People / Sustainability
Tim Gieseke

Tim Gieseke ... Where's the Sustainability Billionaire?

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Where's the Sustainability Billionaire?

It was about a decade ago at a sustainability conference that a speaker said we will know when landscape sustainability is a real deal when the first billionaire is made in the industry.

It seemed a bit counter-intuitive for the ecological-minded audience at first, but he named off a few billionaires that were buoyed by other emerging industries that marked the beginning of new social or economic eras.

After my presentation on EcoCommerce 101: Adding an ecological dimension to the economy, (2010) my soon-to-be-released book at the time, he asked me if I was going to be the first sustainability billionaire, and I said 'yes', you know, just as a placeholder.



I mean, adding an ecological dimension to the economy is a big deal. The value of ecosystem services is estimated at around US$124T. Of course, not all this value can transfer into economic activities, but some estimates put human behavior economics to influence about 20% of the total. In other words, about US$25T worth of ecosystem services is lost or gained based on human activities or behaviors and therefore environmental market signals or a lack thereof effect that 20% of global ecological outputs.

The book is about the effect of an environmental market signal relative to agriculture production.

I had a good run with the book as in 2010 there was little understanding of how one could add an ecological dimension to the economy. Around 2012, the sustainability industry was swarming with Chief Sustainability Officers as this whole new tier of professionals were getting their feet wet. Billions of dollars were spent on staff, metrics, and collaborations. All good for the sustainability industry as a whole, but a sad looking market from any economic perspective. Sure, government agencies, corporations and NGOs are consolidating their efforts and knowledge - all good stuff for society to get to the next plateau, but not by that path.

The sustainability industry today is largely based on the strategy of 'paving over cow old paths'

The emerging industry collectively took the well-worn path of the USDA's 'conservation delivery system' from the 1930's. The top-down government model was easily adopted by the top-down corporate model, after all this top-down, single value proposition was 75-years in the making. As the food and agriculture system become more complex, the industry applied precision conservation - i.e. paving over cow paths. Landowners now had more opportunities, more cow paths to follow, but none of still make much sense or dollars for them from a whole operation perspective.

While these same traditional business concepts (described by Ronald Coase in his 1937 'The Nature of the Firm') were being adopted by the emerging sustainability industry, many other top-down industries where getting slain by new platform business models replacing the top-down firm. If any industry needed a non-linear approach for solutions, it would be an eco-commerce industry and the ability to account for multiple benefits from the landscape that are enjoyed by multiple benefactors. To add an ecological dimension to the economy the governance of the transaction must be understood and be manageable from a network perspective.

It took me awhile to grasp the value of these multi-sided business platforms but I was able to put it into words in a 2016 Taylor & Francis book, Shared Governance for Sustainable Working Landscapes.



We hear about shared value, shared responsibility, shared economy, etc. but none of these are possible without sharing the governance of the transactions.

But most are reluctant to talk about governance for several reasons: governance is boring term and the solution can't be boring, or governance sounds like government so it must be government, or governance is for corporate boards and legislators, not for practitioners. Nobody is going to think the billion dollar answer is in the governance of the transaction. But that is the only place it can be. (as it is the governance of the transaction that leads to the 'tragedy of the commons')

And now since the sustainability billionaire placeholder is still open, it is time to add an ecological dimension to the economy through a multi-sided shared governance platform...as ugly as that sounds.

Of course, the sustainability billionaire story has to begin small, under the fray of the millions of dollars spent on polishing up government programs and corporate supply chain accounting packages. I mean, it can't begin in government or corporations as they 'own' the governance and do not want to put sustainability governance in play, not anymore than Kodak wanted to cannibalize themselves with digital photography, or the taxi industry with Uber, or the accommodation industry with Airbnb, or the Best Buy model with online shopping, or.....

A sustainability billionaire has to find a disruptive path forward that is accommodating to the practitioners that are getting chased around by the latest industry whim and metric, or asked to stand in the winnowing line of the next government program.

As a farmer of two decades, I see before me a USA federal government that is proposing to take the traditional top-down 'conservation delivery system' off at the knees. I see an emerging corporate sustainability market that will rush in to fill this void by going after the low-handing fruit. Neither system was any good or will be effective at engaging the citizens and enabling them to align their assets and activities to meet sustainability objectives.

Government programs did not work as the core of the conservation movement, but it helped. Corporate sustainability efforts will not work as the core of the sustainability movement, but it will help.

The problem is that as more groups and citizens get involved and bring forth resources and expertise, the effectiveness of organizing these groups goes down and the bottlenecks to process these projects and efforts go up (the governance paradox for those that like the details). This is made clear each year as organizations spend thousands of hours to develop project proposals, or landowners spend learning the new industry metric for each of their supply chains. A lot of busy isolated efforts draining ideas and resources.

To resolve these issues and to prepare for 1) the proposed federal cuts, 2) the increase in corporate sustainability demands and 3) emerging ecosystem service markets, an EcoCommerce Network Platform is proposed. Think of it as a combination of the social networking capacities of Facebook, Google Docs, and email with a GIS foundation.

We are giving this 'new firm' a shot on a pretty substantially-sized watershed with significant citizen, grassroots, government, NGO and private sector involvement. This current involvement is key to populate the platform to a functioning critical level to capture the necessary network effects.

There are also a few key features...an organizational governance 'personality test' and ability to initiate a project by clicking on a map and then connect with public or private partners with the expertise and common goals.

We will be able to take this geographical and this chaotic mess of organizations you see below and provide the means for anyone to sort, connect, interact and transact. This map is of the Minnesota River Basin (USA) and the several hundred public and private organizations that claim an interest in its health. Your watershed (or social enterprise) would look similar if you look at it with your 'governance goggles'.



This GIS-featured platform, in its advanced phase, will be able to account for transacting natural capital units as both club goods and private goods.

This is the process to add the ecological dimension to the economy and the path to become the first sustainability billionaire.

Tim Gieseke has career experience in multiple sectors as both a policy-maker and practitioner. This is a rare opportunity in social history as never before has so many organizations with differing governance styles have worked side-by-side to resolve common issues. This results in the governance paradox, where socially-complex issues can only be resolved by the involvement of many diverse organizations, yet when the converge, new confusion and conflicts arise. The EcoCommerce Network Platform separates the chaff from the value. Contact Tim if any of this intrigues you.
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2h Niels van Heeren Soil Balance International Knowledge Hub Working on it. Won't be long now...😉 LikeReply

1d Benjamin Wielgosz Business Development Advisor, Quantitative Analyst Tim Gieseke - fabulous and inspiring read. Alan Laubsch recently discussed with me the potential of blockchain to capture and network these transactions as 'the internet of value' which seems to dovetail with the EcoCommerce Platform at many levels. Ask Alan about Mangrove replanting coins though... if we can train land to currency markets, we may get a step closer... LikeReply11

23h Tim Gieseke President, Ag Resource Strategies, LLC Thank you Benjamin Wielgosz - I will connect with Alan. And yes, blockchain is the key to make this flow. It will enable ecosystem services (NCUs) to be traded as both club goods (80% of the market) and private goods (20% of the market). The inability for all other eco-markets to capture club good value is a major reason we don't see scalable eco-markets. There are a few other reasons as well, but that is quite a chunk to leave on the table and expect the 20% to carry the market. LikeReply1

1d Sean C. Fischer Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Graduate Student - Founder and Sr. Manager For the least cost version, at about 1,932,805 x $20,000 = $38,656,100,000. So we can say that Toyota is real close to $40 billion. LikeReply11

23h Tim Gieseke President, Ag Resource Strategies, LLC Sean - those are good examples from the different perspective of pipeline products sold. The sustainability billionaire criteria I refer to is based on platform transactions of natural capital units between platform users, not the developer. If that does not make sense, I can go into a bit more detail. LikeReply1

1d Sean C. Fischer Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Graduate Student - Founder and Sr. Manager Cumulative sales of the Prius nameplate totaled 1,932,805 units delivered through April 2016, representing a 48.0% market share of total hybrid sales in the U.S. LikeReply

1d Sean C. Fischer Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Graduate Student - Founder and Sr. Manager I read that s total of 4,058,258 hybrid electric automobiles and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) have been sold in the USA through May 2016. LikeReply

1d Sean C. Fischer Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Graduate Student - Founder and Sr. Manager There is the recovery of the oceans energy, that has both a tidal and wind competent. LikeReply

1d Roger Erismann The unpaid garbageman 'transacting natural capital units' How are these units derived? For example the basis of our project is to quantify the amount of anthropogenic debris on the water line and use that as a metric for measuring efficiency of current pollution mitigation systems where the unit of measurement is 'pieces of trash'. We started simply by calculating the cost two remove, indentify and quantify one piece of trash. So now you have cost but that is not the 'value' of the operation. Ideally this could be converted into some unit that reflects the 'value' of the operation. LikeReply4 View previous replies (2)

12h Tim Gieseke President, Ag Resource Strategies, LLC Roger Erismann - Yes, demand is the only thing that drives value. It is often said that there needs to be more demand for ecosystem services, but if one observes it is apparent there is a lot of demand. Adam Smith, in 1776, was able to recognize absolute demand (total demand) and effectual demand (demand that carries enough incentive for others to produce the good or service). Ecosystem markets suffer from a lot of absolute demand, but very little effectual demand. This occurs, not because demanders are unwilling to pay their share, but because there are no market mechanisms for them to pay their share. Markets supplying positive externalities are no more sustainable than markets supplying negative externalities, but their failure are of different types. The EcoCommerce Network Platform enables the aggregation of multiple values while generating costs for those transactions that are below the value of the ecosystem service. The problem before us is not technical or socio-economics, but it is one of a market system that is yet not sophisticated enough to process the transactions that entities desire. That simplistic sophistication is now available. LikeReply

9h Roger Erismann The unpaid garbageman Tim Gieseke if you stay in that paradigm 'demand - value' then this is good. How can l learn more about the process of the 'agregation of multiple values' ? LikeReply

1d Harry Jones consultant Some technology (wind turbines, solar transducers and batteries) suppliers must have amassed some cash. LikeReply2

22h Tim Gieseke President, Ag Resource Strategies, LLC Harry Jones - they certainly have sold products that degrade the ecology to a lesser degree and people support this by indirectly purchasing these products/services. But from a landscape management perspective, a linear transactional processs is as inefficient as finding an Airbnb listing in the yellow pages. The compounding factor is multiple benefits are produced from the landscape that and be enjoyed by multiple benefactors simultaneously. The EcoCommerce Network Platform enables this complexity to be expressed and the values exchanged within the social arena of commerce. It is the billion dollar question that can be answered - that is proven up or down for $250,000 - less than an hours worth of sustainability investment. But what I have learned on my journey, is that the only thing people find scarier than a big problem is a potential solution to that problem :) LikeReply

17h Harry Jones consultant Yeah, Tim, even much preferable unknowns seem to be feared more than the untenable ways we're used to -- sort of a globally comprehensive Stockholm Syndrome. Another deterrent might be that we don't know what all it would take to be truly sustainable in the sense an ecologically neutral pattern covering everyone and all sectors, so we do measurable edge-nibbling that we can point to and call 'Sustainability'. LikeReply

1d willemijn heideman Waldenizer | Broadening my horizon | On the road to a green future | EcoLogical Thinker Tim Gieseke, interesting line of thought.... I think there is no Sustainability Billionaire because striving for a sustainable world requires a totally different set of ethical standards than striving for a billion. Possibly a totally different personality type too LikeReply74 View previous replies (2)

23h Tim Gieseke President, Ag Resource Strategies, LLC Jeff Porter I speak not of products that are made in a sustainability manner , but the ecosystem service/good that is created by the production of the product. My work is in landscape sustainability and the NCU are based on how the land is managed. LikeReply2

18h Jeff Porter Co-founder of Yancy Corporation Tim Gieseke This family may not be billionaires, but they have done well. they have also put enormous amounts into education and the community. http://www.starkerforests.com is very well know in Oregon and I had the privilege of being familiar with the founder and many in his family. My father knew them well. Multi use of the forest and bio diversity have been practiced for decades and even when I was in Boy Scouts we camped on their forest land and were instructed in everything having to do with proper sustainability and management of a forest. LikeReply