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Complementary currencies have spread to many places around the world at the beginning of the 21st century. Creating sustainable economic cycles and short transport routes are often the goals of introducing them. Due to their manageability, regional currencies can be embedded in debates of regional economics and sustainability. Above all, they are suitable for democratic experiments that can show in real environments whether currency designs work as examples of collaborative communities and research. One of these monetary experiments is the climate bonus, which is linked to the local currency Chiemgauer. The research path goes into the daily routine of a real laboratory to find out which methods would be effective enough to deliver carbon savings. The climate bonus creates a monetary network where people can try out new behaviors in a protected space. As a result, three years after the initiation of the project, carbon reductions are above expectations.

Community currencies are only sometimes economically advantageous. We focus on seasonal changes in money supply and assume that community currencies stabilize the money supply in a local community. This leads to additional transactions during seasons of insufficient supply of national currency. We hypothesize community currencies are therefore economically advantageous in a surrounding of seasonally insufficient money supply. We test the hypothesis qualitatively with two case studies, the German Chiemgauer and the Kenyan Sarafu Credit. We find community currencies are only economically advantageous in an environment of insufficient liquidity.

The objective of this research is to contribute to the scientific debate on &ldquo, complementary monetary systems&rdquo, (CMSs), what strategies may be the best for allowing the implementation of a CMS in a territory and that optimise the potential that it seems to have to strengthen processes of sustainable local development and urban resilience. For this, the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats-Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology (SWOT-AHP) has been used, which has allowed us to identify four strategies: (1) build a social, economic and political consensus, (2) create a community observatory for &ldquo, complementary social monetary systems&rdquo, (CSMSs), (3) define communication tools for raising awareness and education in ethical finance and (4) promote the alignment of the CSMS with sustainable local development strategies. These strategies have been formulated so that that they can be implemented by any entity, public or private, and for any of the types of CMS that may be part of a CSMS.