Come and Zoom with Jay Tompt at "The Elephant Meets" - on how local networks and economies can lead wider policy changes
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
Next week's Zoom public discussion/forum, with members of the Alternative UK's next-system group The Elephant Meets…, is with Jay Tompt.
Jay is the director of the REconomy Centre in Totnes, and is a major thinker and practitioner in developing the economic and civic power of localities and towns.
Jay was one of our original speakers in the Elephant series in December 2019 - see his assessment of the system we’re in, and the system to come, at the YouTube embed (to the left). We’ve invited him to update his ideas, post-Coronavirus.
We invite you to register (see app below), and then come to hear and be in conversation with Jay, on Zoom at 5pm - 6.30pm (GMT) on 5th May, 2020. Tickets here on Eventbrite, or the app below:
Jay Tompt on how local networks and economies can lead wider policy changes
The coronavirus may have rattled our conventional structures to bits (in places). But as the paper from the Scottish government on a framework for future Covid responses concluded last week, “when things come apart, there is always the opportunity to put them back together differently”.
However we need practical detail as well as sweeping visions for this. Our engagement with areas like South Devon give us confidence that localities have long been forging resilient and sustainable economic models.
These won’t wait on national government in trying to forge themselves. But any half-aware administration would allow these confident, sparky, bottom-up economic actors to express their self-reliance. As much by standing out of their way, as subsidise and support them.
But our world maybe needs to give them a script they can read—if they are to make policy that amplifies the localism and community energy of the moment.
So we were delighted to see that an old friend of A/UK, Jay Tompt from Totnes’s REconomy Centre, has published a “where next?” post on the Enterprisng Ecosystems blog which sets out very clearly how governments should take a lead from community, localised and eco-aware economics.
As Jay puts it:
Our work – myself and numerous colleagues, collaborators and fellow travelers in dozens of countries – has been focused on building local and regional economic transition which is fair and inclusive, ecologically wise and socially regenerative, resilient and diverse.
These goals and the imperative of economic resilience and relocalisation have become crystal clear during this crisis, gaining new advocates across the political spectrum. So, what would an ambitious, inspiring, transformative response look like from this point of view?
Here’s his “recommendations for government action”:
1) ‘Just Transition’ Programmes for specific industries. Fossil fuel industries, airlines and cruise ships, industrial agriculture – all need to be transformed in order for the UK to meet it’s carbon reduction obligations. Bailouts without a requirement for transformation is a dereliction of duty.
But until there is a clear and fair roadmap for downsizing and transforming these industries, with minimal disruption to the families that depend upon them, political opposition will be fierce.
A ‘just transition’ programme would help to resolve this issue by providing displaced workers a basic income for 24-36 months, fund re-training and education, and support ‘transition-oriented’ entrepreneurial projects.
Workers could be empowered to transition entire companies, as well, through “Lucas Plan” processes, for example. And the banking industry might even play a role.
2) Civilian Climate and Countryside Corps to restore local ecosystems and transition farmers. The UK was already looking at prolonged economic stagnation as a consequence of leaving the EU. The pandemic recession will be worse, potentially throwing many hundreds of thousands out of work, not unlike the 1930s.
The model for the Civilian Climate and Countryside Corps is the Civilian Conservation Corps, part of FDR’s New Deal. It put hundreds of thousands of unemployed people to work – dignified, important, paid work – building trails in national parks, planting trees, restoring ecosystems. (Incidentally, many in the US are already working on this.)
The Civilian Climate and Countryside Corps could put hundreds of thousands on the land doing similar things. It could put young people – and older people – to work,
restoring ecosystems,
rewilding moors,
liberating urban rivers,
building bicycle routes.
working with farmers to help them transition to regenerative and agro-ecological methods
starting up community gardens and municipal farms.
In fact, the CCCC could include a Young Farmer Accelerator programme to train and help young people to acquire farms from retiring farmers.
3) Economic Transition and Resilience Programme – the need for building economic resilience literally hit home with this pandemic and it will continue to be a foreground issue in the months and years ahead.
This represents both an imperative and an opportunity to intentionally transition our economy to meet everyone’s needs, dramatically shrink our ecological footprint, and increase resilience to future pandemics, recessions, extreme weather, and other shocks.
Achieving this will require greater decentralisation, diversity, modularity, and redundancy, implying more local and bioregionally appropriate methods, more local and regionally-based ownership and accountability.
This programme must be ambitious, with an audacious goal for 2030 inspiring popular support and participation – like the climate economy version of ‘the Moonshot’, perhaps.
Elements of this programme would include:
– Expanding the regional mutual bank network. The banking industry in the UK is an oligopoly, isn’t resilient, and doesn’t serve SMEs, nor local and regional economies.
There are a small number of startup banks of this kind, such as the South West Mutual, which are part of the Community Savings Bank Association, a kind of community bank franchisor.
With proper government support this could easily be expanded by orders of magnitude within a decade. These banks would be essential financial services providers to a vibrant and growing relocalised and resilient economic system.
– A regional Transition Enterprise Ecosystem Fund to accelerate the development of bioregionally-appropriate local and regional enterprises.
In the UK, Local Enterprise Partnerships have proven to be problematic, with governance being one important issue. LEPs, like many ‘regional economic development’ agencies in other countries, are often stocked with vested interests.
Therefore, this fund could be managed at county and unitary level with abundant participation of elected local councillors and citizens in governance and oversight, perhaps appointed by sortition.
The fund would offer grants, patient and flexible credit, and equity investments for building out ‘infrastructure’ for rapid place-based economic tranformation.
This includes:-
developing 10,000 co-working and incubation spaces across the country
funding for accelerator and entrepreneurial training programmes
seed funding for entrepreneurial projects
growth funding for young companies, networks, ‘fab labs’, research and ‘enabler’ organisations.
– Farming Regeneration Programme to increase adoption of ‘agro-ecological’ methods and quantity of food produced. An island country importing nearly half its food supply is a vulnerable island country. We must produce more of our food domestically in ways that build soil, ecosystem health and food security.
This will mean producing less meat, more vegetables, helping existing farms to make the transition, and attracting new farmers to the field, so to speak. It will mean supporting all aspects of the food system, including startups.
The programme would provide technical assistance, research and funding.
– NHS Resilient Provisioning Network would create a robust and resilient supplier ecosystem for essential goods and services for the NHS. This would be another ambitious ‘moonshot’ transformation, but strategically and ethically a priority.
This would require ‘re-shoring’ production of vital supplies and equipment, for a start. But crucially, it would facilitate a decentralised and resilient network of producer social/green/cooperative enterprises able to produce a range of goods and services, as well as being flexible, adaptable, mutually supportive.
Perhaps the Community Savings Bank Association offers some interesting learning and a potential model to follow.
These practical programmes, or something like them, would help the UK meet the imperative delivered by the IPCC 1.5° report to reduce emission 45% by 2030. They would further position this country for long term economic resilience and a new kind of prosperity, one fit for the challenges of the 21st century. They complement and are synergistic with each other, and they complement other proposals, such as the Green New Deal.
Clearly, more needs to be done. A just overhaul of the tax system would repatriate the tax revenue lost from corporate offshoring domestic profits and domestic billionaires offshoring avoided tax, both of which could easily pay for the above proposals.
Reforming planning systems to put more power in the hands of local elected councils and allow for more innovative building in town and city centres could help create the conditions for solving the affordable housing crisis.
Liberating urban and agricultural land from aristocratic and royal families would reduce wealth inequality and allow better use of agricultural land. And so on—reinventing education, massive ‘net zero’ affordable housing construction, massive investment in public transport, massive investment in renewable energy, etc.
But what we learned in the last election is that the party political system is anachronistic and dysfunctional. These and other sensible proposals for economic transformation are unlikely to become part of the national political discourse without the backing of a strong, credible movement.
More here. So let’s build that movement… become a co-creator with A/UK.