Since 2012, with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development “RIO +20”, more strongly than before, the capitalist enterprise is invited to contribute to the achievement of the community’s ecological ambitions. In France, the Direction générale du Trésor (Directorate General of the Treasury) and the Commissariat général au développement durable (General Commission for Sustainable Development) declare in a joint report that the States alone have neither the vocation nor the capacity to assume the financing of the ecological transition (Dron 2013). Regulations, soft law, tax instruments and public financing must accompany the responsible company toward more environmentally sound practices. This role entrusted to the capitalist enterprise is that of a private social institution contributing, beyond the private purposes to which it devotes itself, to serving the general interest (Touraine 2003).

In June 2016, the Agence française de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie (French Environment and Energy Control Agency) mentioned the positive effects of a scenario of switching to a “100% renewable” electricity mix (ADEME 2016). By 2050, this technological transition could, according to this report, create 800–900,000 jobs and generate a GDP increase of 3.8–3.9%. Such a scenario involved an investment of 31 billion euros per year, an increase of 7% compared to the investments already planned. The State would have had to bear only 4–5 billion per year, the rest could be provided by private actors. The role of the State would then mainly consist of organizing the consistency between the deployment of public and private investments.

In order to facilitate the organization of this investment flow management, the Dron’s (2013) report proposes extending to public and private institutional investors the social environmental responsibility (SER) framework imposed on certain companies since the New Economic Regulations (NER) Act of 2001. It suggests that the development of socially responsible investment (SRI) should be encouraged so that public and private investments can converge, within a common logic of social responsibility (SR). The purpose of this proposal is to base non-financial evaluation and reporting on understandable criteria of social and environmental utility, and thus to promote the selection of projects eligible for financing.

While some aspects of this policy are theoretically appropriate – no one would criticize a desire for consistency in investment approaches – it is not suitably equipped in practice.

Only listed companies are covered by the NER law. And it is on a voluntary basis that these companies determine the SR objectives, and the non-financial reporting procedures by which they fulfill their generic reporting obligations to the community and key players in their market. The exercise of the company’s general interest mission is therefore very free.

On the other hand, while it is true that extending the scope of the SR framework to public and private institutional investors may lead the company to appropriate some of the SR criteria used by these investors (and thus to simplify the analysis of eligibility for financing and its effectiveness), a “mirror” challenge is to prevent this public/private SR commensurability from leading to an alignment of public objectives with those of the company.

Sustainable development policies must integrate market requirements and not seek to be eligible for them, to comply with them. Considering the economic conditions for sustainable development implies a syncretic approach to globalized finance and the very local socioeconomy of territories. It is, therefore necessary to address the point of friction between these two rationalities, which are complementary but whose contemporary expression is carried out in an extremely frontal way, as proven by the French political and economic situation highlighted by the “yellow jackets” crisis that broke out in 2018.

Investment in sustainable development strategies is most often considered from a technico-economic perspective. The focus is on the relationship between investments in “eco-efficient” technology, social conditions of work and resource supplies, production costs, selling prices of products and the solvency of the actors.

A more socioeconomic approach will integrate this relationship between investment and technological production into a broader field of concern.

The socioeconomic approach will emphasize the importance of a collective capacity to represent the social, economic, and environmental benefits conferred by the choice of one means of production over another, and the sociopolitical propensity to organize the financial conditions favorable to the selection of this means, and therefore of these benefits. In a socioeconomic approach, the evaluation of returns on investments remains essential, but it is inseparable from the consideration of other issues – replacing the financial dimension in a broader field of representations and then recognizing its influence as less exclusive.

Economic actors are subject to solvency constraints specific to their business and situation, while being motivated, on the whole, by a common ambition of the sustainability of the territory whose development they contribute to. These actors take into account the two approaches, socioeconomic and technico-economic, to varying degrees, with each party’s constraints and customs sometimes predisposing them to one rather than the other.

The central issue addressed in this book is the balance of powers of economic representation. Ensuring this balance means, for example, ensuring that the distribution of investment between cleaner production technologies (technico-economic approach) and changes in the relationship to consumption (socioeconomic approach) corresponds to a truly constructed strategy, and not to a conditional, ideological reflex.

A thorough reflection on how to account for value is then needed. The current trend toward consistency between the various international extra-financial frameworks, whether generic or sectoral, applicable to companies is accompanied, at the EU level, by their approximation of private accounting. This approximation is presented as a way to institutionalize a new way of observing and investing. The national accounts and public statistics systems are also under revision. In particular, they will incorporate the guidelines of a framework of post-2015 sustainable development goals (SDG) defined by the UN.

In many respects, this coevolution between national accounts, statistics and SDG is favorable to the evaluation of public and private coordination. The reading grid constituted by these goals allows an analysis that is at the same time global, adapted to biosphere issues, and locally differentiated according to the plural modes of representation of what can be the success of a sustainable development policy. Private actors will be able to have an integrated vision of their SER action and profitability. The State could make the SDGs coincide with the new indicators of wealth defined in 2015 by the Eva Sas¹ law (in an almost total media silence) and put these goals and indicators in relation to the creation of added value. This would make it easier to understand the decoupling between GDP growth, and environmental and social groups degradation.

These new indicators of wealth, inspired by the Commission sur la mesure des performances économiques et du progrès social (Commission on measurement of economic performance and social progress) (Stiglitz et al. 2009), then proposed by the Comité Economique Social et Environnemental (Economic, Social and Environmental Commitee – CESE) and France Stratégie (French socio-economic think task), describe the research effort, employment rate, debt, disability-free life expectancy, income inequality, poverty, life satisfaction, school dropout, soil artificialization and carbon footprint. They are again mobilized by the Philippe government at the end of February 2019 (still in media silence) to give a new orientation to the political evaluation². They offer the analyst the possibility of a polychromatic reading of progress, complementary to that of GDP and debt, monochromatic, “in black and white”. It may also be surprising that they have not been mobilized to structure paths of contribution to the Great National Debate, or its restitution.

But let us return to the heart of the matter: the economic modalities of collective survival in what is now known as the Anthropocene.

To reduce the environmental impacts of the economy, it is often considered, as we have mentioned, to finance the adoption of more sustainable production technologies: this is the technico-economic approach. In a strictly financial analysis, returns are then clearly identifiable, associated with the physical productive apparatus that is the property of an entity.

We have also introduced a socioeconomic approach. And it is also necessary to finance socioeconomic engineering schemes to support cooperation through which the actors of a territory can create, outside specific financing, by the effect of their self-organization, conditions favorable to the diffusion of technological innovations or any other mode of bifurcation toward a more sustainable society.

Technological change is indeed one of several paths – certainly the most compatible with investors’ current practices but not necessarily the most efficient.

Reversing the perspective in this way, by considering the opportunity to invest in territorial socioeconomic engineering to bring out productive choices, implies that we should no longer limit ourselves to representing profitability and sustainability separately, nor to orient institutional financing toward one or other of the territory’s activities. The aim is to represent and coordinate, from the territorial level, a set of activities whose interactions have positive effects both in terms of sustainability and solvency.

In other words, it is a question of giving rise to a real mesoeconomic analysis of territorial development.

The SER indicators would then be used as a basis for deliberations, during which the actors would express their judgments concerning the interactions between activities within the territorial system, discuss together ways of strengthening the effects deemed desirable, and study on this basis innovative options for access to financial capital. These indicators would also be used during contractualizations to determine the precise and personalized terms and conditions of the contributions (in cash, organization and work) granted by each of the territory’s actors, including the institutional investor.

These two approaches complement each other. They imply that the private sector, the community and investors can escape from market reaction behavior in order to adopt a position of expertise and anticipation. The technico-economic approach contributes to the maturation of local markets, i.e. their renewal from within due to a change in the representations of the value generated by the increased consideration of environmental performance. A spread of the socioeconomic approach would lead to the opening up of a new economic area of valorization, outside the market, i.e. political, through coordination at territorial level. This would, moreover, without this being its central ambition, be favorable to the structuring of local markets and to the propensity of actors to adopt technical and economic innovations.

Coupling these two approaches would thus create the opportunity for a virtuous circle for an acceleration of the transition to more sustainable development. But if the alignment of public and private investment – which, as we have mentioned, now constitutes the core of French sustainable development policy – is to accompany the coupling of these two approaches, it is desirable that they can be apprehended with the same finesse and with comparable ease.

SER practices are already relatively suitable for public or private institutional investment in direct support for more environmentally sustainable technologies. Extra-financial reporting, activity reporting and financial statements allow a company to communicate fairly easily how the technological resources it mobilizes are consistent with its SR ambition. The investor can then choose to support this company according to the consistency of this ambition with its own objectives. A fairly clear link can thus be established between the indicators used by the investor to calibrate its contribution, and the indicators used by the beneficiary organization to reflect the virtuous nature of its production practice.

On the other hand, current SR practices are not very appropriate to support the dynamics of the emergence and functioning of multi-actor social innovations. The link between the indicators mobilized by the investor to calibrate its contribution, the indicators mobilized during the deliberations carried out by a multi-actor territorial organization and the indicators mobilized individually by each of the actors is rather weak. The ability to guide, calibrate, monitor and evaluate investments in a group activity is therefore currently weaker than in the case of direct support for technological change.

We might be tempted to argue that this gap is due to a difference in the ability to assess returns on investment: during a technological investment, there is most often an institutional overlap between ownership of the production apparatus and responsibility for achieving SR objectives. That would not be inaccurate, but a bit quick. Once documented in terms of SR objectives, budgeted and contracted, a cooperation is legally embodied on a territorial scale. Its support by the institutional investor is therefore carried out according to very traditional methods.

It is well in advance that the limit is located. While the current accounting and SER systems can help to channel institutional investment – public or private – into an already established territorial cooperation structure, they are currently of no use when it comes to supporting its emergence and organization.

An investor who would like to encourage the emergence and organization of a territorial cooperation structure can finance mechanisms aimed at improving communication between territorial actors. Innovative socioeconomic engineering would, for example, strengthen the participation of these actors in the deliberations and improve these deliberation practices. The investor would thus contribute to creating a local heritage of mutual understanding that could encourage concerted specialization and innovation, thus increasing the potential for economic, ecological and social sustainability.

However, it is difficult for an institutional investor to invest in a potential when no quantified, financialized and contractualized reading of the future of its investment is available. Is it a diffusion of the notion of accounting assets to all spheres of the economy, including the public sphere, i.e. a need for certainty in the identification of future benefits – a certainty that, in accounting, is closely linked to the legal concept of ownership?

In any case, a “too indirect” relationship between investors and multi-actor mechanisms that is not able to account for industrial production hinders the financing of socioeconomic innovation. This innovation is not always carried out by entities that have the very particular institutional basis conferred by the ownership of the means of production, which is accompanied by the ability – or at least the legitimacy – to document the effects of this production. For this reason, the link between the indicators used by the institutional investor to calibrate its contribution, the indicators used by multi-actor organizations during territorial deliberations and the indicators used by the actors who contribute to them is now too weak.

The Dynamic Modeling of Cost Systems (DMCS) approach – the principles of which are set out in this book – is intended to help institutional investors, both public and private, but also local inhabitants, associations, politicians and other actors, to encourage the emergence of local coordination. Its ambition is to provide an analytical grid that each of them can use to collectively renew representations of what coherence in investment is.

This approach is based on a breakdown of the territorial economy, which can be represented by the interweaving of information processing cycles, each characterized by three positions: deliberation, contractualization and valuation. These three-position cycles are incorporated into other cycles (ecosystem, social, political, institutional, etc.) whose representation sometimes implies that the micro-, meso- and macroeconomic levels are no longer separated.

In this “space” of representation, the relationships between economic costs used as arguments in political deliberations, prices of market or territorial contracts and values recorded in private and public accounts are changing. These representations are nourished by communication between actors. They are evolutionary and dynamic. And because of this dynamism, a clear formalism must make it possible to avoid any confusion between the plural times of investment: its past (the origin of the methods and tools that motivate it), its future (what is expected of it) and its present (the way it is implemented).

These conditions are first and foremost presented in this book as necessary for scientific rigor. However, since their formulation is intrinsically a proposal to clarify the rules and strengthen the readability of the relationship to what triggers the decision to invest, these conditions are also a way to avoid opposing wills and cultures head-on, thus freeing the ecological and social transition from certain inertia.

Chapter 1 focuses on representations of sustainable development and their influence on the choice of economic valuation tools. In particular, it describes how the currents of the ecological economy and the social economy both imply a systemic understanding of the economic concept of capital. The thesis developed in this chapter is that any attempt to analyze the relationships between wealth, the ecological and social impacts of production is intrinsically biased by distortions at the heart of the valuation process proposed by the neoclassical economic theory.

Chapter 2 suggests reducing the distortion of economic representations attached to neoclassical analysis by addressing ecological and social functions in an intrinsic way, directly at the territorial level. In particular, it is highlighted in this chapter that the methodology of collective understanding of these territorial functions is not only useful on an ad hoc basis and limited to the issues at stake in a particular governance situation. The memory of a coordination process remains within the social group. It helps to shape its identity, transforms views of economic performance and nurtures a territorial capacity to build on past experiences.

Chapter 3 proposes socioeconomic engineering tools whose mobilization is favorable to an increase in the capacity of actors to co-produce, implement and enhance a territorial development scenario. Deliberative practices, in physical meetings and with the support of digital tools, make it possible to qualify, through ad hoc and evolving indicators, the conditions for returning to a situation of sustainable functioning of ecological, technical and social systems. Such practices minimize some of the spatial, temporal and dimensional distortions inherent in neoclassical assessments. They improve the quality of economic information.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to accounting, in its broadest sense, that is, to everything that makes it possible to account for an activity and its effects. This includes its interactions with other activities, and the ecological, social and economic results of these interactions. This involves, first of all, strengthening the quality of the link between economic information resulting from the local deliberative life of a territory, and financial information subject to less localized fields of constraints (an example concerning the “green value” of buildings will be presented). Accounting innovations must lead, on the one hand, to no longer substitute the various capital assets (ecological, human and financial, in particular) considered by the sustainable development economy for each other, and, on the other hand, to jointly redesign profit formation and the measurement of national wealth.

Chapter 5 involves contractual practice – in both socio-political and market approaches – of what a contract can be. Negotiation prior to contractualization may lead to the inclusion in the contract clauses of performance objectives relating to the sustainability of the development of the territory. Consequently, placing contractualization in new dimensions, temporalities and scales of analysis – which is encouraged by territorial deliberation – can renew the interpretation of monetary information associated with the costs of contract performance and change the willingness to invest (an example concerning the recycling of construction materials will be presented). More generally, the monetary amount associated with the execution of a contract is only informative in the light of the limited and detailed view that is taken, at the time of the transaction, of the territorial effects of this execution.

Chapter 6, by describing the dynamic modeling of cost systems approach, proposes a new way of considering the relationships between micro- and macroeconomic analyses. The representations used during multi-actor contract on territorial issues, and those used to structure accounting representations of value, are in co-evolution. In other words, the coordination of a multitude of activities considered at the microlevel, whose social, ecological and economic effects can be taken into account (the example of the fourth chapter), can motivate mesoeconomic restructuring, whose social, ecological and economic determinants can be contracted (the example of Chapter 5). Making this phenomenon of micro–meso emergence visible implies accepting the relativity of cost perception according to the modes and levels of construction and interpretation of economic information. Socioeconomic innovations (multi-criteria multi-actor analysis) must therefore be brought into dialogue with traditional practices (aggregation of added values, in particular). Moreover, since investing in socioeconomic engineering promotes sustainable and economically advantageous territorial coordination, these investments should be considered as productive investments. Such openness in terms of political economy allows a new approach to the governance of the commons. However, this last chapter insists on the fact that no theoretical politico-economic model can ever guarantee a development compatible with a bioclimatic reality that is sustainable for human societies.