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The social footprint of life in the 21st Century

Background
In a global economy with complex interactions and economic transactions it is hard to understand the consequences of different actions, both on an individual level and for companies/ governments. Most people know that certain products depend on what best can be described as slave labor, promote lifestyles that is impossible to poor people to live, that certain companies are using children and repressive regime to sell cheap products. Still it is hard to know what a better option is and especially what result certain choices will have over time. 

New technology for collecting, processing and presenting data provides new opportunities to provide guidance and feed-back even in complex situations. 

Given that society, groups and/or individuals want to contribute to a more equal world and make sure they contribute to/support such a development it is time to develop a tool that can measure these social consequences.  A social footprint (SFP) or social shadow indicator (SSI) could be such a tool that would help to understand what we are depending on for our lifestyle and what choices that we have that can contribute to a society that is more equal. To indicate the footprint we have in different parts of society and bring those who live in the shadows into the light.


Idea
To provide an estimation and easy-to-understand graphical illustration of the "social footprint"/”social shadow” in different situations. 


Defining social footprint (SFP)/ social shadow indicator (SSI)
The social footprint (SFP) or social shadow indicator (SSI) is the impact of an entity (product, service, individual, companies, country) in terms of the social condition for the people required for the entity to function. More simply, it is the human resources necessary to deliver everything that is necessary for the entity. The resources do not need to be direct, a product that require people to move from their land will get this included in their SFP/SSI, not only the people involved in the actual product.

SFP/SSI is a measure for a situation that makes the people who have been involved in delivering a certain outcome visible. It can be measured in different dimensions, but must capture  what social situation the people delivering the existing situation are living under (e.g. salary; access to services like food/ clean water/ sanitation/ etc; life expectancy; perceived happiness; place on the income ladder).


SFP/SSI for a Product
For a product the SFP would be measured by looking at the people who have been part of producing the specific product. The number of people and the situation they live under will then be linked to the specific product. The same way as CO2 is measured the SFP would be divided into different scopes, direct, indirect and systemic (direct would be the people involved in the  actual production, indirect would be those affected by the production and systemic would be those impacts that the production has on society, e.g educational, legal and administrative).


SFP/SSI for a Service
Using SFP/SSI for services allow us to compare different social consequences of choices that we make to satisfy a specific need for a service. Flying and videoconferencing could be compared in relation to the people affected from extraction of oil and minerals needed for an airplane/airports and those affected by mining for the metals needed for the video equipment.  So the transportation/communication between A to B would be shown from its social consequences. In the same way food could be assessed from a SFP/SSI perspective where a meat based meal would include the people displaced by farming and the people affected by climate change related to the GHG emissions from meat. It could help to measure what retail stores provides and what kind of world different restaurants are contributing to.

SFP/SSI for a company
Using SFP/SSI is a way to see how a company is structured. It would look at the people needed to ensure profit for the company. It would both allow a snapshot picture of the company as well as see how it contributes over time.

SFP/SSI for a Country
To measure a SFP/SSI for a country allows us to see how many people, and in what situation, that are necessary for a country to provide the services. For this measure trade is obviously key, but also migrating workers and others that sometimes are close to invisible.  

Static vs. Dynamic SFP/SSI
A SFP/SSI can be very good to highlight the current situation. But it woudl be easy to get the wrong picture if only a static perspective was given. To include people with a bad social situation (poor, unhappy, excluded, etc) in the production, service provision, company, etc is obviously a good thing if these peope  can be brought out of their current situaition.

Possible applications
In the short term the possibility to compare different services (not only similar products) might be the most interesting. To compare the social contribution by different companies over time would also be an interesting application.

Possible Next Steps
Two project that I hope to pursue is to develop the SFP/SSI tool and apply it to two areas: 1. A selected number of services that are important in order to achieve a low carbon economy and 2. take 50 of the top 500 companies in the world to see how they contribute to a better situation for people all over the planet.

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A Confederation of Dematerialized Industries (slightly modified text based on an idea from Paul Dickinson)


Summary
This text suggests that the migration to a much more dematerialized economy is an unavoidable necessity over the next 20 years. However, if this change happens over 20 years or 5 years is a function of how quickly investments, demonstration projects, new organizations, taxation and regulation affecting greenhouse gases can be implemented at a sufficient scale to migrate expenditure to the dematerialized alternatives.

Backgound
1.   The great majority of commerce in the world today is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

2.   The looming catastrophe of climate change compels nations to reduce these emissions by a very significant percentage, about 80-100% In the next 50 years in a situation when emissions are rapidly increasing.   3.   Sustainable energy generation exist but will only be ready 30 or 60 years (or maybe later) to provide the energy we use today. This means that we need to use our brains instead and find ways to deliver welfare in more efficient ways.
4.   The critical challenge for the 21st Century is therefore to massively reduce greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions and before new technology will emerge (high efficient solar PV, nuclear fusion or some other).


Assuming that we stick with a growth paradigm
(even if that will have to be abandoned later)

1.   In every country citizen perceptions of greater wealth through a
growing economy has become the minimum requirement demanded of governments. Attempts to change this expectation may prove dangerous.  
As Financial Times columnist Martin Wolff wrote on 18 December 2007:
“The biggest point about debates on climate change and energy supply is that they bring back the question of limits. If, for example, the entire planet emitted CO2 at the rate the US does today, global emissions would be almost five times greater. The same, roughly speaking, is true of energy use per head. This is why climate change and energy security are such geopolitically significant issues. For if there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge – indeed, they are already emerging – within and among countries.”  

2.   Economic growth can proceed without increased energy consumption when consumer expenditure migrates from physical goods to increased consumption of 'dematerialized' products. Many of these are carried by electronic media and include:
- Films
- TV
- Games
- Music
- News
- Education
- Culture
- Literature
- People, live

The driver1.   Imagine a home in 2015 where a significant percentage ofexpenditure on cars and fuel has been transferred to the 'dematerialized' economy.


What is needed 1.   A billion people’s homes in the industrialized world should have more than 20MB of high quality internet bandwidth both down and up.

2.   A combination of high definition broadband (HDB) and video telephony would then permit people in their homes to:  - Avoid commuting: videophones left on during working hours to allow managers to 'be with' and therefore supervise home workers. Workers can also virtually ‘sit together’.
- HDB videophones with true eye contact will permit friends and families to spend time together remotely and offer extraordinary potential for social and business networking.
- HDB will permit any film, TV or other piece of recorded media to be enjoyed in cinema quality.
- HDB allows for every school class and university lecture in the world to be recorded and watched by any number of people who may wish to study any thing at any time.
- HDB allows the infinite mass of content available to be edited and repackaged in any form by any person and made available on demand for a price.
- HDB video telephony allows for one billion broadcasters to emerge and educate, entertain and inform us all.
In this near future a young person might naturally want to be rich and famous, but would not necessarily assume that leaving their local area was the most effective first step to achieve their goal. We can also imagine that in this world all energy consumption will be monitored and managed by billions of embedded sensors ensuring high efficiency.


The winners Companies pioneering dematerialization will grow turnover and profit whilst those associated with significant ghg production will lose revenues. The impact on profitability could be dramatic, see table below.

Below is a very rudimentary analysis of ghgs to revenues and profit based on Carbon Disclosure Project data. The table shows 12 companies from high emitting sectors contrasted with 12 companies from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

High emitters include 4 Airlines, 3 Cement, 3 Steel and 2 Auto manufacturers.

ICT include 4 Hardware, 1 Software, 1 Broadcaster and 6 Network operators.

High emitters
	Sales $bn	Profit $bn	M/cap $bn	CO2 MMT
Air France	28.5	1.59	11.49	15.5
British Airways	16.5	1.2	11.14	16.1
Japan Airlines	19.9	0.52	5.93	16.97
Singapore Airlines	13.34	1.66	13.37	13.1
Lafarge	22.5	1.82	26.28	89.2
Holcim	19.82	1.73	24.81	74.51
Cemex	17.59	2.23	25.54	50.47
Arcelor	54.08	3.99	41.28	74.7
Nippon Steel	33.45	2.93	45.9	61
Posco	26.76	4.24	32.45	62.8
General Motors	206.71	4.09	16.5	12.3
Ford	160.12	4.79	14.29	8.4
Total	619.27	30.79	268.98	495.05
ICT
	Sales $bn	Profit $bn	M/cap $bn	CO2 MMT
Cisco	31.9	10.34	157	0.5
Intel	35.38	12.49	110	4
HP	94.08	10.16	106.82	1.54
IBM	91.42	18.95	140.39	2.67
Microsoft	46	17.94	267.62	0.46
Sky	8.03	1.06	19.1	0.03
Vodafone	56.99	22.83	142.77	1.3
BT	37.86	2.9	48.15	0.74
Bell Canada	15.06	1.7	20.66	0.28
NTT	91.99	4.26	70.41	3.19
NTT (mobile)	40.81	5.22	77.8	0.86
Swisscom	7.98	1.31	18.63	0.02
Total	557.5	109.16	1179.35	15.59

  Key observations from the above table include:
1.   The high emitters generate larger revenue
2.  But high emitters generate only 28% of the earnings of ICT
3.  The high emitters have only 23% of the ICT market capitalization
4.   But high emitters produce 32 times more CO2
5.  Per tonne of CO2 high emitters earn $62, ICT earns $6,992
6.   ICT produces 112 times more profit per tonne of CO2 than high emitters.

It follows that the ICT economy can grow far more safely than for example air, autos or construction. Most importantly, ICT companies can dramatically increase profits by accelerating the development of a low carbon economy through inceased taxation and regulation of ghg emissions.


Recomendations
This paper recommends a single issue lobbying organization or company is established to stimulate, unite and direct lobbying efforts by the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies, as well as content providers who all stand to benefit dramatically financially from migration to a dematerialized economy.
The first target for such a organization might be to promote investment in expanded procurement of travel substitution technology by government agencies. A secondary target would be to financially support campaigns for increased taxation and regulation of ghgs in all area


 Deliverables by the organization
1. The principal forum to voice their collective views on the significant opportunities presented to the dematerialized industries in providing low energy economic development.
2. Technical and policy expertise to work to influence the shape of forthcoming national and international standards and legislation promoting a realistic response to climate change.
3. A platform to ensure policy makers at national and supra national level are aware of the issues and opinions of the dematerialized industries in support of the recommendations from the scientific community.
4.  A media voice for the dematerialized industries where they are collectively able to say things individual companies might not want to say for fear of offending their customers.
5. Opportunities to share best practice to help eliminate waste and achieve sustainable improvements in quality, cost and delivery.
6. Help maximizing funding opportunities by accessing the wealth of national and supra national government funding available.
7. Marketing opportunities through participation in technology demonstrations.
8. Access to an economics resource that will ensure the members are kept abreast of the key economic, market and business opportunities stemming from responses to climate change.
9. Regular updates on progress with sector liaison with an enormous number of organizations, legislative bodies and government departments.