Process for Calculating Sustainable Value of each alternative:
For all projects within a community, and for all communities:
Step 1a: Determine boundary of needs for the community. Without further information, default is used. Rest, Food, Clothing, Shelter, Fitness, Education, Childcare, Water/Hygiene/Sanitation, Health Care, Love, Belonging, Community Development, and include all activities required to acquire, process, distribute, utilize, and dispose of the materials required to do these things.
Step 1b: Determine the Locally Used BioCapacity (LUBC). This is the sum of the lesser of the Biocapacity that is managed by the community and the Ecological Footprint used for each biome.
<a database can be established that includes all of this information for all communities. For example, at a State/Province scale, the import and export of each biome between communities must be included to be able to readily calculate the values for aggregate community scales. This database would need to be updated frequently.>
For a specific project
Step 2a: Determine scale. This is the smallest community scale that data is available for that includes the entire population that is directly affected by the project (a residential project would be smallest scale, while a superhighway may be much larger than a single state/province.)
Step 2b: Determine time/resource curve for aggregate community. Time Use data is available in most countries. Ecological Footprinting has been done for all countries, many provinces/states, and several regions.
Step 2c: Determine Locally Used BioCapacity (LUBC) for the aggregate community.
Check that the aggregate community has a LUBC that is greater than Subsistence. If LUBC is lower than Subsistence, scale of community must be expanded to bring aggregate community above Subsistence, and then go back and repeat Step 2a, b, and c. This would be typical of cities, for example, and would require co-management relationships be developed with the surrounding rural areas.
Step 2d: Determine the slope of the time/resource curve for the community at LUBC
For each specific alternative
Step 3a: Determine the direct time costs. This can be done as a calculation for ‘Do Nothing’, and then as a comparison to ‘Do Nothing’. It must be from Cradle to Cradle, to plan, design, construct, operate, decommission, and restore to original state.
Step 3b: Determine the direct time benefit, when only considering Needs. This can be done as a calculation for ‘Do Nothing, and then as a comparison to ‘Do Nothing’. It must be conservative, so is the lesser of ‘Status Quo’, or a future projection that demonstrates a decrease in direct time benefit.
Step 3c: Determine the change in use of renewable resources that are not sustainably managed by the community, as an EF that is imported from ‘away’ or ‘the future’.
Step 3d: Determine the change in mass of non-renewable resources harvested from within the community that will have peak production before the lifetime of the project, and the change in mass of non-renewable resources harvested from outside the community, wrt do nothing. Non-renewable resources from ‘away’ are assumed to be immediately exhausted from the community. Peak production can be calculated as simply as (known reserves / consumption rate), or it can be as sophisticated as a multi-cyclic Hubbert curve.
Step 3e: Determine the future time cost of imported EF. This requires calculating the imported EF for the project (from step 3c), and multiplying by the slope of the Time/Resource curve (from Step 2d).
Step 3f: Determine the time penalty for not sustainably managed resources. Time Penalty = Total Direct Time Benefit (from Step3b) / mass of NR resources (from Step 3d) x sum [mass of NRi x (lifespan – time to exhaustioni)/lifespan)].
Step 3g: Sum all of the values for the alternative:
Net Time Benefit = Direct Time Benefit (from step 3b) – [basic time cost (from step 3a) + future time cost (step 3f) + time penalty (step 3g)]
Sustainable Value = Net Time Benefit / Net Present Value
Step 4: Calculate and Compare Results
Any alternative with a Net Time Benefit that is greater than 0 makes the community more Sustainable.
The alternative with the highest Sustainable Value will produce best combination of financial cost and improvement on community Sustainability.