The Bristol pound. Credit: Mark Simmons/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
NANTES, France, Oct 8 2013 (IPS)

One evening in the small village of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire, England, someone started a conversation about climate change and energy at the local pub. It was 2005. Two years later, residents had cut their carbon dioxide emissions and energy costs by 20 percent.

Ashton Hayes now aims to be England’s first carbon-neutral community."What we're doing could apply to thousands of cities and towns. And we have lots of parties and fun doing it." -- Bristol's Mayor George Ferguson

“People know major changes have to be made in the face of climate change and resource depletion,” said Rob Hopkins, one of founders of the Transition Town movement in which local people get together to find ways to make their streets and neighbourhoods more sustainable.

“It started with friends and neighbours saying ‘what can we do as ordinary people knowing that our governments are not going to sort it out,'” Hopkins told IPS.

Plagued by a mounting trash problem, residents of the South African community of Greyton jammed trash into plastic bottles to make ‘ecobricks’. These make good building material with a high insulation value, and are now being used to construct things like toilet blocks in Greyton.

In Portugal, where unemployment is over 20 percent and wages are depressed, the transition movement is focused on reducing the need to use money. One small town banned money for three days. People shared or exchanged services instead.

“We can make things happen,” said Hopkins, who is author of the book “Power of Just Doing Stuff – How local action can change the world”.

There are now over 1,000 communities involved in Transition Towns, a volunteer, non-profit movement. These communities are inventing their own ways to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels while increasing local resilience and self-sufficiency in food, water, energy, culture and wellness.

According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2000+page report released Sep. 30, temperatures between 1983 and 2012 were the warmest they have been in the past 1,400 years in the Northern Hemisphere.

The cautiously-worded report details observed impacts such as increased temperatures, precipitation changes, weather extremes and more. It also confirms that these and other impacts will worsen as CO2 emissions increase.

“Cities have the biggest role to play in getting to zero carbon,” said George Ferguson, the mayor of Bristol, a city of half a million people in the UK.

“Bristol emphasises active transport, walking and cycling and we plan to double our tree canopy. We want to improve air quality and the health of residents,” Ferguson told IPS.

One of the first Transition Towns, the city is a living lab for ideas and experiments in creating an ecocity for everyone, he said. Cars are banned on many streets between 3:00 and 5:00 pm to allow children to reclaim them for play. That’s sparked a street-play movement in many other communities.

Bristol is also the recycling champion of Britain and plans to launch a city-owned sustainable energy company. Beginning next year school children will learn about ecology by determining where and what kinds of trees they will plant in their neighbourhoods as part of an annual city-funded greening effort.

“The children will teach their parents important eco-lessons, I believe,” Ferguson said.

He takes his entire salary in the local alternative currency called the Bristol pound. It can only be spent at local businesses.

“I bought my bike, my pants, my food and got my hair cut using the Bristol pound,” he said.

There are over 400 alternative currencies in use around the world and the number is growing quickly in response to globalisation and corporate domination of many businesses. While residents can pay their local taxes in Bristol pounds, the corporate-owned supermarkets won’t accept it, he said.

This summer Bristol was rewarded for its efforts, becoming the European Green Capital for 2015, the first British city to win.

“What we’re doing could apply to thousands of cities and towns. And we have lots of parties and fun doing it,” said Ferguson.

Saint-Gilles-Du-Mene is a rural French village in Brittany that was losing residents and failing economically. It decided to reinvent itself as a community-owned net energy producer. Today, using a combination of wind, solar, biomass and biodigesters and improved housing insulation, it produces 30 percent of its own energy. By 2025, residents hope to sell energy to other communities.

“Our energy transformation has created new jobs and synergies. We have a new video-conferencing facility and produce our own biodiesel for farm tractors,” said Celine Bilsson of the village’s renewable energy commission.

Bilsson said her village was inspired by the example of the Austrian town of Güssing, a once-poor town that was the first in Europe to operate completely on renewable energy in the late 1990s. It cut its energy use 50 percent through efficiency and now makes millions of euros selling renewable energy to others.

“We didn’t spend time doing studies. We just reacted. You just do it,” Bilsson said.

Coín activist selling fruit and vegetables at the Málaga Común market. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain, Apr 8 2013 (IPS)

Wholemeal rye bread, lettuce and chard are some of the products on offer from the El Caminito urban vegetable garden at the small organic produce market in this southern Spanish city, with prices set in “comunes”, one of more than 30 social currencies circulating in the country.

“The aim is to find an alternative to the curse of unbridled capitalism and to sow the foundations of a more just and compassionate society,” activist David Chapman of the Málaga Común platform, the network responsible for the market, told IPS.

In the network, more than 700 registered users exchange goods and services using “comunes” as currency and recording transactions on the internet.

In Spain, over 30 local currencies coexist with the euro, and they are “tools empowering communities by means of the exchange of products and services and the creation of parallel markets,” economist and writer Julio Gisbert told IPS.

The común, the lazo and the coín in Málaga, the puma in Seville, the zoquito in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), the pita in Almería and the justa in Granada – all in the south of Spain – are some of the social currencies created with the shared mission of dynamising local economies and moving toward a more sustainable economic and production model all over the country.

The Puma Social Currency Network was launched a year ago in the Old City of Seville as a people-to-people mutual credit system. It seeks to “relaunch and localise the economy of this part of the city, and create community,” local resident Natalia Calzadilla, one of its members and a producer of vegetable jams, told IPS.

Puma users keep a hard copy of their transactions in goods and services on cards. They also upload their offers and requests on the Community Exchange System (CES), a platform created in 2002 in Cape Town, South Africa, which can be used in 56 countries for transactions in social currencies or time exchange.

Madrid has the boniato; in the northern city of Bilbao, the local currrency is the bilbodiru; and in the northeastern town of Girona, the euro-RES.

The euro-RES was created in Belgium over 15 years ago, with the same value as the euro. It is used by a network of some 5,000 small and medium businesses, as well as by individuals, as explained on its web page.

Users of these alternative currencies come from all walks of life: “They are masseuses, doctors, electricians, lawyers, professors… and the quality of what is on offer is amazing,” said Chapman.

The Puma Network, which brings together students, the unemployed, professionals and tradespeople, promotes creativity, the development of new skills, moral support and self-esteem for its members, said Calzadilla.

She paid another member 25 pumas (equivalent to 25 euros) for a massage. Now that person is credited with that amount to buy another service or goods in the community. The project organises a monthly market, called Mercapuma, where producers display their wares, and on Mondays a food store sells organic and homemade foods.

Carmela San Segundo offers English, French and Esperanto classes to members of Málaga Común, and told IPS she paid for painting two rooms in her house and repairing her computer in comunes.

Spain’s economic and financial crisis is encouraging experiments in social exchange, which may use alternative currencies, barter or time banking, “because people are seeking different ways of life,” said Gisbert, the author of “Vivir sin empleo” (Living Without a Job) and the blog of the same name.

According to Gisbert, there are more than 300 time banks in Spain, so called because they do not bank money but hours. When a person performs a service, he or she is credited with the appropriate number of hours in return.

Although complementary currencies are criticised for not solving the problem of poverty, Gisbert argues that their goal “is not to feed people in need, but to seek mutual help to achieve self-sufficiency and a new and more sustainable social model.”

The coín, a currency created in the town of Coín in the province of Málaga, is part of the global transition movement and is intended to serve as an instrument of reaction to and change from “the energy, economic and environmental crisis,” according to its web site.

Most of these social currencies, launched by organisations or networks, have no official basis, Gisbert said. However, that does not mean this small-scale phenomenon is illegal.

Alternative currencies are not a new invention, but a global phenomenon that has emerged especially in industrialised countries. There are complementary currencies in the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and other countries. For instance, in the multicultural London borough of Brixton, transactions can be made in Brixton Pounds.

The Brixton Pound, which is issued in different bills annually, is one of the most innovative social currencies, Gisbert said.

Meanwhile, groups associated with alternative currencies are becoming interested in providing microcredit. José Luis Gámez, the son of the founder of the axarco, which circulates in Axarquía in Málaga province, would like to be able to finance social economy projects in the region with this currency that was created in 1988.

But the silver and copper axarco coins are no longer used because of the cost of minting them. Today, they are collectors’ items.

As well as promoting the exchange of goods and services, alternative currencies can be used to put a value on the work of volunteers or those who create learning, according to the philosophy of an international project, tgl (teaching, giving, learning).

As it makes headway in Spain, tgl is using the social currency L, which is created when people teach or learn skills or knowledge, participate in voluntary projects or carry out social enterprises that generate employment and local wealth.

“L is not a currency to facilitate barter or exchange, but to generate wealth because it injects liquidity into the system. It is created by teaching and learning, volunteer work and social enterprise,” Raúl Contreras, co-founder of the social change platform Nittúa and promoter of the Okonomía popular economics school, where students and tutors are paid in this alternative currency, told IPS.