I recently looked over the U.S. Dept of Commerce’s “NAICS” listings while doing some research for a client. NAICS stands for “North American Industry Classification System”. It is a numbered system categorizing every aspect of the U.S. economy. Supposedly…

The list starts with 2-digit numbers for top-tier categories, such as “11 – Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting”, and extends down to 6-digit numbers for fine distinctions, such as “111219 – Other Vegetable (except Potato) and Melon Farming”.

I started searching for the part of the economy I care about most, all things “eco”. Here are some results:

There is no index entry for “ecology”.
There is no index entry for “ecosystem”.
There is no index entry for “climate”.

Okay, how about “environment”?

Here we get a handful of listings, such as “813312 – Environment, Conservation and Wildlife Organizations”, and “541620 – Environmental Consulting Services”. If you do this search yourself, you’ll find all listings with the word “environment” are 6-digit numbers, the lowest tier of the category system.

I first did this little exercise back in 2001. Now, with updated “2007″ codes, nothing has changed. As an industry, we “ecopreneurs” are all but invisible to federal policymakers. The numeric mapping illustrates with elegant simplicity that “environment” is the lowest priority.

My thought is that if “62 – Health Care and Social Assistance” is a top-tier listing, there should be a similar top-tier listing for “Ecosystem Health Care and Assistance”. This would reflect the importance of healthy ecosystems to the health of people. It would be a great place to start defining the Eco-Sector for all those who track the economy.

Of course, our government officials like to keep things friendly, so when my above searches netted no results, there was a courteous tag line included:

If you cannot find your activity when doing this search,
email Dr. NAICS. or call 1-888-75NAICS.

I sent Dr. NAICS an email requesting a new top-tier category for the Eco-Sector…

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Dear Dr. NAICS,

I would like to request that you add a top-tier category for “Ecosystem Health Care and Assistance”.

This would reflect the importance of healthy ecosystems to the health of people and begin to recognize the economically valuable activities of millions of Americans working in the Eco-Sector toward these objectives.

I recently posted a article on this subject at http://ecosector.com/blog/?p=31

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your thoughts.

Kindly,

Mark Winstein
Founder
www.EcoSector.com
208-596-6500

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 8:25 am and is filed under Commentary, Revising NAICS. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.