Environment – Stephen Hinton Consulting

Latest on the Real Capital Framework

The Real Capital framework bridges the gap between scientific insights and policy-making. It critiques traditional economic models for undervaluing non-monetary assets (e.g., ecosystems, social systems) and proposes a methodology to quantify and manage Natural, Built, Human, and Social Capital for sustainable decision-making.

Ecological Insolvency: When the Forestry Industry is unable to restore its damage

The term insolvency is normally used in finance. A company is insolvent when it can no longer pay its debts. What if we applied this concept ecologically?

Sweden’s forestry industry is in a state of ecological insolvency. It cannot meet the environmental obligations that come with responsible land stewardship. The industry is profitable and not financially insolvent. However, it fails to maintain biodiversity, soil fertility, water quality, and climate stability—its ecological “debts” continue to grow. This is a perfect example of where Real Capital – the forest ecosystem – is extracted and degraded and converted into money. It is becoming so degraded that it may even lose its material-producing capability.

A demand-side strategy for saving Swedish forests

Swedish forests are being clear-cut at such a rate that alarms bells are ringing about dramatic loss of biodiversity and old-growth forest. Once clear cut, it is unlikely that biodiversity and old-growth forest will return. Activists are calling for the preservation of the last remaining patches of bio-diverse forest. This must happen. However, we need to look at the demand side. What is driving this demand and are there demand-strategies available?

Real Capital: A terminology list

For those studying and learning Real Capital (Multi-Capital) and its application to producing bases for decision-making, this glossary may be of help.

Modelling Supply Chains to inform Circular Economy policy

Short Communication

Stephen Hinton, Fellow, International Association of Advanced Materials

ABSTRACT

Supply chains are international. To be effective, it follows that actors should use a common language with the same vocabulary, metrics etc. in each country to be able to run, monitor and regulate them. They have a common grammar that embodies key generally accepted concepts. This grammar, however, still reflects the make-take-dispose mental models of the linear economy. This report presents a proposal for a description of supply chain grammar using the Swedish SNI categorisation of industries. The proposal models supply chains with sufficient granularity to allow identification of intervention points for the crafting of policy to stimulate the transition to circularity.

Each installed production device in the various types of the chain can be classified according to their capability for circularity, allowing for quantitative measures to help companies and countries craft policy and strategy.

Swedish energy and climate planning goes normative. That poses questions

This year, 2025, is the year Swedish local authorities are tasked with preparing for the Green Revolution: To make sure the Paris agreements are reached, to fulfill EU directives on nature, AND to prepare for shocks from the ever-increasing weather volatility.

AI summarizes my circular economy work in 13 minutes

I’ve been at it a long time. Working on the circular economy. From advising the Swedish Circular Economy Delegation, to working on the circular region at the university in Gävle, Sweden, to creating an online education for county administrators. Thinking to put it all in a book, I started collecting fragments into Google’s experimental NotelbookLM. Of course, it offered to do a podcast summary of it all.

What is a municipality to do? Abandon “progress” would be a reasonable strategy.

Does a good life entail pursuing progress? As a local politician my focus is turning to adapting society to extreme weather. And a supportive, inclusive culture. Kindness is good for a feeling of well-being.

As a local politician I’ve been involved in dialogue around strategy for 2025. The process will result in a plan to be agreed in September this year (2024) for next year. My group is responsible for the built environment – in Sweden the municipality has a monopoly on built environment planning as well as domestic waste, which brings great responsibility with it. Faced with the fact that warnings from the IPCC have gone unheeded, (use of fossil fuels has increased year on year) we concluded that our #1 priority is to prepare for the consequences of 1.5 degrees. Ideas on pursuing “progress” seem so last century. But how do you put a management system in place to achieve preparedness? How do you ensure a place is good one to live in? Can we have prosperity as our aim?

Applying Real Capital to the Circular Firm

Several thinkers (including, for example, Boyd 2020 and Hazel Henderson) have suggested that the concept of real capital – or multi-capital – be introduced into the political economy to aid decision-making at policy level as well at corporate level. This may overcome one of the failings of standard economics: Policy makers often rely on economists to provide their decision bases. However, one of the failings of standard economics when preparing decision bases for policy makers, is that anything that cannot be valued in money is seen to have no value or little value. The Earth does not send a bill for the use of its atoms so the stewardship of the material world is left out. Without a comprehensive valuation framework, policy makers and strategists are likely to miss the full picture by just relying on monetary values and make decisions that could be detrimental to society, counter to the intentions of the policy.

This article gives a general explanation of the category of real capital that is built capital, and how to use its valuation in preparing decision bases. The Real Capital approach gives a more robust decision basis, helping identify long term investment needs and policy that steers investment and activities to avoid capital degeneration and promote capital regeneration.

The “C” of the ABC of supply chains is the keystone of circularity

The last article explained that, if you are looking to develop policy to drive the circular economy, then it is useful to divide supply chains up in their industrial classification. You need to look at one in particular, the keystone holding it all up – C, manufacturing. And in manufacturing, you need to focus on built capital – the capability and performance of the actual infrastructure used in manufacturing.