Resilience Value will change how money works

Time is money. What we mean when we say that is there is value in having more time, more resources, more health and resilience, and delaying action when you have time to avoid terrible costs is unwise.

The worsening risk of polycrisis—in which climate disruption, nature loss, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, food insecurity, and repeated unaffordable disasters compound and accelerate each other, and spur repeated waves of mass migration—means we must come to terms with the need for an operative everyday understanding of Resilience Value.

We need to reward investments that lead to good outcomes for people and for nature. We need to foster macrocritical resilience—the overall capacity of an economy to generate real-world value for people, in an inclusive and ongoing way, without degrading future potential for doing the same, with all natural systems working in our favor. The financial, economic, and industrial systems we have now do not meet this standard.

We need money moving through our everyday economy to carry a clear signal that devalues pollution, extraction, and externalization, while valuing nature, resilience, and sustainable human health and wellbeing. We need incentives to steer money toward better outcomes (at rational and sustainable levels of sustainable production), rather than merely toward toward producing more stuff, without regard for outcomes.

Resilience Value needs to be an integrative, multidimensional, and evolving indicator that tells us whether a given decision is more likely than others to create sustainable and inclusive value. The benefit would be that more of the money moving through our everyday economy would be positioned to play a foundational role, supporting expanded future value (sustainable prosperity, in harmony with nature).

Central banks, finance ministers, trade ministers, development banks, even food-focused financial actors, are organizing themselves to shape, participate in, and capitalize on the coming breakthrough moment when Resilience Value—or a suite of tools that add up to an economy-wide trend—becomes the governing consensus. That moment must come, if we are to experience a future without constant and compounding crises.

For the full story, go to Resilienceintel.org/resilience-value