Civilisation Balance Sheet II: Liability Transfer, Hidden Depletion and Reparative Balance

Abstract

Civilisation Balance Sheet II develops the Civilisation Balance Sheet (CBS) framework introduced by Turnbull (2026) by examining how apparent societal or institutional gains can conceal the transfer of costs, risks and responsibilities to other people, households, communities or systems. The paper introduces three linked concepts: Liability Transfer, Hidden Depletion and Reparative Balance, organised through five proposed principles: Comprehensive Recognition, Liability Transfer, Attribution, Non-Compensation and Reparative Balance. Drawing on feminist and care economics, public-sector appraisal, capability theory, responsible-business frameworks, human-rights reparations and environmental-economic accounting, the paper identifies an apparent integrative gap: existing approaches recognise important dimensions of externalised cost, distribution, depletion and remedy, but do not ordinarily preserve the full causal chain from liability generation and transfer through to absorption, consequential depletion and residual repair within a common accounting architecture. The paper proposes a preliminary Liability Transfer Ledger and research agenda for operationalising and empirically testing the approach. It is presented as a conceptual extension of CBS requiring further methodological development, systematic review and empirical validation, rather than as a completed economic accounting standard. CBS I: Turnbull, F. (2026). The Civilisation Balance Sheet: Rethinking Societal Progress Through Assets, Liabilities and Externalised Costs. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21925317