ACADEMIC OUTREACH
PEER REVIEW

Balance® has blended biodiversity creation, climate change mitigation, and socio-economic concerns in the creation of the peer-reviewed Balance Unit, a step beyond traditional carbon credit schemes. Our purchase of existing carbon credits assures that businesses and planting partners who work with Balance will not suffer from the faults of monoculture-based, socially unengaged, carbon credits.

To inform the development of our methodology, BALANCE® engages in scientific research with academics across several fields, from economics to climate modeling. Our studies are designed to empirically investigate and improve the BALANCE® methodology, to guarantee that project developers’ client claims conform to the latest developments in science and technology. Our overarching goal is to investigate how differently the world could look after 100 years of sustainability practices like those guiding BALANCE®, as compared with continuing adoption of existing carbon credit-based methods, which expire long before the 100-year radiative forcing cycle of atmospheric CO2 is completed.

Some of the topics we are currently focused on include:

Comparative analyses of methods in sustainability

Microeconomic analyses and related community-level research

Macroeconomics and government policy

BALANCE® co-benefits and human rights provisions in sustainability practices.

Our department of academic outreach, directed by JohnMichael Jurgensen at the University of Chicago, has begun academic collaborations with several professors and researchers, including students working on PhD-level research and experts with decades of relevant scientific experience. Our goal is to continue developing and improving the BALANCE® methodology with the findings of these inquiries, as well as to generate a number of peer-reviewed publications on the topics listed here.

 

Our comparative sustainability methods research investigates how well long-term environmental initiatives like BALANCE® compare to traditional carbon credit systems in reducing carbon emissions.

It also assesses the broader effects of BALANCE®’s planting principles, including their ability to support biodiversity and other key environmental variables, like water quality and soil health. At various academic partner universities, we will use data from both ongoing projects and advanced computer simulations to conduct these studies.

BALANCE® investigates how organizational decision making and income-based factors can influence carbon reduction strategies for local communities and businesses.

We are studying the effectiveness of BALANCE®’s proprietary sector-based GHG emissions calculator for business, in comparison with similar measures. Our research ultimately strives to understand and improve the practices, incentives, and outcomes for sustainable carbon reduction at all levels, while benefiting local communities and indigenous people throughout the process, through the creation of BALANCE® co-benefits, providing economic security and well-being.

This research focuses on existing regulatory policies at various levels (local, subnational, national, and international) and assesses the substance of their guidelines and overall effectiveness.

We also investigate the consequences of corporate inaction on both economic development and environmental outcomes, considering differences between sectors that adopt environmentally balanced approaches and those that do not. In a more applied context, this inquiry informs our understanding of sectoral turnover and the wider policy effects of helping businesses to balance their supply chain GHG emissions while conforming to international sustainability standards and goals. This includes study of the efficacy and differences in outcomes for cases which conform to BALANCE®’s guidelines, compared with those that do not.

BALANCE® contractually prioritizes the individual-level effects of forestry and sustainability practices in all projects.

Our research on co-benefits employs corporate finance modelling, focusing on risk, return, corporate strategy, and valuation, to understand the incentives necessary for investment in carbon reduction and other goodwill-related projects at both the internal supply chain and local community levels.

Our human rights-related work investigates the practical, economic, and ethical implications of sustainability practices. BALANCE® will conduct an analysis of the results of widespread shift from a 40-year rotation cropping, monoculture-based system (the current standard for carbon credits) to biodiversity-focused, 99-year minimum, BALANCE® Units. This will include measures of year permanence minimums, with indigenous people engaged in income generating projects such as permaculture, agroforestry, fishery from included waterways, catchment enhancement, forest products, sustainable firewood production, and more. BALANCE® also encourages our project developers to create biochar for their own use, and through our purchase, accumulate biochar credits. These results, of planting with BALANCE®, and others, will be considered in our studies of the effects of shift to BALANCE® Units, compared with those of the current monoculture-based system practices.

If you have an interest in joining BALANCE®’s research or would like to find out more about our current work, please contact us here.

These universities are undertaking BALANCE® research programs