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Money and the ecological turn: lessons from alternative currencies

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Abstract

Our current monetary system displays major flaws as to whether it can support the ecological turn. This article stylises them as bank credit, a-territoriality and non-specialisation of money, and commensurability. Yet, the variety of experiences of alternative currencies displays remarkable features like territorialisation, socio-economic specialisation of money, a practical criticism of commensurability, and non-bank funding and financing schemes. Considering those features seriously, and making them part of monetary systems, require adapting the existing monetary infrastructure by creating specific circuits through the establishment of boundaries.

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Notes

  1. “EU taxonomy for sustainable activities”, https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-finance/sustainable-finance/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en, retrieved on 23 May 2022.

  2. In Blanc (2018), we warn that a seventh group of ‘alternative currencies’ constituted by cryptocurrencies should be considered cautiously and with an eye on their further development. It, nevertheless, should be stressed that most of the so-called ‘cryptocurrencies’ are not currencies at all under the combined viewpoint of the stated aims of their founders and their actual uses. See also (Scott 2022, p. 258–260).

  3. Time-based exchange actually took different forms, from time rewards to mutual credit. See (Weaver et al. 2021).

  4. Works on the Swiss case of the WIR bank showed its counter-cyclical role for its SME members (Stodder 2009; Stodder and Lietaer 2016). However, as the WIR system is not a mutual credit system anymore (Schroeder 2019), contrary to most brief presentations of it, including from myself (Blanc 2018), but a bank with specific unit of account and means of payment, it cannot be used in this discussion to support the case for alternatives currencies of group 6.

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    Jérôme Blanc

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Blanc, J. Money and the ecological turn: lessons from alternative currencies. Sustain Sci (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01465-x

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