Bank of Nature's Manifesto
We see
Climate change as an eviction notice from nature. For too long now, humanity has extracted value from nature without terms, like interest, fees and penalties. We are in default and misguided in believing that there will always be more nature to take without our debt to nature coming due. We see a sustainability endgame with both environmental and human dignity security that comes from a two-way human-nature partnership.
We believe
Fiduciary money is the tool that humanity can use to change our relationship with nature, from extractive to interactive. That’s money with a mission and money that is distinct from speculative corporate finance, short-term market trading or political capital corrupted by corporate capture. Fiduciary money is guided by intergenerational fiduciary loyalties, the obligations to negotiate better terms through prudent stewardship and the imperative to live on in perpetuity.
We choose
An interactive human-nature partnership that guides us toward endgame sustainability. We are invested in creating an economy that is inclusive of externalities and our debt to nature — our two-way human-nature partnership. Through our independent proxy for nature, we will direct fiduciary money to enterprises that work to realize a future made sustainable, both environmentally and socially, and to “Make More Nature” toward endgame sustainability.
We empower
Common sense, nature-building people, of relevant knowledge and intention, to be fiduciaries of our planet-scale solutions. They will exercise fiduciary prudence for fiduciary owners of fiduciary money with the overarching goasl of global stewardship and intergenerational loyalty. We empower enterprise to engage with the crises at scale and join us in the benefits of a two-way, economic human-nature partnership made real through fiduciary money and finance.
Our unconventional conventions
1
Give nature agency
Establish nature as “the Commons” – an independent proxy for nature and legally recognized peer to international governments and industries.
2
Restructure the economy
Include nature as a substantive factor in economic theory and practice and, through a proxy, name it as the agent responsible for climate and future security.
3
Engage climate security heroes
Partner with the financial organizations that have both the mission and scale to fully engage in the stewardship of climate security.
4
Pay nature rent
Make good on what we owe for the extraction from nature to make our society and move towards the true costs of our society by internalizing externalities.
5
Embrace money as a unifier
Acknowledge that money and capitalism will be protected through a climate-changed future, but that can be a unifying tool for change at scale.
6
Make more nature
Invest directly in nature building, innovation, detoxification, capacity and reversing “overshoot” along with improved equity for humans and non-humans
7
Invest in future generations
Enforce existing intergenerational fiduciary duties responsibilities and build new law that gives future generations a legal foothold in today’s decision making
8
Make dignity matter
Imagine a new human excellence narrative that gives future generations a chance to take us forward… with progress imperative.
9
Define endgame sustainability
Imagine a world made sustainable and initiate the necessary moves to realize that time when humanity and nature thrive and the climate challenge is resolved.
“Bank of Nature is an opportunity to think differently about what is conventionally acceptable. Leaving nature out of our success is the Great Omission behind this chaos of health, environment and human dignity pandemics.”
Ian Edwards, founder, 2021
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