--- title: who depends on you canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-depends-on-you markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-depends-on-you.md subtitle: "the outward direction: the relations downstream of you, the value you send them, and why they are the ones who hold your account" category: ensurance --- # who depends on you *the outward direction: the relations downstream of you, the value you send them, and why they are the ones who hold your account* Who depends on you? Ask it of a person and the answer is family, neighbors, the people who count on them. For a land trust with one preserve, a rancher with a beaver meadow, a watershed council, a community water committee, or a town, the answer is a map: everything downstream, downwind, and along the corridor that would notice if your ground stopped doing its work. Picture a beaver meadow in the Crystal River valley in Colorado, below the forest that catches the snow. The headwater forest, the meadow, the aquifer under the valley floor, the trout in the reach below, and the towns that draw on that water already depend on each other, in both directions, whether or not anyone opens an account. Value already moves along those ties both ways, and almost none of it is priced. On [**ensurance**](/?from=guide), each of them can hold an account so that some of that dependence can carry money both ways. The account is not the meadow, and a list of dependents is not a market until people act on it. [Every account has two lists](/guide/every-account-has-two-lists?from=guide) names both lists, and [what you depend on](/guide/what-you-depend-on?from=guide) works the first. This post is the second, the outward one, taken in order: relation, value, money. :::johnson **the people and purposes below you are relations first. then they are your holders.** — They drink, fish, farm, and live downstream of your ground, and value already reaches them from it, mostly unpaid. That is why they are the ones who can hold your account. [read next: a bid on both ends of every edge →](/guide/a-bid-on-both-ends-of-every-edge?from=guide) ::: ## who depends on you, in one paragraph **Who depends on you** is the second of two lists every account keeps: the places, people, and purposes whose condition yours provides. It is a list of relations before it is anything else: who drinks, breathes, fishes, farms, and lives downstream, downwind, or along the corridor from you. Second, it is a list of value: what actually reaches them from your ground. Only third is it money: the list of who can hold your certificate and your coins. ## first, the relation Start at your ground and walk three ways. | direction | the relation | the value that reaches them | |---|---|---| | downstream | the trout reach below, then any ditch or intake on the way to the Roaring Fork at Carbondale and the Colorado at Glenwood Springs | water that can be slowed, spread, and released more slowly; sediment that can be held back; cool refuges for the fish | | fire-prone slopes | the slopes and homes a fire would run toward | a wet, green patch that can slow a fire where the dry hillside would carry it | | along the corridor | elk, songbirds, the next beaver colony | a crossing, a stopover, a pond to move into | Purposes sit on the list as well as people. The meadow serves [clean water](/clean-water.ensurance?from=guide) and [habitat](/habitat.ensurance?from=guide), and those purposes depend on it as surely as the ditch does. The [Crystal River](/crystal-river.basin?from=guide) and the [Roaring Fork](/roaring-fork.basin?from=guide) have accounts today; a meadow like this one would start as a suggestion. Relations run both ways. The keeper and the kept are one: the land trust's care, the rancher's fencing, the volunteer who counts beaver dams. The list is a set of ties, not customers. ## second, the value Look at the right-hand column again, then add the parts no table holds: the knowledge of the people who keep the meadow, the meaning a family finds on that reach, the plain fact that the meadow is alive. Most of it will never be priced, and that is not a gap to close with a number. Holistic value is intrinsic, instrumental, and [relational](/guide/what-is-relational-value?from=guide) at once, which is why [what do you want to ensure](/guide/what-do-you-want-to-ensure?from=guide) starts from the living thing, not the instrument. Price is a bridge to part of it, never the worth. *Your second list is already written in the landscape.* It is written as relations and value first, and only later as holders. The keystone series has a name for the ground those dependents occupy, the serviceshed, and a method for finding it; [what is a keystone parcel](/guide/what-is-a-keystone-parcel?from=guide) is where that starts. If you run a land trust, you have probably written this list already, in a grant narrative or two: this preserve protects the town's water, the fish's cold water, the elk's corridor. It went to a foundation as a reason to give. Read the other way, it names who could hold a share in funding the preserve. ## third, the money Money comes last. It follows the relation and the value, never stands in for them, and carries only an account's share of that value. Your dependents can hold your account's **certificate**, a share in this one named place. Where the place is titled and its owner works with the protocol, the certificate is a policy; where it is not, as with a whole watershed or a purpose, it is a line. A policy and a line are two names for the same kind of certificate, one for a titled place and one for a place or purpose without title; neither is an insurance contract. They can also hold your **coins**, the currency for the purpose your place serves, which reaches wider than any one place. - The town can hold the certificate for the headwater forest above its intake. - The utility can hold the same certificate, for the treatment it would rather not run. - The orchard can hold the certificate for the hedgerow its bees fly from, and the coin for [pollination](/pollination.ensurance?from=guide). A dependent holds not as a donor but because its own condition runs through your ground, and it already bears the cost when that ground fails. Being held says who depends on the meadow. It says nothing about what the meadow is worth, and the trout is not a position. When several dependents hold the same place, they become each other's co-payors, each carrying a share sized to its own stake; [split the bill for what lowers it](/guide/split-the-bill-for-what-lowers-it?from=guide) works out how. ## harm travels the same edges The list is not only benefit. Smoke, runoff, sediment, heat, and a cut corridor travel the same edges as clean water and pollinators, in the same directions. If what leaves your ground is harm, the receptors on your second list already carry the bill: the intake that filters the mud, the road crew that clears the slide, the town that breathes the smoke. The fix at the source is a line those receptors can fund. Picture a degraded slope above a creek. The users below it, who pay each time it slumps, fund the slope's erosion-control work instead, through the slope's own account or the [erosion-control](/erosion-control.ensurance?from=guide) purpose. Economists have argued over this bargain for decades: Pigou wanted the source taxed, and Coase answered that the parties could bargain it out when rights are clear and talking is cheap. Here the bargain gets an address. That is a victim-pays arrangement, and it is not always fair: where a source is liable, polluter-pays still applies, and receptors with little to spend should not be the ones asked. The account gives the fix a place to be funded; it does not decide who owes. ## what you keep The account is addressed to the living thing; the place's name is on it. A person or a group keeps the meadow and signs for the account. That may be an owner, a Tribe, a community, or a council; the account does not decide which. The account is not title. It gives the meadow no legal standing and does not make it a person. Holding the certificate changes nothing about who holds title or who has authority over the place. It is a share in funding the place, not a claim on the ground, and it carries no promise of a return. [Who pays for nature](/guide/who-pays-for-nature?from=guide) explains why it is built that way. ## what exists today - A person who depends on a place can mint its certificate through [specific ensurance](/specific?from=guide). That primary mint is the door. Buying and selling a certificate between holders runs through a marketplace route that is built in part and not end to end, so this post promises holding, not resale. - A certificate is a share in funding a named place. It does not carry ownership of the place, a vote over it, or a promised return. - An account can hold another account's certificate and coins, and its own page has a portfolio tab that shows what it holds. - [Proceeds](/proceeds?from=guide) send a set share of what one account receives onward. The operator sets the split; anyone, an account included, can distribute it. - Humans mint; accounts suggest. An account can propose a new certificate or coin. A person decides whether it is minted. - A person confirms each action unless they have switched a program on. If the place you keep has no account yet, [suggest it under the water-cycle agent](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=water-cycle.syndicate&name=the%20place%20you%20keep&from=guide); you can rename it on the form. ## frequently asked questions ### who depends on you? For a piece of land, everything downstream, downwind, and along the corridor whose condition runs through yours, plus the purposes it serves, such as clean water and habitat. They are relations first, and value reaches them from you whether or not anyone pays. On ensurance, they are also the ones who can hold your certificate and your coins. ### does the person who keeps the place lose anything when dependents hold its certificate? No title or deed passes. A certificate is a share in funding one named place, not a claim on the ground. The keeper still keeps the place and signs for its account. What changes is that the people who depend on the place can carry part of its upkeep at its own address, and holders can see what the account receives and routes. If a proceeds split is set, part of what the account receives goes onward as the operator set it. ### what if what travels from my land is harm, not benefit? Then the receptors are still on your second list, and they already bear it. Fixing the source is a line they can fund, such as the erosion-control work on a slope above an intake. The account fines no one and does not decide who owes; it gives the fix an address. For help reading which way your edges run, [talk to someone who can help](/contact?from=guide&topic=both-directions). ## next Next, what happens when every node does both: [a bid on both ends of every edge](/guide/a-bid-on-both-ends-of-every-edge?from=guide). If you keep land that others stand on, [land stewards](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=both-directions) covers ecosystem service payments for managed lands and restoration funding without grants. ## sources Pigou, A. C. 1920. *The Economics of Welfare*. — the case for correcting a harm at its source through a tax on the source. Coase, R. H. 1960. "The problem of social cost." *Journal of Law and Economics* 3, 1–44. — the case that the parties can bargain over a harm when rights are clear and transaction costs are low. ## the series 1. [every account has two lists](/guide/every-account-has-two-lists?from=guide) (read first) 2. [what you depend on](/guide/what-you-depend-on?from=guide) 3. [who depends on you](/guide/who-depends-on-you?from=guide) 4. [a bid on both ends of every edge](/guide/a-bid-on-both-ends-of-every-edge?from=guide) 5. [no single funder, no single supplier](/guide/no-single-funder-no-single-supplier?from=guide) 6. [how to write your two lists](/guide/how-to-write-your-two-lists?from=guide)