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Steve Killelea

The Talent Around the Table: Steve Killelea ... Can we measure peace? Steve Killelea is trying.

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Andrew Bellak Follow Andrew Can we measure peace? Australian entrepreneur & philanthropist Steve Killelea is trying. From the Rotary Magazine http://ow.ly/MgZMB

Andrew Bellak CEO StakeHolders Capital

Can we measure peace? - The Talent Around the Table: Steve Killelea ow.ly

Can we measure peace? Steve Killelea is trying. Australian entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Killelea credits surfing with opening his eyes to the plight of the world’s poor. As a young man chasing big waves in Indonesia, he spent time with a local family and saw how poverty impacted their li... Like Comment (1) Share Unfollow Reply Privately1 day ago Comments 1 comment

Peter Burgess Peter Burgess Founder/CEO at TrueValueMetrics developing Multi Dimension Impact Accounting

Andrew ... I understand completely what is motivating Steve Killelea, and his initiative to develop a peace index is a step in a useful direction.

In my view the Peace Index won't make much of a difference. The idea that peace is an important component in quality of life is clear. What is less clear is why we don't have more peace. What is less clear is WHY we have so much violence.

I have spent my whole career trying to make the best use of measurement to get desirable results. In my corporate career, the goal was profit, so the metrics were those that enabled better decisions related to improving profit. Later on when working on various aspects of international socio-economic development the metrics were more about the relationship between resources used and benefits delivered. Post career I am trying to put all of these ideas into a single coherent system so that everything that relates to progress and performance on our complex socio-enviro-economic system can be measured and optimized for better decision making.

A lot of people argue that markets help to optimize the use of resources. My observations is that this is most often wrong. It is wrong because there is little understanding in most markets of the complex chain of events that make a product available for sale, little understanding of its impacts during use and in the post use waste chain. Similarly what is the history that is the root cause of the violence taking place now.

Many of the measures we use all the time relate to me ... my money transactions and my wealth. Another set of measures relate to organizations, their profits and their value on the stock exchange. The economy is considered to be doing well when these measures are getting bigger. However, no consideration is given to what it is taking to get these results. What has been going on in the supply chain? What is the impact on the environment, natural resources and environmental degradation. What are the workplace conditions along the supply chain? What happens to all the waste being created? These aren't being measured and reported on yet they are vitally important. Money as a measure is only a small part of a very much bigger picture.

In the USA there are many who are concerned about the state of the infrastructure. It is pretty awful compared to what it should be like. But look at the infrastructure in other parts of the world ... and the picture changes. Why is it that with so many people around the world are unemployed we cannot do something to build the infrastructure that we all need? The quick answer is that infrastructure is not a money maker for money oriented investors ... and that is most investors. The fact that infrastructure would produce enormous 'good' does not matter, because you cannot take 'good' to the bank, and it is difficult to securitize 'good'.

I argue we should make a start and measure 'good' and this is what Steve Killelea is doing in connection with peace. But it is only a part of what needs to get done.

Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics.org Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
Peter Burgess

The Talent Around the Table: Steve Killelea ... Can we measure peace? Steve Killelea is trying.

Australian entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Killelea credits surfing with opening his eyes to the plight of the world’s poor. As a young man chasing big waves in Indonesia, he spent time with a local family and saw how poverty impacted their lives. Years later, after the software company he founded, Integrated Research, had made him a high-tech tycoon, Killelea decided to put his fortune and energy into humanitarian aid, sustainable development, and peace-building. His efforts include the Global Peace Index, a measure he created to quantify peace, and the Institute for Economics and Peace, a nonprofit think-tank he founded that focuses on the intersection of peace, business, and the economy. Killelea will be a keynote speaker on 5 June at the Rotary Peace Symposium in São Paulo, Brazil. Learn more and register at www.riconvention.org/peace.

THE ROTARIAN: What convinced you to focus on aid, development, and peace?

KILLELEA: I had a good friend who was the treasurer for World Vision who took me up to Laos to look at a project we could do [together] there – providing water to about 15,000 people. It cost less than $20 a head, reduced the death rate for children under five from about 18 percent to 12 percent, and got rid of all the waterborne disease. I was hooked on the substantial impact you can have with the right developmental aid projects. To date, we’ve done about 110 projects in countries around the world, and because we’re working with the poorest of the poor, a lot of them are in countries that are war zones or near post-war zones. So I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the devastating effects of conflict, and that’s what got me interested in peace.

TR: Where did the idea to create a Global Peace Index come from?

KILLELEA: I was in northeast Kivu in [the Democratic Republic of Congo] and started to wonder what the most peaceful countries in the world were like. Was there anything I could learn from them? So I did some searches on the Internet and couldn’t find a list of the most peaceful countries in the world. A simple and profound question springs from that: How much do we actually know about peace?

TR: What are some of the ways in which peace intersects with business and economics?

KILLELEA: A simple example would be a farmer: If you’ve got a conflict going on, a farmer won’t plant a crop because he may have to leave, or militias or government troops may seize the crops for their own use. We’re developing a Mexican Peace Index and conservatively estimate that Mexico’s GDP would be 18 percent higher if there were no violence. Most people who die of homicides are young men, so generally you could say [each death represents] 40 years of lost participation in the economy. If you look at businesses, you see that crime increases the need for security, to the point where you need multiple armed guards in front of shops. We also find that distribution routes change in high-violence areas. People will stop shopping in areas they think might be dangerous. People will stop going out to bars at night. In many cities of the world, you wouldn’t get a taxi on the street because you’re worried about getting hijacked. – Heather Maher