Vincent Dert 

The Impact Measurement and Application of Conservation System (IMACS) was recently described in ten preprint papers. IMACS represents the first “first principals” based system for measurement of damaging and conserving impacts and the calculation of sustainabilities for products, services and individuals. IMACS distinguishes “participating” and “non-participating” individuals, organizations and their products and services. IMACS automatically assigns damaging impacts to individuals, products and services. Under IMACS, each generator of impacts “owns” their impacts, while impacts are transferred with products sold or distributed. For the fully implemented and participating world, all impacts will be determined accurately using a combination of (mostly) remote sensing and (increasingly less) ground/sea level-based verification and straightforward calculations. For the initial application, all impacts will be estimated using a statistical approach, where products, services and individuals with higher impact uncertainty are assigned higher impacts. Participating organizations can select lower cost estimation methods leading to higher estimated impacts and vice versa. Under IMACS, each event creating additional impacts, represents an additional supply chain step. This makes it easy to follow each product throughout the supply chain until it’s purchase by the end-user consumer. Due to the level of automation used, the impact estimation/determination can be done at very low costs, much lower than using life cycle assessment (LCA) or input-output analysis methods. Resource using, damaging, protecting and restoring impacts are distributed over eleven impact groups. Conservation is made available by for-profit and non-profit organizations and distributed by IMACS licensed organizations as “Title-to-Conservation” (TTC). Neutralizing amounts of conservation are applied to participating products and services purchased by participating consumers. Due to the shortage of conservation as TTC, initially none to very little TTC can be applied, leading to initially very low retailer or supply chain costs expressed as percentage of sales. However, the sale of TTC at market prices will allow the exponential growth of the conservation industry and create strong incentives for reduction of resource using and elimination of damaging impacts throughout the supply chain. Increasing consumer demand for products “free of impacts” (after impact neutralization through application of TTC) will force supply chain participation, creating a “new normal” where the supply chain pays for the costs of conservation. Using this approach and a twenty-year transition period to full societal participation, return to pre-industrial atmospheric conditions can be achieved in 40 – 60 years, greatly limiting damage from climate change, while saving costs. The same applies to all impact groups, greatly limiting environmental damage, biodiversity loss and reducing human suffering and premature deaths. A review of marketing studies indicates that the model assumptions used for societal participation are conservative. The use of certified and licensed for profit businesses for most tasks within IMACS allows a rapid global roll-out and scale-up of IMACS functionality. The system has the potential to create very large amounts of funding for conservation, and potentially allows a relative fast return to pre-industrial environmental conditions, while improving human conditions and saving costs. By participating in IMACS, individuals and organizations can eliminate current CO2 emissions, neutralize historic CO2 emissions, provide adequate fresh water for ecosystems, protect wildlife areas and their biodiversity, save money and improve their competitive position. IMACS, by assigning the costs of conservation (protection and restoration) to individuals and organizations responsible for the damage done, can effectively address and solve the classic “tragedy of the commons”.