--- title: a place and a purpose can hold an account canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-place-and-a-purpose-can-hold-an-account markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-place-and-a-purpose-can-hold-an-account.md subtitle: people are not the only ones with an account category: philosophy --- # a place and a purpose can hold an account *people are not the only ones with an account* A funding stack that only contains organizations will miss the payment. The meadow upstream of the orchard is not a stakeholder you can invite to a workshop. It is the thing the fruit depends on. It can have an account in its own name, and the orchard can pay that account because the dependence is real. The forest, the wetland, the herd, and the town that drinks from them already depend on each other, whether or not any person opts in. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) funds that living condition. It is not the forest, and it is not a theory that only people act. People, places, and purposes can each hold an account. A person or an organization holds the token and signs for it. The account addresses the place. It does not speak for the place. A land trust is a people. The meadow it stewards is a place. The pollination that meadow does for the orchard, or the cold water a reach of river does for a fish, is a purpose. Three accounts, three reasons. They can sit under your group's name if you are the one doing the work. An account always lives in some namespace, and someone holds the token. :::johnson **the account addresses the meadow. a person still signs.** [see the accounts on the map →](/explore?from=guide) ::: ## three kinds of party | party | what it is | an account lets it | |---|---|---| | People | A trust, a firm, a town, a crew, a fund. A sovereign government decides for itself whether it wants an account | Receive and send in that name, for the mandates it actually has | | Place | A parcel, a reach of river, a wetland, a forest stand, a town's source water | Be the address of the living thing itself, so a neighbor can pay the thing they depend on | | Purpose | A species, a service, a risk, a practice | Gather the places that perform that job, and be paid for the job rather than for a single fence line | One organization often needs all three. The trust's account is how donors recognize you. The parcel's account is an address for a place. If you do not hold title, that instrument is a line, not a policy, and it does not move the landowner's title. Paying a neighbor for work on land you do not control still needs that landowner's consent for the work. The purpose's account is how a fish, a fire regime, or a forage year has an address when no single owner covers the range. A purpose account does not divide money by itself. Someone sets a split. Minting only the trust's account leaves the dependence invisible. Minting only a global purpose, with no place under it, leaves the check with nowhere specific to land. The Colorado River already has an account of the place kind. It was minted here. Whoever holds its token is the one who can sign. The account does not speak for any nation, state, or town on the river. It is one example, not a template you must copy. Your reach, your ditch, your stand can have its own, with a holder who is supposed to hold it. ## parcels already trade Every parcel in a worked landscape is already in exchange with the parcels around it. The forest lets water through more slowly for the town below. The wetland holds a flood that would otherwise sit in a street. The meadow feeds the insects the orchard needs. The ridge keeps a genetic line moving for the patch on the far side. None of that waits for a membership vote. It is the ordinary business of a landscape. Parcels paying parcels is that trade made payable. The town pays the forest account because the town's intake depends on it. The orchard pays the meadow account because the fruit depends on it. A purpose account for cold water can be the address people pay, and a split that a person sets can send that money on to the reaches that hold the cold water. A people account — the utility, the trust, the company — pays whichever of those it depends on. The reason they pay is the one they already understand: a treatment avoided, a lease kept, a season stayed open. The payment itself is still money to an address. The payment is not a donation that admits the payer has become a conservation organization. It is a payment for a condition the payer already loses money when it fails. The payer can be a company that will never join a group. The recipient can be a place that has no staff. That is the point of giving the place the account. A network of projects is the longer version of the same picture: one project is fragile, and projects that pay the places they depend on hold each other up. That series has the ecology and the portfolio. This page has the party who holds the account. Read both if you are about to fund a single site and call it a strategy. Projects that fund each other is the earlier walk through the pipes. This page does not rebuild it. ## the organization and the river are not the same recipient If a town never joins, the town is not a recipient. Nothing in the routing has the town's name on it. The river can still have an account, and a utility, a brewery, a ranch, or a trust can still pay that account. The living system getting funded does not require every dependent organization to enroll. The organization getting paid does require an address. The town still drinks the water if the condition holds. That benefit is the water. The check goes to the addresses on the instrument. The town that wants the check holds an account or operates one. The town that only wants the water can keep drinking the water. An account is not legal personhood. It does not give a forest a vote at your county hearing, a right to sue, or a seat the law has not given it. It is a way to address value to the place so the value can arrive. Rights of nature are a different conversation, with courts and constitutions in it, and they have their own page. If you came here for that fight, this series will disappoint you on purpose. We are talking about who can be paid. ## your list, again The group page said the mandates are yours. This is what that looks like when the mandates are not all human. A monitoring firm might care about three places and one method. A tribe might care about a fishery and a village, and the accounts should follow that care rather than a menu written somewhere else. Do not put a sacred site on a public map because it would make a tidy example. A company might care about one intake and nothing else. One account is a complete use. Forty accounts that repeat a slogan are not. We do not speak for those parties. The people who already stand in them do. If you are that person, the account is a tool you can point. If you are not, do not mint an account "for" a community you do not belong to and call it representation. The wallet page is the longer caution on what an account is. Read it before you put a watershed's name on something you control and they do not. ## frequently asked questions ### can a forest have an account? Yes. A place can hold an account in its own name, the same way a trust or a purpose can. The account can receive value aimed at that place. It is not a legal person, and it is not a vote. ### what is parcels paying parcels? The payments between places that already depend on each other. A downstream user pays the upstream account because the dependence is already real. The landscape was doing the exchange. The account gives the exchange an address. ### if our town never joins, can the river still be funded? Yes. Anyone who depends on the river and chooses to pay can pay the river's account. The town that never joins is not a recipient of that money. The town still drinks the water if the condition holds. ### is this rights of nature? No. Rights of nature are a legal and political claim about personhood and standing. An account is a way to address value. The two can exist in the same decade and still be different projects. The rights conversation is on its own page. ## next step Look at a place that already has an account, such as the [Colorado River](/colorado-river.basin?from=guide), or open the [map](/explore?from=guide) and see who is already named. If you are a watershed partnership, [regional collaboratives](/solutions/regional-collaboratives?from=guide&topic=open-protocol) is the seat. If you run a system that depends on source water, [utilities](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=open-protocol) is the seat. A question about which party should hold the account can come through [contact](/contact?from=guide&topic=open-protocol). ## the series Read first: [use ensurance beside the work you already do](/guide/use-ensurance-beside-the-work-you-already-do?from=guide). 1. [use ensurance beside the work you already do](/guide/use-ensurance-beside-the-work-you-already-do?from=guide) — keep your project. the living system can still have an account 2. [run a group for what you already care about](/guide/run-a-group-for-what-you-already-care-about?from=guide) — one namespace, as many accounts as you have mandates 3. [three ways to stand next to the protocol](/guide/three-ways-to-stand-next-to-the-protocol?from=guide) — use it, be in it without running it, or stay out 4. a place and a purpose can hold an account — this post 5. [the protocol door stays open](/guide/the-protocol-door-stays-open?from=guide) — the app can say no. a contract on base stays on base ## sources [What a networked project actually is](/guide/what-a-networked-project-actually-is?from=guide) — one project is a bet. A network of projects is a portfolio and a region. This page does not retell it. [Projects that fund each other](/guide/projects-that-fund-each-other?from=guide) — the earlier walk through the pipes. [When nature gets a wallet](/guide/when-nature-gets-a-wallet?from=guide) — what an account is, and what it does not settle. [Nature agency: the land with voice](/guide/the-voice-and-the-land?from=guide) — rights of nature. A different claim. [Colorado River](/colorado-river.basin?from=guide) — a place that already holds an account.