no more absurd credit creation mechanisms

Limit the capacity of banks to generate unsustainable credit (for example by ensuring a global framework that reinstates appropriate reserve-requirement ratios and/or leverage ratios).

Require transparency of financial instruments and ensure appropriate scale of financial institutions (for example splitting up too-big-to-fail banks and tougher auditing).

Make sustainability and ethical criteria central to pension funds and to independent credit and risk rating (for example by compulsory carbon reporting).

stimulate investments to save the planet

Set up new, and extend existing credit institutions that drive green and local investments (for example through lower interest rates).

Advance green and fair procurement by increased use of the state's purchasing power to stimulate information, training and jobs for green infrastructure, sustainable energy and biodiversity.

Counter the restrictions on credit by providing safe and sustainable investment opportunities with state guarantees for projects that have high sustainability and ethical ratings.

Provide incentives and investment for ecosystem services and biodiversity (for example for farmers and for rural and marine regeneration).

Encourage businesses to help one another through regional complementary currencies providing liquidity in times when credit is scarce.

tax bads not goods

Shift the tax-base from labour to resources.

Introduce fairer taxes to reduce social inequality.

Outlaw off-shore tax havens and tax corporate profits in the countries where they are earned.

The basic aim of the economy is to meet human needs equitably and to improve quality of life. To achieve this, we need to measure economic success by metrics of well-being.

The economy must be designed on the basis of ecological systems, with environmental values playing a central role in reaching economic decisions, and we must move as rapidly as possible towards a resource-light economy.

Society should aim to develop more direct relationships between buyer and seller and to meet local needs with local production. At the same time, local initiatives need to be geared to global realities.

Diverse social, cultural and economic systems are more resilient against sudden collapse. Diversity must be actively promoted, protected and treasured.

Society should support a diversity of business models that encourage individual and mutual ownership, and social entrepreneurship at a small scale, but encourage stewardship and shared ownership on the larger scale.

The optimum health of any complex system is at a balance point between efficiency and dynamic resilience.

Every single human being has basic rights that must be met by social and economic systems. The current economic system manufactures poverty and inequality. Also we must ensure intergenerational equity so that the young are not compromised by the requirements of the old, and vice versa, and the rights of future generations are protected.

Beauty and elegance lift the spirit and enhance human wellbeing.

Husbandry should be largely traditional - but this does not imply a simple reversion to the past. We need to build on the traditional crafts with excellent science and to ease the physical burdens with truly appropriate technologies. Science and high-tech at present are designed to replace traditional crafts. In short we need a 'new agrarianism'.

Investing in a truly sustainable organic food system where, as far as possible, food is produced, prepared and consumed locally. Wealth created from the food chain should remain within communities.

Many initiatives are already in train that are helping to bring about the necessary transformation and these must be supported. They include the slow and organic food movements which foster food culture, and schemes to increase access to land, such as community-supported agriculture, land trusts and food co-operatives.

Expand accounting to include social and environmental capitals.

Encourage complementary currencies that promote social and environmental value as well as supporting geographical areas or economic sectors at different scales.

Re-localise the finance system with strong support for community-based institutions and investments.

Support and develop the new models of money creation (for example TERRA Global Reference Currency) and interest-free lending into large scale experimentation, action research and evaluation. This will replace compound interest with a more intelligent circulation mechanism.

Ensure finance systems are subordinated to the interests of the community and of the ecosystem. Chiemgauer currency in Germany, JAK Bank in Sweden, Wirtshaftsring in Switzerland, and time banks are examples that are already making money work for people rather than the people working to pay the costs of money.

Adopt the principle of subsidiarity so that decisions and responsibility are taken at the lowest possible level. Communities are already recognising this need, for example in the Transition Initiatives starting around the world, connected via a network able to spread benefits through knowledge sharing.

Introduce a sliding scale of regulation so that the larger an organisation the more heavily it is regulated.

Strengthen the rights of stakeholders.

Decouple governments from corporations.

Ensure that transnational corporations are accountable and subject to democratic oversight.

Introduce maximum & minimum wages with a maximum ratio of difference between most and least paid.

Take responsibility for environmental refugees.

Develop appropriate and effective international institutions for a just economic and ecological order.

Start a global carbon cap and trade system, based on IPCC science, that internalises the environmental cost of carbon dioxide at source, ensuring that fossil fuels are fully costed.

Rapidly deploy energy efficiency programmes (for example retrofitting existing housing and other buildings), providing mass employment opportunities.

Upgrade the electricity grid to allow contributions from remote large-scale renewables (for example offshore wind and concentrated solar power).

Encourage implementation of small scale local renewable, and high efficiency technologies.

Adopt smart policy measures to support the above actions (for example government guaranteed feed-in tariffs, and roll-out of renewable obligations).

Remove institutional barriers to sustainable energy (for example by rethinking unfriendly grid tariffs and policies, and re-designing smart local mini-grid systems, already successfully implemented in Woking, UK and many places in Germany).