Phedeas’s PhD research focuses on how the economic crisis influences grassroots civil action for sustainability. It aims to investigate the impacts and effects of the downturn on complementary currency networks and the associated practices of the actors involved. PhD (2012-2015) supervised by Gill Seyfang and Tom Hargreaves at the University of East Anglia Overview: Discussions about … Continue reading »
Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth, and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems. These parallel systems of exchange (or community currencies) are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development, … Continue reading »
A new working paper presents a niche analysis of community currencies for sustainability. Over the last decade, the nascent field of Sustainability Transitions has sought to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’. Building on this pioneering work, recent … Continue reading »
The International Journal of Community Currency Research relaunches and publishes a special issue reflecting on 30 years of experience in designing and using parallel currencies to tackle economic, social and environmental issues. Continue reading »
The challenges of sustainable development (and climate change and peak oil, in particular) demand system-wide transformations in sociotechnical systems of provision. An academic literature around coevolutionary innovation for sustainability has recently emerged as an attempt to understand the dynamics and directions of such sociotechnical transformations, which are termed ‘sustainability transitions’. This literature has previously focused … Continue reading »
“Community food projects are not about food, and community energy projects are not about energy” was one of the conclusions from an international workshop of experts on ‘grassroots innovations’. These are initiatives which aim to promote sustainable development from the bottom up, and commonly have broad objectives including community-building and social inclusion, as well as … Continue reading »
A new working paper presents results of the first global scoping study of community currencies for sustainability. As a response to the unsustainability of current global financial systems, parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth. … Continue reading »
Abstract. The author critically evaluates the impact and potential of a community currencyöor local money systemöknown as the `local exchange trading scheme’ (LETS), to contribute to sustainable local development (SLD). Two distinct and contrasting models for sustainable development are described: a mainstream approach, focused on local regeneration [termed here the `local economic development' (LED) approach]; … Continue reading »
Sustainable consumption is gaining currency as a new environmental policy objective, but there is a limit to the changes in consumption behaviour that individuals can make within current socio-economic frameworks. The ‘new economics’ literature argues that sustainable consumption is characterized by five factors: localization, reducing ecological footprints, community-building, collective action, and building new social institutions. … Continue reading »
Seyfang, G. (2010) ‘Low-Carbon Communities and the Currencies of Change’ in Peters, M., Fudge, S. and Jackson, T. (eds) Low Carbon Communities: Imaginative approaches to combating climate change locally (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham) pp.108-122
