Sustainable territorial development and monetary subsidiarity

Abstract

Starting from the potential of local, social and complementary currencies with respect to the challenges of sustainable local development, we emphasise their contributions and limitations on the basis of empirical studies of the SOL Alpin and the Accorderie. Then we show that, in their deployment, these currencies use the principle of monetary subsidiarity. Each currency circulating in complementary mode on an infra-national scale is believed to circulate at a relevant level defined socio-economically and geographically and to be characterised by a mode of stakeholder and democratic governance developed on the scale at which the currency is deployed. Lastly we propose a territorialised subsidiary monetary arrangement by focusing on two scales of action: the highly localised level and the regional level and we emphasise the articulations and conversion processes among the different currencies.