This article argues that in the current context of rising unemployment and growing exclusion from the traditional locus of social cohesion and income distribution, a new approach to social policy and employment is required. The scope of informal employment strategies to tackle social exclusion...

The term “sustainable consumption” is subject to many interpretations, from Agenda 21's hopeful assertion that governments should encourage less materialistic lifestyles based on new definitions of “wealth” and “prosperity”, to the view prevalent in international policy discourse...

Gill Seyfang and Ruth Pearson look at the diverse range of alternative currencies in a discussion of how local community currency can promote local regeneration, build social capital and foster sustainable development. Development (2000) 43, 56–60. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110197

Seyfang G. (2006) Sustainable consumption, the new economics and community currencies: developing new institutions for environmental governance, Regional Studies 40, 781-791. Sustainable consumption is gaining currency as a new environmental policy objective, but there is a limit to the changes...

Community energy has been proposed as a new policy tool to help achieve the transition to a low-carbon energy system, but the evidence base for this strategy is partial and fragmented. We therefore present new empirical evidence from the first independent UK-wide survey of community energy...

Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth, and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems....

This paper presents a new analytical framework of 'grassroots innovations' which views community-led initiatives for sustainable development as strategic green niches with the potential for wider transformation of mainstream society. This framework is applied to a low-carbon, low-impact,...