A Dual-Currency Framework for a Sustainable Future
Executive Summary:
This proposal outlines a dual-currency global economic model designed to better align market incentives with human wellbeing and ecological sustainability. The system introduces two complementary currencies: the World Dollar (WD) for discretionary exchange and capital flows, and Earth Credits (EC) as permits required to extract profit from the economy. The purpose is to redefine how economic value is created, distributed, and sustained in the 21st century by making all corporate profit contingent on verified contributions to people and planet.
Introduction & Rationale
Today’s global financial systems reward short-term profits, consumption, and speculation over long-term wellbeing, sustainability, and equity. While GDP continues to rise, so too do ecological degradation, inequality, and systemic risk. A new framework is needed—one that maintains economic dynamism while embedding ethical and ecological guardrails by conditioning profit on net positive impact.
The Dual-Currency System
World Dollar (WD):
- Used for general market exchange: pricing, wages, investment, trade, and non-constrained goods/services.
- Functions like current fiat currencies (e.g., USD, Euro) but operates within a harmonized global settlement layer.
- Regulated by traditional markets and central banks.
Earth Credit (EC):
- Required for the extraction of profit by all companies across the economy, with sector-specific EC intensities calibrated to social and ecological materiality.
- Also required for the production, sale, or profit extraction of essential goods/services: food, water, housing, energy, healthcare, education, and transportation.
- Distributed universally to all individuals as a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to secure access to essentials and civic participation.
- Can only be earned back by companies through measurable, verified contributions to sustainability, wellbeing, and social good (e.g., emissions reduction, ecosystem restoration, equitable labor outcomes).
- Issued and managed by a Global Public Trust (GPT), independent of national governments.
Key Principles
- Profit as a Licensed Privilege: Extracting profit requires ECs, making profitability conditional on delivering net positive outcomes.
- Essentials Are Not for Speculation: Core human needs are shielded from speculative pressure through EC requirements and universal allocations.
- Incentives for Good: Corporations earn ECs by reducing emissions, protecting ecosystems, improving worker wellbeing, advancing equity, and delivering verified public benefits.
- Democratized Access: Every individual receives a base EC allocation, ensuring equitable access to essentials and bargaining power in the real economy.
- Separation of Desires and Needs: WDs enable market freedom; ECs impose social and ecological accountability on profit-taking.
How It Works
For Individuals:
- Receive a monthly EC allocation to cover essentials and participate in collective wellbeing.
- Use WD for wages, savings, investments, and discretionary consumption.
For Corporations:
- Must “spend” ECs to legally recognize profits and distribute them (e.g., dividends, buybacks, executive bonuses). No ECs = no distributable profit.
- EC intensity varies by sector and activity based on lifecycle impact and social materiality.
- Can only earn ECs through verified positive impact (audited performance against standardized metrics and science-based targets).
- May trade ECs in regulated markets, but net profit extraction over time must be backed by ECs earned through impact, not solely purchased, to prevent pure arbitrage.
For Governments & NGOs:
- Monitor EC compliance and fund programs using EC-denominated grants tied to outcome metrics.
- Use policy to set EC baselines, sector intensities, and impact methodologies; encourage long-term value creation and fair competition.
Implementation Pathway
- Phase 1: Pilot ECs in controlled regional programs (e.g., renewable energy, housing affordability, public health), testing “profit licensing” with ECs in participating firms.
- Phase 2: Establish the Global Public Trust to issue ECs, accredit verifiers, set sector baselines, and manage registries and audits.
- Phase 3: Gradually expand EC requirements from essential industries to economy-wide profit extraction, with transitional allowances and voluntary UBI trials.
- Phase 4: Harmonize with existing global economic structures via international treaties, accounting standards, and cross-border recognition.
Benefits
- Aligns all corporate profitability with the UN Sustainable Development Goals by making impact the gateway to profit.
- Reduces inequality via universal access to essentials and stronger bargaining power for households.
- Makes sustainability profitable by turning verified positive impact into the currency required for profit distribution.
- Reduces speculative pressure on basic human needs through EC gating and universal allocations.
- Establishes a platform for ethical AI, green infrastructure, and regenerative enterprise, linking capital returns to verified outcomes.
Risks and Considerations
- Resistance from entrenched interests and legal challenges around fiduciary duty; requires clear transitional rules.
- Complexity of cross-border implementation and consistent measurement; needs robust global standards and registries.
- Verification and integrity: strong MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) to prevent impact fraud and greenwashing.
- Macro design: careful calibration of EC issuance, sector intensities, and secondary markets to avoid inflation, scarcity, or perverse incentives.
Conclusion:
The World Dollar / Earth Credit model is a pragmatic evolution of global finance. By conditioning profit on verified social and ecological performance—and ensuring universal access to essentials—we can build a future where markets reliably serve people and planet.
Next Steps:
We invite economists, policy leaders, investors, and technologists to co-design pilots, simulation models, MRV standards, and governance for the Global Public Trust, and to test sector-by-sector EC profit licensing in real markets.
The Measurement Challenge Isn’t Disqualifying: Yes, measuring social/environmental impact is complex, but we already do complex measurement for accounting, taxation, and regulation. The difficulty of measurement doesn’t invalidate the principle that profit should be tied to net positive contribution. Universities can propose and refine open auditable measurement tools based on scientific evidence.
⚖️ The Measurement Incommensurability Problem
Making value judgments explicit rather than invisible.
Even with perfect measurement, a deeper challenge remains: how to compare the incomparable.
When 1 EC can be earned for avoiding 100 kWh of peak energy use, or serving 20 meals, or delivering 10 primary-care visits, we’re not just describing efficiencies — we’re making normative choices about what matters most.
If those judgments stay hidden inside technical formulas, the system quietly embeds bias and erodes legitimacy.
The solution is not to pretend we can compute perfect equivalence, but to make every assumption transparent, contestable, and revisable.
🧩 1. The Value Equivalency Working Group (VEWG)
A permanent, open, and multidisciplinary body under the GPT Charter.
| Function | Composition | Accountability |
| Define and revise EC outcome conversion tables | Ethicists, economists, domain experts, affected-community representatives, and GPT technical staff | Public minutes, published rationale documents, citizen-comment periods |
Key mandates:
- Publish Rationales: Every equivalency must come with a plain-language justification (e.g., “Why we value 100 kWh peak-shaved equal to 20 meals”).
- Annual Public Review: At least once per year, the VEWG opens a 60-day comment period; proposed changes require multi-chamber GPT approval.
- Conflict-of-Interest Rules: Members disclose affiliations; rotation every three years.
- Advisory Panels: Temporary panels may be convened for emergent issues (e.g., AI displacement, pandemic response).
🌍 2. Regional and Contextual Adjustment
The GPT ledger supports localized EC weightings tied to verified scarcity or urgency indicators.
Examples:
- Water restoration earns +50 % EC value in drought-declared basins.
- Public-health interventions gain temporary multipliers during WHO-declared emergencies.
- Reforestation credits rise in biodiversity-critical zones identified by UNEP datasets.
All adjustments:
- Must be data-driven and published in advance.
- Expire automatically unless re-authorized after review.
- Appear as visible metadata on every EC transaction.
🔁 3. Dynamic Value Adjustment Protocol (DVAP)
A transparent algorithm updates equivalencies annually (or sooner under emergency review) based on:
- Scarcity indices (energy, water, food, healthcare access).
- Outcome elasticity (marginal social benefit of additional unit).
- Cross-sector externalities (e.g., how energy savings reduce hospital admissions).
DVAP recommendations feed into the VEWG for deliberation and public comment before activation.
🧭 4. Deliberative Transparency
All equivalency debates, models, and dissenting opinions are publicly logged.
Machine-readable datasets and sensitivity analyses accompany each update, enabling outside researchers to replicate or challenge assumptions.
Citizen assemblies may trigger special review by petition (e.g., if 1 % of verified wallet holders request reconsideration).
🪞 5. Why This Matters
By institutionalizing contestation rather than pretending to have solved it, the system:
- Preserves legitimacy: value judgments are visible and revisable.
- Reduces capture risk: no opaque technocratic pricing of human outcomes.
- Improves learning: equivalencies evolve with real-world feedback and cultural values.
In short:
The Earth Credit system does not hide its moral mathematics — it publishes, debates, and updates them in the open.
Earth Credit / World Dollar Series
Implementing the World Dollar / Earth Credit System
WD/EC Global Public Trust (GPT)
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