Sustain One World aims to help develop and implement EH-IMACS as a practical framework for measuring environmental impacts and linking economic activity to conservation.

Our objective is to support a standardized approach through which products, services, and other activities can be evaluated more consistently and through which conservation and restoration can be expanded over time.

The long-term aim is to help reduce damaging impacts, improve conservation and restoration, improve transparency, and support a transition toward sustainable production and consumption.

Background context:

• UN Sustainable Development Goals
• IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report
• Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services | IPBES secretariat
• Making Peace With Nature | UNEP – UN Environment Programme
• The Climate Emergency

Damaging Environmental Impacts

EH-IMACS is designed to account for the damaging environmental impacts associated with products and services. Major examples include biodiversity loss, unsustainable freshwater use, soil and sediment damage, climate-related impacts, coastal flooding risk, and other environmental pressures.

The full EH-IMACS framework uses a broader set of impact groups. In addition to environmental impacts, it also includes human-condition impacts.

These impact types are closely connected. Biodiversity depends on healthy land, water, climate, and ecological restoration. For that reason, the system is designed to address multiple types of damage together rather than treating each problem in isolation.

Conserving Environmental Impacts

EH-IMACS also accounts for the conservation and restoration needed to neutralize damaging impacts. Examples include protection and restoration of wildlife areas, watershed protection, soil and sediment restoration, coastal protection, emissions reduction, and atmospheric carbon removal with durable storage.

EH-IMACS is designed to make environmental impacts more visible at the level of products, services, and individual consumption. For participating purchases, the system links measured or estimated impacts to corresponding conservation intended to address those impacts.

These change incentives in a practical way. Lower-impact products and operations require less conservation, so producers, service providers, retailers, and consumers all have a reason to reduce impacts directly wherever they can.

EH-IMACS would be implemented gradually. Participation, impact measurement, and conservation capacity would expand over time, allowing the system to begin in simplified form and become more complete as the supporting infrastructure develops.

Participation in EH-IMACS would likely develop in stages as methods, software, and conservation capacity are built out. Early participation can focus on following the project, expressing interest, and supporting further development. As the system matures, participation could expand to standardized classification, impact assessment, and conservation-linked transactions. 

For individuals, participation is intended to provide a practical way to support more transparent environmental accounting and to encourage lower-impact production and consumption. It is also intended to support conservation and restoration efforts linked to everyday economic activity.

For organizations, participation is intended to provide a framework for clearer impact information, more credible sustainability comparisons, and stronger alignment between business decisions and conservation outcomes. Over time, organizations that reduce damaging impacts and improve transparency would be better positioned to demonstrate those improvements within a common system.

EH-IMACS is designed to estimate or calculate the environmental impacts associated with products, services, and individual consumption. In early stages, some values may be based on broader estimates. As participation grows and better data become available, the system is intended to move toward more specific and more accurate impact values. 

The system is also designed to translate those impact values into sustainability indicators by comparing actual impacts with reference conditions intended to represent sustainable use and restoration. In general, lower-impact choices and lower-impact production would be expected to score better than higher-impact alternatives. 

Where appropriate and feasible, EH-IMACS is intended to incorporate measured or independently verified environmental data to improve the location specificity of environmental impact estimates. 

Becoming sustainable requires reducing damaging impacts, supporting protection and restoration, and choosing lower-impact ways to meet the same needs. EH-IMACS is intended to help make those differences more visible and more comparable across products, services, and organizations.

In practice, this can include increase of renewable energy sources, reduction of fossil-fuel use, improving efficiency, reducing damaging land and water use, and preferring products and services with better sustainability performance where such information is available. Which changes are most effective can differ by location, technology, and stage of implementation.

For individuals and organizations alike, the general direction is to reduce avoidable impacts, support restoration where damage has occurred, and move toward more sustainable options over time. 

EH-IMACS is intended to help create funding for environmental restoration through participation-linked conservation purchases. In the climate context, that can include support for durable carbon-removal measures in addition to reducing ongoing emissions.

The scale, timing, and cost of possible climate-restoration pathways depend on model assumptions, technology development, participation levels, and the rate at which removal capacity can be built. 

Returning to sustainable conditions is broader than climate alone. Over time, EH-IMACS is intended to support restoration across multiple impact areas as methods, measurement systems, and conservation pathways are further developed.