Capital Sequestration: Degrowth through Investing in Community-Led Transformations of Provisioning Systems

Investing in different futures is an existential challenge that much research within and adjacent to Ecological Economics engages with , yet organizations that recognize this social ecological imperative have few options for funding and implementing radical transformations to the needs and well - being provisioning systems that currently exist . Ecological macroeconomic ideas and EE principles of long term well being and justice on a livable planet will be explored in the context of the housing crisis in Canada, and a rural Ontario community organization attempting to find transformative solutions to the lived , local experience of this crisis . Provisioning systems for housing , when tied to real estate markets , debt money creation , land enclosures , and financialized supply chains , contribute to capital accumulation cycles ; it is hardly possible to meet our housing needs , in aggregate , without also perpetuating the form of this provisioning system. The idea presented here , that of Capital Sequestration , proposes to remove capital from markets and ` invests ' this capital in land trusts as an intentional transformation of financial capital into social and ecological values . Through land and housing trusts as well as non - market funding pathways , Capital Sequestration is a method of investing in the transformation of provisioning systems through the sustained and collective boundary management of financial markets and incommensurable values . This practice offers significant promise as it applies ecological macroeconomic theory work , is grounded in the normative goals of and emerges from empirical research of EE , and meets a pressing need within society for imagining alternative economies .