ELSI: Cross-Domain Effects Part 2 (continued) (Part 2)

Systemic Implications

the harmony network parameters PEAIE harmony network: PEAIE in Detail Harmony is a measure of internal tension in a network. It takes into consideration social justice, as well as the rights of not just humans but also of other organisms. Below, the five Harmony network parameters are listed, followed by some frameworks to help evaluate them. Power Balance Who controls what happens, and influences decision making? Including distribution of assets; who controls the resources and wealth.

Expression Who can talk, who is heard, and what can be said openly? Including freedom of expression and/or repression of perspective or opinion, commitment to transparency and voluntary free flow of information. Access Who can access important information, resources, education, etc., and to what extent? Inclusion To what extent are people and all other life considered valuable in relation to each other? Including civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, gender and race equality.

Equity

To what degree do those that have specific needs have those needs met equitably? Justice and Human Rights Frameworks In 1949 the UN department of Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights suggested to use a set of indicators to measure and track progress for human rights goals for the first time.

If you work on projects where human rights and/or equity are important, such as national policy or corporate strategy, you can use the below frameworks to help inform the Harmony para­meters. A few of these are: Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The basic 30 articles, fitting on one sheet of paper, that was adopted in 1946 by the 56 nations in the United Nations. A minimum baseline. UN 2012 Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation. A comprehensive and freely available framework for the evaluation of human rights.

Useful for evaluating nations, regions, governments, and large organizations and their supply chains. Natural Capital A body of thought, work, frameworks and indicators attempting to quantify value of natural resources and ecosystem services, to protect and expand them. Human Spaces Report A way to measure and implement nature’s inclusion into the workplace.

EU Social Justice Index 28 quantitative and eight qualitative indicators, distributed across the sections of poverty prevention, equitable education, labor market access, social cohesion and non-discrimination, health, and intergenerational justice. Power balance Power balance reflects on how the resources that give agents power to act, over themselves and over other agents, are distributed.

When applied to the ELSI stack, you’ll see that these resources can be numerous, including physical resources such as water, energy, and land, but also nonmaterial things such as information, decision-making agency, capital, and in some cases, other agents (slavery, farming for plants and animals).

Power balance has a large influence on the tension within a system, and thus, on Harmony. For example, an oppressed population revolting to overthrow their despots triggering strife, death, and destruction, which consequently result in the collapse of that society. Power balance is often dynamic and shifts over time. The preeminence of access to food and natural resources as the main currency of Power balance has been overtaken by access to and control of information.

In this day and age, developed societies prize information not just merely for survival but also for superiority. Few people in the developed world can function anymore without internet. Typical areas of interest to investigate here include forms of government, voting rights, wealth and asset distribution, and agent’s decision making power over themselves and others. Expression Expression is about how agents can and do communicate with one another.

The resilience parameters of Transparency and Awareness deal with an important part of this equation of the network as a whole, and Expression allows deeper investigation on issues such as freedom of speech, repression of particular issues or groups of agents, and commitment to Transparency and voluntary free flow of information.

A high degree of Expression is important for a good Harmony in a system. This means that most means to purposefully curtail Expression, either in form or content, will likely harm a system.

Not just the level of basic Expression (which agents can talk freely, what subjects are restricted) is important, but also the reception of Expression (who or what is actually heard). This also may be related to the ‘Validity’ resilience network parameter: if there is full freedom of Expression, but Validity is low, a system will have tension.

But, with high Expression, the system may find ways to correct this low validity itself. If Expression is high, and Access is low, there may be a bias in who actually gets to benefit, use and reap the benefits of Expression, and also give rise to tension.

Access Access focusses on the level with which agents in a system can access critical assets, information, resources, education, etc. In societal terms, this may also include the ability for agents to travel to other places (power of passport), and physical Access to places of (free) education and information exchange. For instance, a person who has official access to higher education may be financially prohibited from pursuing it.

In this case, it can be said that Access to higher education is low. Access therefore is defined in terms of participation rights and/or capacity (being able to participate if willing). Restricted Access to valuable resources for large groups of agents may produce tension and destabilize a system. Circling back to the education example, the effects of educational deprivation may be evident only in the next generation.

Similarly, correcting Access issues may take at least one generation. inclusion Inclusion is a measure with which agents in a system are included in the general set of laws, regulation, or cultural habits to which rules of ethics apply.

This reflects on slavery as well as discrimination, and more broadly about all living things, the rights of organisms beyond human society. To exemplify this, we can look at the development of society over the centuries. In the Old World, only men of good standing were included in the so-called ‘ethical set’.

Women, children, slave men, and all other living things outside of man, were considered possessions that a man of good standing could do with as he pleased. Murder was considered with gravity only when men of good standing were implicated. Over time, more agents were included in the ethical set. In ancient Egypt for example, infanticide came to be outlawed. However, it was legal to keep children as slaves.

Through the thousands of years that followed, women, children, and to some degree animals, have gained more inclusion into the ethical set, although the degree of inclusion is unevenly distributed around the world.

While slavery is now officially illegal in all countries of the world, prison slavery is still allowed even in some states of the USA, and practices akin to slavery are still widely present. Inclusion can also be used as a measure of fairness within organizations, for example, to see what rules apply to what agents in an organization.

Equity Equity measures to what degree agents within a system have their needs met, according to their ability. This is different from equality, which distributes equal amounts to each agent. Equity is about fairness in distribution, not equality. Consider the mundane matter of access to buildings. While provision for disabled persons (handicap ramps, etc.) typically cost more than provision for able-bodied persons, it is nevertheless important for disabled persons to have equal access.

Equal access here points to the usage rights of buildings and its relative facility for users with different needs. Literally, creating a level playing field. Equity is a fundamental property of any society. Equity as a parameter serves to evaluate distribution of power and resources, freedom of speech, access to resources, and inclusion.

Ethical considerations matter significantly in Equity. “Faced by the magnitude of the unknown, we are lead to the limit of what analysis can do, and then point beyond– to what can and must be done by the human spirit.”

• Donella Meadows, 2008n

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Takeaway

Equity, justice, inclusion, and access are measurable Harmony parameters, not abstract ideals. Each can be indexed, tracked, and improved through systemic intervention. A system that scores well on Resilience and Autonomy but poorly on these Harmony metrics will eventually destabilize from within.