There is a lot of relatively pointless confusion related to semantics in the biodiversity and biodiversity credit field. And really, nature tech in general. Let’s clear this up so we can communicate:

Three terms. One clear distinction each.

Metric

Means any core measurement. Usually, these have a bit of a scientific protocol to do it right. Like "diameter of tree at breast height" is actually THE core metric in almost all forest carbon, and everything else is calculated from there with allometric equations. But there are some standard instructions for trees (they don't grow in a perfect circle). In biodiversity, "species" might be a metric, but identifying a species is actually very different with different protocols depending on insects, trees, fish, etc.

So raw data, like game camera footage, is converted into a metric like a species observation through a fairly formal process. But what do metrics mean?

Methodology

Is an agreed upon protocol to make MEANING out of metrics. An example is here, our biodiversity methodology.

So for instance Savimbo's Indicator Species Methodology takes game camera footage of a bush dog (one of the rarest species in the Amazon) and has a formal replicable set of instructions to interpret outcomes out of that and say what area has been conserved from analyzing that metric. So how do we compare our outcomes to other people's?

Unit

Is just the final output format. A comparable abstraction.

Different ecosystems and actions need different metrics and methodologies. Analyzing oceans and freshwater systems are different. Jungle is different from desert. These are different actions, different species, and different equipment. The unit is how you compare what you did interoperably with everyone else.

It’s a standard set of expressions. Like we use “hectares” instead of “acres.” This is about how you express your final result so it can be used by electronic systems. The unit we use for area-based biodiversity action is the Interoperable Biodiversity Unit (IBU)

#StopArguingAboutStupidShit

Now people get really angry about other people’s metrics and methodologies.

For us, we don’t really care. We just ask them, because they are the experts in their fields, to EXPRESS their work in a format that can ALSO express ours. Works in electronic databases, AND is good for buyers and Indigenous Peoples to understand.

(I swear this is not ideological, but you realize how many people never left their teenage traumas about authority when you impose something as rigorous as interoperability on the world.)

This means you have to accept the core premise that humans need to work together on planet problems. And many humans have NOT accepted that premise, while still trying to work on planet problems.

Which is their choice.

Our choice is to focus on what we DO agree on. Which is here in this article.

Responsibility

There is a responsibility to being a scientist. Richard Feynman taught me that. He built the A-bomb out of pure love of reason and math, then paid a steep price when his work was misused.

We study things to be experts, and then people consult us, and we need to tell the truth — and be humble about it.

Buyers and Indigenous Peoples don’t always have the same level of responsibility to assess internal integrity of metrics and methodologies. That is most commonly the job of certifiers and ratings agencies who have the technical capacity to see when protocols, or sensors, are flawed or limited and where.

It’s really important that we use units for nature itself. Not what it’s worth to humans in $$$, but what is it worth to ALL species on the planet.

It would really help if people understood the difference between these three things BEFORE they start to argue, and used the same terms so we can actually compare our work.

We have a responsibility to do our best on this stuff, right now.

I’m really pleased that Google did this “natural forest” map. Primary forest is kind of a misnomer as forests are alive, constantly evolving and modified by Indigenous communities for millenia. But this map shows where forests are still relatively intact.

It’s such a great negotiating tool for where extraction stops. For us, basically not in natural forests, ever, case closed. Intact biota is a global treasure, and has immense value to the human species in the form of medicinal plants for diseases, ecological knowledge, and reforesting and rewilding fountains of natural propagation.

We’ve worked really hard to value natural forests at deforestation borders, with the biodiversity credit which any forest community can do, and yeilds up to $30/unit in intact ecosystems.

We understand that other people are going to choose to mine or drill. And that there is a negotiation here, and the negotiation is when people are mining OUTSIDE of natural forests. How to do it cleaner, more ethically, and with less impact. Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and GIST Impact and Dunya Analytics are all working really hard to get that under control. But for us, natural forests are a complete no-go zone.

The planet is like a cell, and like a cell, it has organelles and organs, and what keeps the planet alive is creating a semi-permeable membrane to keep disparate use zones safely separate so they don’t encroach on planetary support systems. I’ll write a bit more about this in another post because I know it needs to be explained better. But I really love the work by the PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and territories of life on where the no-go zones are, and how to protect them.

Mining causes, but isn’t the same as timber deforestation; it mostly contaminates water supplies, and the effects of poisoning them are distributed and take years to fully develop. I included some research on human health from copper mining below. Lithium has even more impact. Gold is completely unnecessary to mine at all and I’m a huge fan of Rod Holden for his work on how to keep it in the ground and mine with financial modeling instead.

Short story, that’s the rules for Savimbo and we work really hard to enforce them via whatever mechanisms we can. Including economic support for standing forests, Rights of Nature NOW law, and safe mechanisms for Indigenous leaders.

Here’s material that we use all the time.

If you guys want more material, stuff we use all the time:

• Here is a great book about hostage negotiating, Never Split the Difference. It teaches how to take a stand and win when you really can't give ground in a negotiation. It’s actually quite different negotiating tactics, and I highly recommend it for Indigenous activists and advocates.

• Here is a Rights of Nature case Indigenous women won in Peru to halt extraction on a river.

• Here is a landmark Canadian Supreme Court case where Eritrea communities got DAMAGES from Canadian mining companies from within Canada.

• Here is a report on deaths of 146 environmental defenders in our zone last year, which is why a good negotiator can make it safer for leaders to defend territory.

• Here is a clear report on the risks of copper mining to human health and ecosystems. Here is a press release on the Nature paper about 5k Indigenous children dying from an open-pit mine in Peru with clearly documented poisoned waters and downstream effects.

If you have any questions, you can check out Ask Savimbo. Been working on delivering training material in a more structured way.

And once, when you raged in a tantrum, then shuddered into wracking sobs, and fell into an awkward hug. Then came back days later, shuffling your feet, uncertain, and asked me shyly if I would clasp you again like that. Like a weighted blanket.

It felt good, you explained. I don’t think you knew why. But by then I did.

I had held you like a straitjacket until your emotions broke. No one had ever contained you like that before, so you could experience the full brunt safely and feel the release after they peaked. You missed your developmental tantrums at two. You were busy surviving.

You were pretty tough at that time. I think you were eight. Big enough to be too big. Honestly, you kind of needed a straitjacket. I know kids shouldn’t, but you were still on several psychiatric medications, your dad secretly double-dosing you with them randomly when he felt like it to turn you off. My first experience with that kind of child abuse. I’m so sorry. I stopped it when I figured it out. And I mean I really stopped it. But we hadn’t sorted it out yet.

But we did, and this story is why.

So, how to tell this story? I am telling it so one day you can find it and see yourself reflected like a jewel in my eyes. Without telling too much — telling what’s not mine to tell.

I came for all kinds of complex adult reasons of my own. But all you probably knew, and what is probably the truth, is that I came like Mary Poppins on an umbrella.

And I came for you.

They didn’t tell me anything, of course. I learned later that you had hit the former nanny in the head with a rock, and she had to go to the hospital. But given the adults I found around you, I kind of support that. Most adults wouldn’t, but you did what you had to.

You were fighting your own child’s guerrilla war.

So this day on the beach, our first day. All I had to go on were vaguely worded warnings that you could be tough. (I had been hired off an online listing, which was very irresponsible of all adults involved, including me.) But all boys are tough, and I was tough, and I needed the placement. So I took the job, and the first day, you were bundled into my car with your brother and various beach stuff, and we went to the beach.

The adults weren’t going to warn me, but they sort of tried. Some vague hints about “behavioral problems” and that you shouldn’t travel in cars. But I was the nanny, and didn’t listen any better than you did. I had been in the frozen winters of the far north for too long. So we were going to the beach and we did.

Later on, I saw you and your brother unbuckle and rage around the car, try to jerk the steering wheel from your dad on the freeway. Really dangerous stuff. But that was with your dad, and you had your reasons.

But they didn’t tell me that then. It was our second day. They just sent us off in the car. No warning. And there you were, sitting next to me, buckled up reluctantly. Clearly ready to explode with impatience. But you and I negotiated a deal for car gum, and for the music, and you liked New York by Jay Z, and I did too, so that was that.

And I looked over at you to the right of me, and it suddenly occurred to me, and I said in startled realization — because you were tapping the windowsill, and looking at the sea, and immersed in the song — “There is nothing wrong with you!!” I saw so clearly in that moment that you were a totally normal kid. And you looked at me, your gaze direct. And I think you realized for the first time in your incredibly short life that it was absolutely true.

And that was that.

But the beach. This story is about the beach. It’s about the beginning. Because we broke you out of your prison. And maybe now, if you read this as an adult, you still wonder what happened. Maybe you won’t forgive me for abandoning you. And there are all kinds of adult reasons why I had to. But there are all kinds of adult things I did when I left that changed your life forever too. And I will tell you here, in our public private, and then maybe you will know that I didn’t abandon you at all.

But I want you to know why I didn’t abandon you. Why I fought for you with all of my adult-power.

It was the crab.

We went to the beach. And you and your brother went wild. You ran and ran. You rolled in the sand. You ran into the waves, you just flew across the sandy water, and you were covered in sand from head to toe. Your sandy blond hair was sandy sandy. And you were wild with the sun and the freedom, and I just watched.

Too much time in the house? I thought. I had no idea.

I will briefly sketch your history, which I learned later, so it makes more sense. But there was a mansion, and an addicted mother, and her addicted friends. And years and years of early childhood abuse. Them high with you and your brother, and sexual abuse because she didn’t protect you. And no one to see, no one to care, and movies no child should see playing over and over in the background. And finally, they put her away.

But for you, the damage was done. You were ‘damaged’ and your dad saw it as a continual honeypot for rotating foreign nannies, and the other kind of abuse started, or maybe continued. More sophisticated medical and emotional abuse with twisted disciplines. The medicated, standardized, pathologized, doctor-teacher enabled abuse and labeling.

The endless suffering of a psychologically traumatized child “victim” who can never be anything else.

So in the car, when I said, “There is nothing wrong with you.” It might have been the first time an adult ever said that to you. But I could see in your defiant gaze in that moment that it was something you already just knew.

You were so bright, so brilliant. Even then.

So on the beach, when I finally let you out. Out-out with the sun and the sand and the endless ocean you ranranranranranran. And I didn’t know why, but I just let you run. Boys need to run, I thought. Good for ‘em.

But that wasn’t the moment that mattered. The moment that mattered came later. It was when it was time to go. You weren’t very good with any kind of discipline then. It unlocked the anger and the uncontrolled will that had been so bent and twisted by authority figures.

And it came down to the crab.

You had been collecting hermit crabs. Running in zig zags and throwing them into the water, and you had one in a blue bucket. And you wanted it. Crabs aren’t that… conscious. You wanted to take it home, and I said, “No.” And you began to shake. You weren’t very tall, only came up to my waist. But it was a real shaking. An adult shaking. Your eyes narrowed, and I saw real adult compressed fury.

“It’s mine,” you said. “If I can’t take it home, I will crush it. I will kill it. I caught it and it’s mine.”

And there it was, some eyestalks waving, totally confused in a blue bucket sloshing around in some seawater and sand. And I looked at it, and I could tell by then that it was going to be a long, tough ride home. I could see you weren’t responding like a normal kid to normal things. I didn’t see the full picture then; it took a few months to map it and untangle the psychology web you’d been snarled into. But I could see that day that I had to pick my battles, and I was sorely tempted.

I can kill a crab. I’ve killed crabs. It’s a crab. There are thousands of them. There were thousands of them at our feet right then. I mean, it was a good specimen, you had selected well — I was impressed with your hunting abilities. But I thought, is it really worth this dumbass crab? Am I really going to pick this battle?

It was my first day on the job. I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. There were all kinds of adult reasons why it wasn’t worth pissing you off — yet. I knew we were going to have it out — I just wanted to pick the place and time. Not with an uncontrolled and unpredictable child who was still practically a stranger on a public beach.

And I looked at the crab, and I looked at you, and I thought, no, we are going to have this fight right now.

“That is not your crab. That crab belongs to itself,” I said. “It lives in the ocean.”

And I looked at you and I really, really meant it.

And you lost it. I mean, you were really great at losing it back then. You had taken the standard of “disturbed child” and constructed a monument to it. You were smart as hell, and the adults had only given you one way to succeed. So you were quite the fireworks show.

It was impressive.

But I noted, because I am the oldest of nine children, that you never once dropped the plastic bucket.

So I stood there as stubborn as you were — are. A will like ours can’t be tamed. Yours hadn’t been broken, and mine never will either.

And I waited.

And when you calmed down. I said, “That crab belongs to itself, just like you belong to yourself. You don’t own the crab, and I don’t own you.”

And that plunked you like an arrow in the solar plexus. You stood there dumbstruck, and you looked at me, and I looked at you.

And you put the crab carefully on the beach. And we left, and we made it home. (Thank god for Jay Z.) And after that, we had a real alliance.

And we did the work. It took about three months. But you did it. We did it. Because we had an agreement.

You belonged to yourself.

I know your life changed after I left. I heard from others that you were doing better. There were all kinds of adult reasons I had to leave. But I didn’t leave you without protection. I put the guardrails in place. I marched you over to the best neighbor, and I had a real talk with him. And I made him promise, adult-to-adult, if you needed shelter, you could go there, no questions asked. I made sure the authorities and people around you knew what was happening. I talked to your teachers. I told your doctor that you had changed, and he was grateful. He said he knew you just needed ‘behavioral interventions,’ and he couldn’t give them to you. I said I did, and you were better, and he agreed, and he said he would stop medicating you. And from what I heard, it worked.

But I want to tell you what we know. You didn’t need behavioral interventions. You needed love.

You needed real,

blistering,

hardcore,

LOVE.

And you got it from me. And that was ALL you needed.

And now, when I work on the environment, I think about that. I think about all the broken little boys in the world and their stupid crabs in buckets. And I tell them all the same thing.

There is nothing wrong with you. And it is not your crab.

The goddamn crab belongs to itself.