Creative Monetary Valorization

Abstract

Nowadays, an important effort is being made throughout the world to assess the economical value of social and environmental actions, through monetary valorization realized in traditional national currencies. However, we find in our classical monetary system an explosive engine of growth driven by money creation, inflation, debt and interest rates that directly imply unsustainable systemic crisis. Furthermore, it is henceforth more and more difficult to argue that economic growth can be decoupled from nature degradation and social inequalities as our economic system is based on resources exploitation and mass consumption where societal integration depends on profession and purchasing power in a constant quest for productivity gains. As a consequence, the sustainable development oriented initiatives, as sustainable investment, solidarity philanthropy, and microfinance which stay in this same system, still leave a lot of issues not addressed. This work is based on the idea of alternatives monetary and economic systems no longer based on the current values, but on a socio-environmental valorization. After an analysis of ethical, economical and sustainable values, we better understand what the values of our societies were and which ones should be exchanged in an alternative currencies system. The fourteen case studies of alternative exchange systems based on socio-environmental values showed the absence of genuine socio-environmental profit and value exchange system. Notwithstanding, alternative currencies have a real potential to create exchangeable socio-environmental values, even if they are not yet based on socio-environmental valorization. They could help to implement a new concept of profit so that sustainable development issues won’t always be managed as wealth redistribution need (loss), but as wealth creation resource (gain). Those creative value currencies will also allow a better economic orientation, incentive through closed market or barter of specific goods and services thanks to the creation of income, quota of exchangeable socio-environmental values. Those creative monetary valorization mechanisms will be based on participatory democracy bank which will only take care of the control and regulation of currency circulation and not its accumulation. Finally, assessing the possibility to apply this kind of system, we suggest that to finance those local communities’ projects, an intermediary service based on private individual philanthropy is necessary.