Local Currencies
Why?
Environmental Sustainability
General benefits
Local food consumption promoted by the use of local currencies would:
- help to go towards climate change mitigation
- enhance traditional practice : artisanal instead of industrial fishing, transhumance, local and small-scale farmland instead of intensive agriculture
- potentially increase organic farming, improving soil quality and fertility of arable land as well as soil, plant and pollinator diversity
- potentially decrease global impact such as rainforest deforestation
Those points would help in preventing overexploitation of resources and ecosystem degradation (including ecosystem services).
Climate change mitigation
Globalisation generates tremendous amount of greenhouse gas emission. The manufacturing and construction sector alone is responsible for almost a quarter of all annual anthropogenic emissions, while agriculture forestry and other land use comes in second totalling 18.5% (Fig.1., 23% according to the IPCC report, 2019), followed by transportation with 16.5%. Currently, 25-30% of food produced is lost or wasted.
Fig.1. Global greenhouse gas emissions by sector in 2016 ("Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Sector". EarthCharts. Retrieved 15 March 2020). Percentages are calculated from estimated global emissions of all Kyoto Greenhouse Gases, converted to CO2 equivalent quantities (GtCO2e).
Fig.2. Potential future pathways of global greenhouse gas emissions (measure in gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents) in the case of no climate policies, currently implemented policies, national pledges within the Paris agreement, and 2°C 1,5°C consistent pathways. High, median and low pathways represent range for a given scenario. Based on data from Climate Action Tracker (CAT). Licenced under CC-BY-SA by the authors Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser.
Local currencies could help to go towards pathways that keep the global average temperature under 2°C (Fig.2., Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 1) by:
- reducing long distance shipping and transportation
- increasing the soil carbon storage capacity by reducing land degradation (organic farming and sustainable practices)
- financing public services for climate change mitigation or adaptation (more trees in cities, public transportation,...)
Both pathways include high income and reduced inequalities, effective land-use regulation, less resource-intensive consumption, including food produced in low greenhouse gas emission systems and lower food waste, environmentally-friendly technologies and lifestyles, and moderate international trade with connected regional markets (IPCC report, 2019).
Safeguarding the rainforest and emblematic species
When the environmental cost is exported abroad, we do not realize the impact of our daily consumption. Tremendous amount of lands are attributed for soya production in Brazil where a total of 114.6 M t of soy were exported in 2017 mostly to China but also to Europe. This production essentially aims to meet the increasing demand in meat production and leads to extensive destruction of the rainforest. Similarly, palm oil production in Asia is threatening Orangutans and other emblematic species such as the Sumatran rhinos. In both cases, soya and vegetable oil can be produced in most of the developed countries that are the primary consumers. Relocalizing the food-chain would allow us to have more control and consciousness of our environmental impact, adapting our way of production and consumption accordingly.
Since 1960, the supply of vegetable oils and meat per capita has more than doubled and the supply of food calories has increased by about one third. Changes in consumption patterns have contributed to about 2 billion adults being now overweight or obese, while around 821 million people are still undernourished (IPCC report, 2019).