Wednesday 6 November 2019

Financing Local Government Climate Emergency Responses With Currency Innovation

Across the UK and Europe, Local Governments have been declaring a climate emergency. Citizens are now asking what will this mean in policy and practice?

The context for these climate declarations includes a decade of significant budget cuts to Local Government. That means they have limited financial means with which to implement policies to either mitigate or adapt to dangerous levels of climate change.

To respond to this predicament, IFLAS researchers have prepared a concept for local currency innovation by local governments. The proposal is for an innovation which will both generate immediate finance for councils as well as promoting the development of payment systems that provide alternatives to mainstream financial and payments networks, thereby increasing resilience to future disturbance.
Prof Bendell presenting at a UN conference on currency innovation

Occasional Paper #4 seeks to start a conversation with people who have knowledge of either local government finances or the implementation of local policies on the climate emergency.

"Local Future Tax Credits: Towards a tool for local government to finance itself and help adapt to the climate emergency" is written by Matthew Slater, Jem Bendell & Dorian Cave.

The paper follows on from two previous occasional papers on the climate crisis, written by Professor Jem Bendell (#2 on "Deep Adaptation") and Professor Rupert Read (#3 on the coming end of our civilisation).

To discuss the issues in this new paper, we invite you to consider joining the Government and Policy discussion group of the Deep Adaptation Forum.

You can download the pdf of the paper here.

An article from the lead author, Matthew Slater, that describes how this proposal relates to the broader local currency agenda, is released here to coincide with the Occasional Paper.

This paper relates to IFLAS research on currency innovation, which includes doctoral research into the Lake District Pound (Christophe Place), volunteering currencies in heritage areas and sites (Cecile Smith-Christensen) and solidarity economy currencies such as Faircoin (Dorian Cave).

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