EXTERNAL DEBT – ECOLOGICAL DEBT
WHO OWES WHOM?
The Social Justice Committee supports the efforts of the International Campaign for the Recognition and Payment of the Ecological Debt – ACCION ECOLOGICA ( – based in Quito, Ecuador, and its statement to the communities and countries of the South who are CREDITORS of the ECOLOGICAL DEBT, as follows:
We declare that sustainable ecological communities are not possible while the weight of the External Debt continues to exist, and while the Ecological Debt continues to increase; both of which are the principal causes of unsustainability in the countries of the Third World and planetary destruction.
We are therefore asking communities and countries of the South to adopt the following Resolution.
RESOLUTION
Considering:
- That in 1492, Third World countries were subjected to a process of stripping of resources and a loss of human
life. Due to this process we are now carrying a great historical weight of environmental degradation on our
shoulders. In America mercury contamination in silver amalgam; the exportation of gold almost without cost from
the mines of Minas Gerais, in Brazil; exportation of guano from Peru; exportation of the skins of the chinchona
oficialis of the Andes; due to the pollution from the sulphur dioxide of the copper smelters of Chile and other
countries In the last few decades, this process has accelerated with the substitution of primary forests by tree
farms, and other monocultures bound for export; the destruction of coastal ecosystems due to shrimp farming and
over-fishing; and the piracy of biodiversity and human genes, which threaten the sustainability of our people.
This degradation has been increased because of the pressure for exports.
- That the technologies and the way of life of the industrialised societies have had irreversible impacts on
the biosphere and have provoked the impoverishment or disappearance of a great number of people, cultures and
ethnic groups, thus seriously threatening the continuation of life on the planet. These industrialised societies
owe the Ecological Debt with the biosphere and the peoples of the South.
There is a debt to the biosphere, and therefore a debt to the peoples that have used the biosphere sustainable. This debt must be paid by those who abuse the biosphere, by those who go beyond ecological limits with their disproportionate pollution and by those who unsustainable extract resources.
- That the External Debt has been used as political pressure for the over–exploitation of natural
resources, which affects the way of life and basic survival of many peoples.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund impose brutal structural adjustment programs on the Southern countries causing serious social and environmental costs. In order to comply with the adjustment programs and to pay the external debt, the degradation of the natural world increases. Opposition to structural adjustment is to defend impoverished communities and natural world.
- That the ecological debt of the industrialised countries with the Third World continues to accelerate due
to:
(a) the intellectual appropriation of ancestral knowledge, above all, those related to the improvement of seeds, the use of medicinal plants and other knowledge which biotechnology and the modern agro–industry is based, and for which we have to pay royalties
(b) the extraction of our natural resources, such as oil, minerals, and marine and genetic resources, which are subject to unequal ecological exchange and which as part of their extraction processes destroy the very basis for the survival of communities
(c) the use and degradation of the best soils, the air and the water, and human energy, in order to establish cash crops for export, risking food and cultural sovereignty of local communities.
(d) The inequitable manner in which climate change is being confronted, transferring responsibility to the countries of the Third World through joint implementation programs. The disproportionate carbon dioxide emissions of the rich of the world are the principal cause the greenhouse effect.
- RECOGNISE the existence of the Ecological Debt which the industrialised societies maintain with the
biosphere, and with the people of the Third World.
- RECOGNISE that the external debt of the Third World countries has already been paid, as it is minimal in
comparison with the Ecological Debt of the industrialised countries, which is measured in terms of its
devastating social, cultural and environmental impacts.
- EXERT PRESSURE for the restoration of the areas affected in the countries of the South by the extraction of
natural resources and export monocultures, so that local and national communities recover their capacity to be
self sustaining.
- EXERT PRESSURE on all countries especially those of the Third World to stop all projects which promote the
intellectual appropriation of ancestral knowledge specially those related to the improvement of seeds;
destruction of natural resources; and projects which as part of their processes destroy the very basis of the
survival of communities and peoples and degrade the best soils, the air, water and human energy; and projects
that increase disproportionate carbon dioxide emissions.
- EXERT PRESSURE on all countries, especially the industrialised nations to make substantial changes in
technologies, life styles, and policies which risk the continuation of life on the planet.
- DEMAND the cancellation of structural adjustment programs, as a derivation of the external debt, as they
presently constitute one of the major causes of pressure on natural resources.
- DEMAND that the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Multilateral Development Banks, international,
regional and national decision making forums, terminate programs and lines of credit which put ecological
equilibrium and human survival at risk.
- DEMAND that the World Trade Organisation stop increasing the ecological debt through its free trade policies.