Money
The transition to a low-carbon economy requires a new approach to money.
Money Group Future Development
The economics groups is meeting in early April to thrash out ideas for a community money scheme, building on the experience of the LETS scheme, which was very successful in Stroud. If you have experiences to share or would like to be involved contact molly@gaianeconomics.org
One popular idea is time-banking, and Stroud already has such a scheme in Fair Shares of Stonehouse. http://www.fairshares.org.uk/ To find out more about time banking in general go to http://www.timebanks.co.uk/
We will be finding ways to encourage localisation of more of our consumption by using a parallel or complementary currency. For an article explaining how this has been done in South Africa see New Complementary Currency Brings out Trading Talent of Locals by Margaret Legum http://www.stwr.net/content/view/1245/37/. And find out about a successful community currency introduced in Germany here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer
And you can find a full exploration of the types of community currencies available and a guide to deciding how to design yours from this address: http://www.global-community.org/cgi/gc/scan/fi=news_topics/se=4/sp=topics.html