Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

This is an interesting subject closely related to my work at UCL's Institute for Seucrity & Resilience Studies both in respect of 'Resource Resilience' (keeping the lights on) and 'Human Resilience' (capacity building etc). 

For me 'Resilience' is pretty much symbiotic/coterminous with Peter Steele's 'Restoration'.

My focus has long been upon the necessary associative protocols ('social contracts') which frame Peter's 'Rights' (ie rights of use, usufruct & control) and the financial instruments which are used within these frameworks to generate 'Returns'. 

My research approach has been firstly geographic, to identify 'what works' in terms of successful policy frameworks, and secondly, historic, to review what exactly was there before the legal and financial institutions with which we are familiar came along ie 'what worked'.

This recent presentation at Strathclyde University sets out my findings in general terms. http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/open-capital-2015

Perhaps one of the most interesting historic findings is that the very word 'Return' refers to the return of credit instruments to an issuer. eg the Tax Return was the accounting event at which the tax-payer who had pre-paid tax at a discount (and thereby funded the sovereign) would return the 'stock' record of the transaction to the Exchequer for matching and settlement of his tax obligation against the 'counter-stock' portion of the split tally stick accounting record which pre-dated doube entry book-keeping..

But I digress. 

In the forestry context it is quite possible to imagine simple social/associative contracts for the use of the forests and for the sharing of usufruct as between stakeholders. More to the point it is possible to imagine investment in forestry through the issuance - in exchange for value received - of credits returnable in payment for forest products generally, and carbon energy value specifically. 

If the Danish objective operating principle of 'least carbon fuel cost' is then applied alongside the subjective principle of 'least human cost' then the outcomes will probably be more positive than the current outcomes from the application of 'least $ cost' economic principles from the application of conventional corporate protocols and instruments such as equity shares, debt and derivatives.