Growing green money? Mapping community currencies for sustainable development

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, building social capital and substituting for material consumption, valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets, and challenging the growth-based monetary system. However, this international movement towards community-based ecological economic practices, is under-researched. This paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies. It identifies the diversity, scale, geography and development trajectory of these initiatives, discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development, and identifies future research needs, to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives. © 2012 Elsevier B.V

Mapping diverse visions of energy transitions: co-producing sociotechnical imaginaries

The need to rapidly decarbonise energy systems is widely accepted, yet there is growing criticism of ‘top–down’, technocentric transition visions. Transitions are, such critics claim, unpredictable, contested, and comprise of multiple and competing perspectives. This paper opens up to diverse visions of energy transitions by studying a corpus of 12 visions produced across different ‘institutional settings’ of the state, business, science and technology, and civil society in the UK. We introduce a new analytical framework grounded in relational co-productionist perspectives in science and technology studies (STS) to comparatively analyse the similarities and differences of the visions in relation to four dimensions of sociotechnical transformation: meanings, knowings, doings, and organisings. Whilst research on energy transitions often focuses on dominant imaginaries within political cultures, regimes and centres of power, it is an explicit intention of this paper to also comparatively map the distributed, diverse and counter-hegemonic visions. The paper reveals that what is often presented as a primarily ‘technical’ transition is always normative in bringing forward particular forms of social and political order. Our analysis reveals important distinctions between more ‘centred’ and more decentred or ‘alternative’ imaginaries of the energy transition, differences which reveal the inherently political nature of energy futures. Visions which emerge from civil society settings are shown to be a key locus of diversity in sociotechnical imaginaries and tend to open up to alternative models of progress, social change, and the roles of publics. This emphasises the significant role played by the settings and the make-up of collective practices through which energy visions are co-produced. We suggest that mapping diverse visions to reveal their respective partialities, exclusions and sociopolitical dimensions in this way, can offer a more humble, reflexive, and responsible foundation for practices of future-making and sociotechnical transformations

What Influences the Diffusion of Grassroots Innovations for Sustainability? Investigating Community Currency Niches

Community action for sustainability is a promising site of socio-technical innovation. Here we test the applicability of co-evolutionary niche theories of innovation diffusion (Strategic Niche Management, SNM) to the context of ‘grassroots innovations’. We present new empirical findings from an international study of 12 community currency niches (such as LETS, time banks, local currencies). These are parallel systems of exchange, designed to operate alongside mainstream money, meeting additional sustainability needs. Our findings confirm SNM predictions that niche-level activity correlates with diffusion success, but we highlight additional or confounding factors, and how niche theories might be adapted to better fit civil-society innovations. In so doing, we develop a model of grassroots innovation niche diffusion which builds on existing work and tailors it to this specific context. The paper concludes with a series of theoretically-informed recommendations for practitioners and policymakers to support the development and potential of grassroots innovations

Let's 'do different': Planetary Citizen Education Proposal

BCAN, the Biodiversity and Climate Action Network, brings together students and staff at UEA committed to making UEA ‘walk the talk’ on the climate & biodiversity emergencies. The BCAN “Climate Education” working group has developed a series of pragmatic proposals for improving climate education at UEA. These proposals are based on research on other universities’ climate education work, on staff and student workshops (funded by the Chase Climate Justice Network) and on conversations with relevant bodies at UEA. Implementing these proposals will require a moderate level of resource commitment from central management. Not committing these resources puts UEA at significant risk of further falling behind others in the sector. The proposals in this report can be implemented swiftly and mostly be slotted into existing structures. They should be a starting point for more fundamental reforms in the near future. This report proposes that UEA widens, broadens, and deepens its climate education offer, by taking the steps outlined in detail in the graphic on the next page. The proposals in this report are based on a philosophy of interdisciplinary critical optimism that takes issues of climate avoidance and climate anxiety seriously, while equipping students with critical thinking skills and preparing them for taking action in the real world

Distributing Power: A transition to a civic energy future

There is growing interest, from a range of stakeholders, in the potential of distributed low-carbon electricity generation in delivering a low-carbon energy system. Yet there are still significant gaps in understanding, particularly regarding the feasibility of scaling up distributed generation from technological, governance, regulation, policy, and financial perspectives. The aim of this report is to address these gaps within the context of the Thousand Flowers pathway

Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field

The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’; but recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation – the international field of community currencies – which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external ‘landscape’ pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions

Transitions towards new economies? A transformative social innovation perspective

There are numerous social innovation networks and initiatives worldwide with the ambition to contribute to transformative change towards more sustainable, resilient and just societies. Many of these have a specific vision on the economy and relate to alternative visions of a ‘New Economy’. This paper highlights four prominent strands of new economy thinking in state-of-the-art discussions: degrowth, collaborative economy, solidarity economy, and social entrepreneurship. Taking a perspective of transformative social innovation, the paper draws on case studies of 12 social innovation initiatives to analyse how these relate to new economies and to transitions toward new economic arrangements. The 12 cases are analysed in terms of a) how they relate to narratives of change on new economies, b) how they renew social relations, and c) how their new economy arrangements hold potential to challenge established institutional constellations in the existing economy

Distributing power, a transition to a civic energy future: Report of the Realising Transition Pathways Research Consortium ‘Engine Room’

The overarching challenge for UK energy policy is to ensure the delivery of secure, affordable energy in a way that meets the emission reductions targets laid out in the Climate Change Act (2008). The EPSRCfunded Transition Pathways (TP) and, more recently, Realising Transition Pathways (RTP) projects have both argued that multiple logics of governance, ownership, and control of the electricity system can be followed to address the energy trilemma. This work has developed three transition pathways for the UK energy system, each driven by different governance patterns. Each pathway has a specific technological mix, institutional architecture, and societal drivers. These pathways are: Central Co-ordination: Central to this pathway is the role of the nation state in actively delivering the transition. Market Rules: After the creation of a broad policy framework, the state allows competition and private companies to deliver sustainable, affordable energy. Thousand Flowers: This pathway is characterised by a greatly expanded role for civil society in delivering distributed low-carbon generation. The following report focuses on the Thousand Flowers pathway. There is growing interest, from a range of stakeholders, in the potential of distributed low-carbon electricity generation in delivering a low-carbon energy system. Yet there are still significant gaps in understanding, particularly regarding the feasibility of scaling up distributed generation from technological, governance, regulation, policy, and financial perspectives. The aim of this report is to address these gaps within the context of the Thousand Flowers pathway. This research was carried out by the ‘Engine Room’ of the EPSRC-funded Realising Transition Pathways (RTP) consortium. The ‘Engine Room’ was established to facilitate interdisciplinary work across the consortium and consists of research fellows and doctoral researchers from different fields in the nine partner institutions. Engine Room workshops and meetings give researchers the space to present their work and develop and exchange ideas with their peers. This report is an output of a series of interdisciplinary Engine Room workshops held throughout 2013/14 which also drew on contributions from energy industry stakeholders. These workshops brought together the current research and cumulative findings of the Realising Transition Pathways consortium, to examine the consequences of a transition from a centralised energy system to one where distributed generation plays a much greater role (50% of final electricity demand), and is delivered by a civic energy sector. In this report we do not present any panaceas, attempt to preference a civil response to energy transition, or claim technological infallibility. We do, however, explore the potential of a distributed energy future and investigate the technological trajectory it could follow, along with an institutional architecture compatible with its development. We acknowledge throughout that this is a challenging but realistic system transition