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Foresight is an anticipatory and controled process to prepare for future developments. Foresight comprises a set of methods to forecast trends and to build future scenarios.The talk/session intends to collaborate on the concept of a personal account system for footprint tracking as one possible solution element to realize effective and scalable “degrowth”.

Today: Only a tiny minority of consumers transforms insight into real behavior ("ethical consumption"). Also rebound effects weaken the effectiveness.

Urgent question: How to change the mainstream behavior effectively?

Image source: http://footprintnetwork.org

Example of footprint aspects, source: http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/2013_infographic/

The Personal Footprint Account (PFA) is a tool to measure and display the ecological effects of the individual consumer behavior.

Concept study, UXD ( user experience design) for an PFA app. Mobile end device desplaying footprint dimensions in realtime. Behavioral navigator screen. Creative Commons BY – Willi Schroll

The effective behavioral change for sustainable lifestyle patterns – on a mass scale.

Behavioral tool: PFA will display the eco footprint, per capita, possibly for everyone in the future. Mobile devices like smart phones might also allow for realtime monitoring in the future.

An infrastructure for measuring, delivering and managing the footprint data has to be built.

Good news: With the technolgical progress ahead the costs will decrease in the next years (Moore’s law).

Civilisation has learned to behave “economically rational” – with the ubiquity of pricing, accounting, bank accounts, a “saving culture”.

This success principle can be applied to the next stage, the civilisation following principles of sustainability and resilience. We need to behave “ecologically rational” – and tools will help us to do so.

In the same way as a bank account cannot have a debt beyond a certain limit, the IFA will effectively change the behavior. ● Case travel decision: The carbon limit is reached for this

year, it will be very costly to take another flight● Case shopping clothes: The social balance sheet as a

part of the IFA shows that you are “in debt” (e.g. working conditions of garment workers).

Let us build the infrastructure for this!

● Data input (bar code, NFC, GPS, sensors)● Calculating partial footprints● Infrastructure (analogy to credit card system)● The next stage of ICT, the Internet of Things, might

be part of the infrastructure● The infrastructure can be built successively, e.g.

starting with the CO2 footprint

● Big Data, surveillance, ○ but: privacy by design is possible (example: the privacy safe

design of tollcollect Germany) ● Complexity

○ as in economy: even fuzzy data have an effect in the decision process and hence optimize the flow of ressources, values and materials – into the direction of sustainable use of ressources

● Costs○ the costs will decrease (miniaturisation, Moores Law, sensor

empowered smartphones, spreading of IoT)

● Risks○ Eco dictatorship?

■ “soft” dictatorship (social pressure)■ politicians stepping aside■ “technocratic” corporations like Google increase power

● Weakness○ tech vision – “nerd solution”○ fatal evolution to “dehumanized people”, depending more and

more on technological systems○ more tracking and surveillance, less privacy

● Risk: “Libertarian paternalism”; see: “Nudge” by Richard Taylor○ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)

● Emotion/empathy instead of appealing to ratio – (see Charles Eisenstein, Jeremy Rifkin)

● Instead of a “system solution” we should create a new mentality + lifestyle

There was a hint from the group about a concept, that is also directed to the personal level● Energiebank – An energy political project in Switzerland for decreasing the

energy / CO2 footprint: Targetting the “2.000 Watt Society” – 2.000 Watt per person)

Image source: http://www.energiebankschweiz.ch/?id=5

The concept of a “third way” is rather clear – but not new. The questions remain:

● Is this model of the “Economy for the Common Good” (Gemeinwohlökonomie) really feasible?

● Is this “movement” able to spread in the environment of a market economy?

● So far nearly 1.700 enterprises and 5.800 consumers apply the principles

http://www.common-good-economy.org/en

Image source: sldie 4 in report (pdf): http://www.bsl-lausanne.ch/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/BSL-_Economy-of-the-Common-Good.pdf

The “Economy for the Common Good” applies footprint bilancing on the level of the enterprise. Being sustainable in a proven way results in a higher score. Enterprises compete for sustainability factors, esp. the social dimension

● human dignity● solidarity● social justice● ecological sustainability● democracy

Image source: sldie 7 in report (pdf): http://www.bsl-lausanne.ch/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/BSL-_Economy-of-the-Common-Good.pdf

Experiences and insights shared during a project for Business School Lausanne: “Common Good Matrix Consulting Project”

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGuV5cn-_ns

The PFA vision can be extended into certain directions for usage scenarios

Ubiquitous PFAThere are more sensors not only on personal mobile devices, but in the future there will be also more sensors/data tracking in the physical surroundings (IoT, smart things, Ambient Intelligence). This will make the tracking of various footprint sources more simple (but will also increase the risk of surveillance)

Image component from source: http://cloudtweaks.com/2014/09/cloud-infographic-internet-things

Social and gamified PFAAnalogous to collaborative communities the PFA users can connect for increasing their efficiency together – there might be platforms built to enable “group action” for degrowth like gardening, low PF activities (in the same way as we have platforms for “group buying” today); also gamification can be used as it is done in the domain of communities around fitness gadgets (“Quantified Personal Degrowth” = Quantified Self for degrowth) Image 1, snippet from source: http://www.fitbit.com/

Image 2, source: http://blog.thedetroithub.com/2011/08/31/compuware-plants-new-urban-garden-in-downtown-detroit/

Nations and regions are locked in competition-for-growth trapWorldwide the politicians cannot advance into certain reasonable directions, since the economies are competing for best conditions for enterpreneural actors and investors. As a result this dilemma is a barrier for sustainable politics (less economical growth, degrowth) on a planetary scale.

International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)ISPO has been founded in 2000 to to break this lock-in situation. ISPO is a voluntary organization that promotes the “Simultaneous Policy” (Simpol) campaign: Coordinated decisions of politicians can break the fatal blockade for international treaties. A roadmap for a PFA can use the SIMPOL mechanism to avoid local disadvantages.

ISPO, International Simultaneous Policy Organization (logo) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Simultaneous_Policy_Organization

Why should people agree with restrictions and with the “rationing” of ressources?In the rich countries the masses are used to their “anti-sustainable priviliges”, they live with a huge ecological footprint, e.g. in the domain of consumption of goods and far distance travelling. Sure, the acceptance is a central issue.First, the parallels are accepted restrictions in the field of health or mobility: Citizens allow for laws, that are applied equally, e.g. using saftey belts, speed limits, preventive medicine, vaccination etc.Second, globally the awareness for the necessity and willingness for implementation of PFA is not equally distributed. As a consequence the implementation/roadmap will be geographically differentiated as e.g. today’s tax laws are. Example of global cultural differentiation in case of social

inequality (map fo Gini coefficient) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

Ecological debt, interest rates, progressive compensation? The concrete structure for an “acceptable differentiated PFA scheme” is a real design challenge. One option is a progressive PFA compensation scheme, analogous to (accepted) progressive taxation. There could be a kind of interest rates for personal “ecological debt”, analogous to debt in the financial domain. This means, that e.g. another transatlantic travel ticket in a one year period might cost 2 or 3 times more than the “annual eco-correct ticket”, the fee then is used for reforestation. How could this be implemented in an elegant way, avoiding the growth of a huge bureaucracy apparatus for rules, exceptions, observation and control?

Instead of building huge administrative control structures the focus should be on a post-consumerist “positive lifestyle vision” with a small footprint. It will be adopted and convincing as much as it actually creates more happiness and satisfaction in the personal life. On a mass level also a big challenge!

● I encourage sharing and supporting the creative commons○ This presentation is published under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA○ The author should be quoted if you use the slides. Consider the copyright for the graphics and photos

on the slides, that have been quoted for illustrative function in the scientific context.○ See more: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ ○ If you want to use the presentation or parts of it commercially please contact me.○ It is much appreciated if you link to the specific slideshare.net or google address, you can also embed the slideshare code.

Appreciated to link to http://about.me/wschroll for easy author contact.● The title, cover and presentation slides have been changed and the deck has been enriched with graphics to illustrate the concept.

○ “Individual Footprint Account” (IFA) has been renamed to “Personal Footprint Account” (PFA), since the commonly used term is personal footprint

○ The original was hacked in short time, since the decision to run an open space was spontaneous. A rough copy of the original slidedeck is here: http://j.mp/indifp-old

○ Thanks to the participants for being part and for the critical remarks● Related links

○ Degrowth conference http://leipzig.degrowth.org/en/ ○ Ecological footprint (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint ○ Footprint Network http://footprintnetwork.org/ ○ Degrowth (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth ○ List of environmental issues (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_issues ○ Anthropocene (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene

● Shortlink to presentation slides on Google docs: http://j.mp/indifootprint● Contact: http://about.me/wschroll – willi.schroll/at/googlemail.com