If you just get a valuation and predictive platform built, it will be tremendously valuable. The information generated by those trading (playing the game) will deliver pricing signals and transparency to stakeholders — businesses, individuals and governments — as to the value of environmental and social assets currently excluded form market consideration and rational pricing mechanisms. Trading on the IVE may be the most meaningful game you ever play.” – John Sherriff, Former CEO Enron Europe

The IVE Does Two Primary Things:

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The IVE is a place where inputs are collected from the countless professionals, academics, activists, organizations and agencies focused on researching these natural assets and producing data with respect to their value. We bring all that information together in one place so that the second mission of IVE can be achieved.

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The information we aggregate is then translated into assets and systems, “IVE Elements” that we want to value: for example, Lake Tahoe, Blue Fin tuna, the Mississippi Delta and healthy children, and then the public “votes” on the value by investing and trading in these IVE Elements. This system functions much like a traditional stock exchange, where the market digests information and sets prices through trading.

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With a market price, we can value a tree in a forest. The IVE market may say it is worth $50,000 over its lifetime and only $400 if it is cut down. We can also value costs that don’t show up in a price tag today. For example, the cost of a ton of coal does not include damage to human health, mercury contamination of fish, acid drainage into streams, or adding CO2 to the atmosphere. This information is powerful for determining values that today are not factored into the economy — both positive values and costs.

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Just as in any marketplace, people trading on the IVE can make money by owning these assets and their services and by improving them and increasing their value.

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What is valued financially has a voice in our society. Instead of being protected only by legislation, valued assets will be protected by those with financial interests. This incentive works with the economy to provide far more powerful protection and stewardship.

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When we determine something’s value we can rank the relative value of each asset or service. With a market price, governments, businesses and individuals can make better decisions about products, services, regulation, taxes and social priorities. These decisions are also made by all of us with every purchase we make as the price of goods and services will include the real value and costs in financial, social, and environmental terms.

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The IVE Index (think NYSE Dow Index or Gross Domestic Product) can be the indicator of global economic and ecological health that drives us rather than the narrow fortunes of 30 companies (DOW Industrial Average) or the irrational measure we live by now — Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — which often are better measures of the destruction of resources and human potential than of their wellbeing.

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The wealth that is created by valuing natural assets is available to be used to further improve those assets. With increased wealth, we can afford to invest in health, education and designing better products and services more in line with our social and ecological values. When assets are valued, people naturally protect them and foster their growth and health out of self-interest.

'Fascinating.' — Paul Hawken, author of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution