C4.6 Harm Internalization

Ethical Integrity. Does the system satisfy justice requirements across time, groups, and power?

Change in version 2.0: new criterion (codes C-2).

What it asks

Harm to health and to the environment is a cost to whoever causes it, not a source of revenue: the toll of pollution on health does not rise, those who cause harm answer for it to those harmed, and the regulators who should detect it are free of the influence of those they regulate.

Why it matters

No other criterion measures the health burden of pollution, or whether harm is a cost to the one who causes it: healthcare appears only in C2.2's basket of basic needs, and fuel-related pollution only in C3.5's externalization clause. The documented pattern the criterion answers is concealment of known harm to protect product revenue, and capture of the regulators who should detect it, as in the histories of tobacco, leaded fuel, PFAS chemicals and industry-funded nutrition research. Where one owner profits from both a harm and its treatment, the incentive to tolerate the harm is structural. The criterion does not assume that harm is caused deliberately: it tests whether harm is a net cost to whoever causes it, which removes the incentive whatever the ownership.

How it differs from nearby criteria

C4.6 from C3.5 and C4.2: C3.5's fourth clause measures the unpriced environmental cost of fuel use as a share of GDP, a price gap, and C4.2 the pressure of consumption on the biosphere; C4.6 measures harm to human health from polluted air and water and from poisoning, whatever its source, and the liability and regulation that make harm a cost to whoever causes it. A system can price fuel fully and still see pollution deaths rise from household fuel or unsafe water, or leave fuel unpriced while those deaths fall. The third clause measures whether regulators are free of the influence of those they regulate; C2.6 measures rights held against the state and the independence of its courts, and C4.4 the accountability of major decisions to those they affect. Health outcomes in general, coverage and financial protection, are not measured; a Health Security criterion is recorded for v2.1.

How it is measured

Clause 1: the sum of the age-standardized mortality rates per 100,000 population attributed to household and ambient air pollution (SDG 3.9.1), to unsafe water, unsafe sanitation and lack of hygiene (SDG 3.9.2) and to unintentional poisoning (SDG 3.9.3), in the World Health Organization's Global Health Observatory, at the start and at the end of the 20 years to the stated date; the clause is met if the rate at the end is no higher than at the start. Where the SDG series do not span the window, the Global Burden of Disease study's (IHME) age-standardized death rates attributable to air pollution and to unsafe water, sanitation and handwashing, and from unintentional poisonings, are used, cross-checked against the SDG series where both exist; where the two disagree about whether the clause is met, the call is flagged (protocol 6.1). Clause 2 is shown from the law in force and its record, which the scoring document names: those who cause harm to health or to the environment are liable to compensate those harmed and to remedy the damage, under tort, product-liability or environmental-liability law or through a compensation scheme funded by a levy on those who cause the harm, and no immunity leaves a class of harm uncompensated or compensated from public funds alone; those harmed can bring the claim before an independent court, collectively where the harm is dispersed (a class or representative action, or the standing of associations, as Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention provides in environmental matters); and the scoring document names at least one such claim decided against those who caused the harm, and paid, within the scoring window. Clause 3: for a configured national economy, the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, sub-factor 6.2 (government regulations are applied and enforced without improper influence), in the edition for the stated date, read at the two decimals the Index publishes. Its questions ask whether an environmental authority's notice to a plant polluting a river, or a public-health authority's to a food producer tied to an outbreak, ends in compliance or in the authority being bribed or influenced to ignore it, and how often bribes are paid for permits, licences and public-health and welfare services. The bar, 0.77, is the upper quartile of the 143 jurisdictions' scores in the Index's 2025 edition, fixed as a figure so that later editions do not move it: the Index publishes no bands, and it normalizes its scores against a 2015 base year, so a point on its scale has no meaning of its own. For a design, clause 1 is the projected rate in the economy it is proposed for; clause 2 is its stated provisions; clause 3 is its stated provisions for the bodies that regulate food, water, air, chemicals and medicines, their independence of those they regulate in funding, appointment and the movement of staff, and the disclosure of who funded the evidence they rely on. Only what the design states and provides for is credited (protocol 4.1); a mechanism is scored on what it adds to or takes from the economy it operates in (protocol 3.2).

Indicators

clause 1, WHO Global Health Observatory (SDG 3.9.1, 3.9.2 and 3.9.3); IHME Global Burden of Disease, risk-attributable death rates; clause 2, the law in force and the record of claims; clause 3, World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, sub-factor 6.2 (bar 0.77, the upper quartile of its 2025 edition).

How scores are anchored

Normative roots

From N13 (Incentive Alignment) + N6 (Ecological Compliance).

Judgment calls on this criterion

• How free of influence must regulators be?

How the systems score

Sources

Definition: NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V (Package C, decision 46.1). Anchors: NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V (Package C, decision 46.1).

Check this criterion with an AIPush back on this threshold