful employment. How can we expect to make informed decisions? The time has come for the world to consult on its just and inclusive future, and how to measure more comprehensively its progress towards this future.

What should we be measuring?

If a single monetary measure is no longer adequate, then what should we be measuring? The opening premise is to measure the major factors that contribute to humanity’s well-being. This means focussing on the common good of any human society and how to respect, maintain and improve, on an ongoing basis, all aspects of planetary life essential to ensure quality of life for the generations that follow.

Initially nine dimensions of the natural and human system were defined. Volunteers organized subgroups to identify measurements for a “Global Systems Accounting” in their dimension:   
1. Carbon (Energy) Accounts   
2. Biodiversity Accounts   
3. Pollution Accounts   
4. Minimum Living Standards (poverty) Accounts   
5. Food Accounts   
6. Health Accounts   
7. Work and Service Accounts   
8. Knowledge and Education Accounts   
9. Spiritual Capital and Values Accounts

For each dimension deliberations centered around the factors that would contribute to improved well-being and those that caused negative impacts. For example, ensuring that everyone has adequate shelter, nutritious food and a meaningful activity useful for themselves and society signify well-being, while relying on fossil fuels, discarding plastic and inadequate medical services are harmful. Lack of access to education will negatively affect the social fabric, while cooperation and altruistic motivation are constructive.

After about six months, to advance the dialogue and interactions, these nine dimensions were consolidated into three main measurement groups:

1. Environmental Accounts, including Carbon, Biodiversity and Pollution   
2. Human Well-being Accounts, including Minimum Living Standards, Food, and Health   
3. Social Accounts, including Work and Service, Knowledge and Education, and Spiritual Capital

The below graph may be helpful in showing the relationship of one dimensions to the others and to overall Human Well-being.

As the above graph shows, Work and Service provide the resources for humanity to improve its environment, individual well being and society. Indicators for well-being would define work as a service to the community and society. Work in service is meant to improve community life and its environment, and society must give everyone an opportunity to be of service, and enable learning and growth. This takes on a spiritual dimension that influences social and economic development.

To put it another way, Work and Service represent the twofold moral purpose we as human beings have on this planet, which is to better ourselves by improving our spiritual qualities, while at the same time improving the society in which we live. This idea is reflected in the following quotes:

“The Betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct.”i

In particular to the young the following guidance is relevant:

“To every generation … comes an opportunity to make a contribution to the fortunes of humanity, unique to their time of life. For the present generation, the moment has come to reflect, to commit, to steel themselves for a life of service from which blessing will flow in abundance.”ii

Global Solidarity Accounting – the Journey

The first phase of Global Solidarity Accounting focused on exploring each dimension in some detail, providing resources and a foundation for the concept with a paper on the International Environment Forum website, and exploring efforts by other organizations to develop well-being accounting systems. Examples were identified within United Nations agencies, other international organizations, and some governments.

Each group called for participants to join and collaborate in the effort to identify resources aiming to develop indicators for a Global Solidarity Accounting system that would steer away from a single GDP measure and avoid the pitfalls of the existing financial measurement of development in use internationally.

The co-creation of a new global accounting system took different approaches, as some areas such as environmental measurements and frameworks are more developed, in comparison with human well-being for instance. Nonetheless, a robust effort was made to explore and identify resources in various places such as Bhutan and Vanuatu where governments have developed and adopted frameworks to measure human well-being reflecting their own cultures and values.

Additionally, guiding principles were found in the Bahá’í literature and the Bahá’í International Community. The topics included trusteeship for nature, agriculture, the charging of interest, corporate structures, the elimination of extremes of poverty and wealth, basic income, community based economic resource management for the good of all community members, etc. The basis of any indicators must be grounded in justice, equity, inclusivity, and interdependence within a framework that allows all human beings to participate in the governance of their societies.

An attempt was made at identifying indicators for shelter, food, health, climate impact and more. For some of the accounts, identifying measurable indicators proved much more difficult, particularly when speaking of less concrete dimensions such as knowledge, or spiritual capacity of a community. One either had to find proxies, which proved hard, or come up with a self-assessment of one’s reality, which seemed more feasible at the community level. A few of the friends in the group developed self-assessment questionnaires and started applying them in their respective communities. Although the self-assessment may appear lacking in objectivity, it did stimulate meaningful conversations, and can over time provide trend indicators of how the community is advancing on a path of self-improvement.

Graphics were developed by different groups to chart positive and negative indicators. Attractive questionnaires were developed to engage in community social action. This led to experimenting and consulting on the pilot materials, translations of the materials, and initiation of community engagement in Ontario, Canada, Geneva, Switzerland and Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Environment Accounts

The planetary environment is the foundation for all life and natural resources, but we are now exceeding planetary boundaries and system stability, and eroding the resource base upon which we depend, representing existential risks to our future. Accounts measuring our energy and climate imbalances through carbon flows, our management of biodiversity, and global contamination by pollutants, would target the most critical risks.

Human Well-being Accounts

For social sustainability, a similar set of accounts could be created for major material dimensions of human well-being, again using as “currencies” direct measures of well-being. Eliminating poverty by meeting basic needs such as for shelter, water and security and restraining excessive wealth is a clear priority, complemented by specific accounts for the food system and achieving good health for all.

Social Accounts

For the Social Accounts group, the challenge of recording and measuring a trend is significant. The only current tangential indicators are in employment, and in primary and secondary school enrollment with often little indication of knowledge acquired. While there are some social science methods to measure Spiritual Capital, statistics like membership in a religious organisation do not come close to assessing the spiritual capital present in society. Positive and negative scores should not be averaged out, to allow targeted action to move negatives into positive territory and to advance positives into higher scores.

A local community questionnaire might ask: “Irrespective of pay, how well are people engaged in productive work?”, or “Do people engage in their work with positive attitude and spirit of service?” For Knowledge and Education, some questions might be “How well do people have equal access to education?”, or “How well are people engaged in self-motivated lifelong learning?” For Spiritual Capital, some questions might be: “How well are ethical/moral principles accepted as the foundation of community life?”, or “How many community members get together for spiritual practices?”

Global Solidarity Accounting – Next Steps

The basis of human well-being in all aspects is to be of service to others, to share, to have adequate resources to meet one’s needs for shelter, food, health, water, etc. Excess resources need to be available to assist those who may have a lack of resources even though they, each within their own capacity, contribute in some form to community resources. We need to prepare simple descriptions of solidarity or well-being accounting as a way of thinking of progress as human and environmental well-being rather than material wealth.

This suggests two directions to take the project forward:   
• content for global public discourse through Baha’i-inspired organizations: IEF and ebbf   
• materials for community conversations to read the local reality, engage in public discourse, and decide on social action. This could include text and presentations on the nine dimensions of well-being for community use

We also need to compile references to existing examples of well-being accounting and indicators

i Bahá’u’lláh   
ii Universal House of Justice, 8 February 2013