Hundreds, if not thousands, of talented sustainability farmers are finding themselves unable to find employment in their field. They are being pushed into doing less ecologically beneficial work because their labor is undervalued.
Why is sustainable farm labor so undervalued in our society—especially when it has such a high ecological value?
The Oakland Ecological Insentive Scale (OEIS) is a way of addressing this problem.
Towards A New Type of Ecological Incentive Scale
What if, rather than the typical ad-hoc approach to environmental incentives, we build an adaptive system that factors in net gains (and losses) in biomass in relation to all activities associated with an organization, business, or residence?
The Oakland Ecological Incentive Scale (OEIS) was developed by game designer Samara Hayley Steele in collaboration with biodynamic landscape contractor Michelle Ford, urban farm activist Tatille Jackson, and sustainable business analyst Gizi Azmy.
The OEIS is a framework designed to guide future collaborative efforts between ecological researchers, software engineers, policymakers, and game designers in creating a digital, user-developed, peer-reviewed wiki-like system to serve as the back-end to forward-facing analytics software that could be utilized in both game design and public policymaking.
This project includes the creation of a new type of forum for ecological specialists to bring their work into concert, while likewise simultaneously producing a congealed form of their research readily understandable to anyone with the ability to count, allowing weighted numbers to be easily plugged into other systems of incentives, labor organization, and play.
In essence, this is a project towards a market index for keeping the planet habitable.
Oakland Ecological Incentive Scale v. 1.3. (Download PDF)
This project is a component of the Gaia Reboot ecological gaming system.
