Ecological budget

What it is

An ecological budget is a list of quantities. So much primary energy, by source. So much material by mass. So many tonnes of greenhouse gas, against a cumulative total that never resets. So much water drawn from each basin, so much land converted, so much nitrogen released, so much timber and fish taken. Each figure is a ceiling. Alongside them sit floors: the minimum habitat held in protection, and the minimum restoration owed in the period.

Who sets it

The Ecological Budget Authority, a body of scientists appointed for a single nine-year term by a procedure that no single organ controls. It publishes its data, its models, its assumptions, and the reasoning of members who disagreed. A budget produced in a closed meeting is not a budget at all.

Where the figures come from

Enterprises report on their own operations. Worker and consumer assemblies file objections. Communes contribute local monitoring. Inhabitants contribute what they know about the condition and history of the place they live in, which the text treats as evidence about that territory. Anyone may submit independent scientific work. The draft is published for ninety days, and every substantiated objection gets a written answer.

Why it has teeth

Most constitutions state an environmental aspiration and leave enforcement to politics. Here the budget binds the economic plan directly. A plan, permit, licence or contract that exceeds a ceiling is void to the extent of the excess, and confers no right on anyone. When an allocation runs out, production stops. Essential provision keeps priority over everything else.

Offsets

Buying a credit abroad to discharge a domestic ceiling is prohibited. Materials and energy embodied in imports count against the Republic's own budgets, so moving a dirty process across a border changes nothing on the ledger.