It is not just safe to say—it must be shouted from the rooftops—that without closer attention to measurement, nothing will come of the admirable and essential efforts being made by Project Drawdown as it strives to accelerate the deployment of climate solutions, the development of new leadership, and shifts in the overall conversation from doom and gloom to opportunity and possibility.
It is intensely painful to see well-intentioned, smart, and caring people acting out transparently hollow and ineffective rhetorical moves operationalized in ways that are absolutely guaranteed to fail. Project Drawdown, like virtually every other effort aimed at addressing climate change and sustainable solutions, from the United Nations Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals (Fisher, et al., 2019; Lips da Cruz, et al., 2019; Fisher & Wilson, 2019) to the Carbon Disclosure Project (Fisher, Melin, & Moller, 2021, 2022), seeks to create sustainable change without ecologizing knowledge infrastructures. Failing to make use of longstanding and highly advantageous principles and methods of measurement and metrology can only lead to disappointing results.
My previous publications on this theme (Fisher, 2009, 2011, 2012a/b, 2020a/b, 2021a/b; 2023; Fisher, et al., 2019, 2021; Lips da Cruz, et al., 2019; etc.) are now joined by a more pointed contrast (Fisher, 2022) of how confusing numbers for quantities must necessarily always result in failed sustainable change efforts.
That is, interpreted in the context of Project Drawdown, the new article asks, in effect,
- How dramatically accelerated progress akin to that seen over the course of technological developments made in the last 20, 50, or 200 years could be possible if efficient markets for human, social, and natural capital were created (Fisher, 2009, 2011, 2012a/b, 2020a, 2021b)?
- How “science-based priorities for climate action—across sectors, timescales, and geographies” can be set so as “to make more rapid and efficient progress” if no attention is paid to creating meaningful metrics read from instruments deployed in distributed networks and traceable to consensus standard units?
- How any reasonable basis for expecting so-called “science-based priorities” to actually make any kind of difference that matters can be substantiated if instruments are not carefully designed to measure higher order sustainability constructs—as opposed to merely tracking physical volumes of carbon and other greenhouse gases?
- How any kind of credible plans for “more rapid and efficient progress” can be formulated if the constructs measured are not demonstrated in theory and practice as exhibiting the same properties of structural invariance across sectors, timescales, and geographies?
- How systems recognizing that “everyone has a vital part to play in achieving” Project Drawdown’s goals can be created if everyone everywhere is not being connected in global metrology systems that design, calibrate, and distribute tools for custom-tailored, personalized, legally owned, and financially accountable sustainable change measurement and management (Fisher, 2012b)?
- How “changemakers—business leaders, investors, philanthropists, development officials, and more” can be informed and supplied “with science-derived strategies to ensure climate solutions scale as quickly and equitably as possible” if systematic approaches to creating metrologically sophisticated participatory social ecologies (Fisher, 2021a; Fisher & Stenner, 2018; Morrison & Fisher, 2018-2023) are not underway?
- How universal involvement in making the needed investments and reaping the desired rewards can be facilitated without mapping measured constructs telling individuals, groups, and communities where they stand now in relation to where they were, where they want to be, and what to do next, with clear indications of the exceptions to the rule in need of close attention in every unique local circumstance (Black, et al., 2011; Fisher, 2013; Fisher & Stenner, 2023)?
Moving faster to address the urgent challenges of our time is not primarily a matter of finding and applying the will power and resources needed to do the job. The desire, will, and resources already exist in abundance. As I explain in several previous posts here, what we lack are institutions and systems envisioned, planned, skilled, resourced, and incentivized to harness the power we possess. My new Acta IMEKO article (Fisher, 2022) contrasts the differences between today’s way of imagining and approaching sustainable change, and a new way that shifts the focus to a broader vision informed by an ecologizing approach to devising sociocognitive infrastructures (Fisher, 2021a; Fisher & Stenner, 2018).
If it were easy to communicate how to shift a paradigm, one might have to wonder how truly paradigmatic the proposed change really is. Though it often feels like nothing but screaming into a hurricane, there is really nothing else to do but persist in spelling out these issues the best I can…
References
Black, P., Wilson, M., & Yao, S. (2011). Road maps for learning: A guide to the navigation of learning progressions. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives, 9, 1-52.
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2009, November). Invariance and traceability for measures of human, social, and natural capital: Theory and application. Measurement, 42(9), 1278-1287.
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2011). Bringing human, social, and natural capital to life: Practical consequences and opportunities. Journal of Applied Measurement, 12(1), 49-66.
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2012a). Measure and manage: Intangible assets metric standards for sustainability. In J. Marques, S. Dhiman & S. Holt (Eds.), Business administration education: Changes in management and leadership strategies (pp. 43-63). Palgrave Macmillan.
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2012b, June 1). What the world needs now: A bold plan for new standards [Third place, 2011 NIST/SES World Standards Day paper competition]. Standards Engineering, 64(3), 1 & 3-5 [http://ssrn.com/abstract=2083975].
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2013). Imagining education tailored to assessment as, for, and of learning: Theory, standards, and quality improvement. Assessment and Learning, 2, 6-22.
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2020a). Contextualizing sustainable development metric standards: Imagining new entrepreneurial possibilities. Sustainability, 12(9661), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12229661
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2020b). Measuring genuine progress: An example from the UN Millennium Development Goals project. Journal of Applied Measurement, 21(1), 110-133
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2021a). Bateson and Wright on number and quantity: How to not separate thinking from its relational context. Symmetry, 13(1415). https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13081415
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2021b). Separation theorems in econometrics and psychometrics: Rasch, Frisch, two Fishers, and implications for measurement. Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 35(1), 29-60. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02601079211033475
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2022). Contrasting roles of measurement knowledge systems in confounding or creating sustainable change. Acta IMEKO, 11(4), 1-7. https://acta.imeko.org/index.php/acta-imeko/article/view/1330
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2023). Measurement systems, brilliant results, and brilliant processes in healthcare: Untapped potentials of person-centered outcome metrology for cultivating trust. In W. P. Fisher, Jr. & S. Cano (Eds.), Person-centered outcome metrology: Principles and applications for high stakes decision making (pp. 357-396). Springer.
Fisher, W. P., Jr., Melin, J., & Möller, C. (2021). Metrology for climate-neutral cities (RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB No. RISE Report 2021:84). Gothenburg, Sweden:. RISE. http://ri.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1616048&dswid=-7140 (79 pp.)
Fisher, W. P., Jr., Melin, J., & Möller, C. (2022). A preliminary report on metrology for climate-neutral cities. Acta IMEKO, in press.
Fisher, W. P., Jr., Pendrill, L., Lips da Cruz, A., & Felin, A. (2019). Why metrology? Fair dealing and efficient markets for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1379(012023 [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1379/1/012023]). doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1379/1/012023
Fisher, W. P., Jr., & Stenner, A. J. (2018). Ecologizing vs modernizing in measurement and metrology. Journal of Physics Conference Series, 1044(012025), [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1044/1/012025].
Fisher, W. P., Jr., & Stenner, A. J. (2023). A technology roadmap for intangible assets metrology. In W. P. Fisher, Jr., and P. J. Massengill, Explanatory models, unit standards, and personalized learning in educational measurement: Selected papers by A. Jackson Stenner (pp. 179-198). Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-3747-7
Fisher, W. P., Jr., & Wilson, M. (2019). The BEAR Assessment System Software as a platform for developing and applying UN SDG metrics. Journal of Physics Conference Series, 1379(012041). https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1379/1/012041
Lips da Cruz, A., Fisher, W. P. J., Felin, A., & Pendrill, L. (2019). Accelerating the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through metrological multi-stakeholder interoperability. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1379(012046 [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1379/1/012046]).
Morrison, J., & Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2018). Connecting learning opportunities in STEM education: Ecosystem collaborations across schools, museums, libraries, employers, and communities. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1065(022009). doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1065/2/022009
Morrison, J., & Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2019). Measuring for management in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics learning ecosystems. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1379(012042). doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1379/1/012042
Morrison, J., & Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2020, September 1). The Measure STEM Caliper Development Initiative [Online]. In http://bearcenter.berkeley.edu/seminar/measure-stem-caliper-development-initiative-online, BEAR Seminar Series. University of California, Berkeley.
Morrison, J., & Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2021a). Caliper: Measuring success in STEM learning ecosystems. Measurement: Sensors, 18, 100327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measen.2021.100327
Morrison, J., & Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2021b, June 1). Multilevel measurement for business and industrial workforce development. Presented at the Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Metrology. Joint Workshop of ENBIS and MATHMET, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy.
Morrison, J., & Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2022). Caliper: Steps to an ecologized knowledge infrastructure for STEM learning ecosystems in Israel. Acta IMEKO, in press.