statement

What is "Ecological Debt"?

Ecological Debt is the liability that industrialized countries have for the damage they have caused to the livelihood of humans and to life in the planet. Such destruction is the direct effect of their production and consumption which constitute an unsustainable model of development, strengthened by globalization, and a threat to the sovereignty of nations.

Ecological Debt is the obligation and responsibility that industrialized countries of the North have with the Third World, for the exploitation of their natural goods such as oil, minerals, forests, biodiversity, indigenous and peasant knowledge, marine goods, and for the disproportionate and illegitimate use of the atmosphere and of the oceans to dump waste, including the greenhouse gases.

Raw materials, fossil fuels and other goods are exported from the South to the North without taking into consideration the environmental damage that they cause, as well as the cheap price of human health and livelihood of the local populations. Transnational corporations exploit such resources. Court cases against transnationals claiming damages for environmental destruction very often fail. There is no corporate accountability. There is therefore an ecological unequal exchange, because the South exports much energy and materials at a cheap price. In addition to this, the Third World is home to the production of chemical and nuclear arms, toxic products are manufactured (as in Bhopal) or toxic waste is deposited in their soil.

Ecological Debt was generated in the colonial era and has been increasing ever since.

This social and environmental, local and global destruction benefits economically a small, powerful group that maintain a model of development based on exaggerated consumption and waste. According to United Nations figures, 20% of the population of the world, the majority who live in the North, consume 80% of the planet's natural resources.

The way of life that Northern industrialized countries enjoy is due to the flow of natural goods, financial resources and the poorly paid work of the Third World, without taking into account the social and environmental damage that the extraction of these goods generates.

The impoverished countries of the South subsidize this industrialized model. This has to stop.

Currently, the mechanisms of exploitation and destruction are contributing the increasing the ecological debt, aided by new strategies applied by transnational corporations, as well as structural adjustment programs, various forms of credit for mining and fossil fuel extraction, or free trade agreements.

Foreign investment for development, the deregulation of states, the privatization programs for services and natural goods, intellectual property rights agreements and technology transfer, so-called clean development mechanisms, are some of the new forms of domination and generation of the ecological debt.

International organisms such as the IMF, WB and the WTO, try to perfect these mechanisms by creating the world commercial agreements in the world, as the cost of making peoples suffer and resources being over-exploited.

However, hope for a full life for everyone is renewed when movements of resistance challenge the dominant model of globalization and homogenization, and show that there really are alternatives.

The Zapatista movement in Mexico, the struggle of the Movement of the Landless movement in Brazil, the Vía Campesina around the world, and the many local communities which oppose projects that affect them (whether they are dams, mining projects, industrial shrimp farming, deforestation and uniform tree plantations), they are all examples of resistance and are part of a movement that is growing every day.

Friends of the Earth cannot stand on the margins of this antiglobalizing process. Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, South and South-East Asia have bitter memories and a bitter reality of exploitation.

The claim of the Ecological Debt is one more tool in order to defend energy, food and economic sovereignty of our countries.

Arguments in favor of the claim of the Ecological Debt:

When demanding the Ecological Debt, the arguments must be clear. Every region, every country, and every case has particularities and the challenge is to identify them. This process will stimulate local resistance, and ought to change the relations between nation-states by putting the issue of the Ecological Debt at the centre of the debate.

- AN HISTORICAL DEBT

Ecological Debt means to claim the historical debt that industrialized countries of the North have with the Third World for the exploitation, destruction and devastation that they generated during colonization.

The colonial era was marked be European countries mining gold, silver, precious stones, fine wood, and exploiting other biological resources from the colonies. Added to this was the forced payment by local populations to the European conquerors. Models of extraction and production were imposed, that responded to the necessities of the European economy and later aided the industrial revolution.

All of this occurred at a great cost: the death and enslavement of native populations. With the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, the population of America was around 70 million. Only a century and a half later it was reduced to 3 and a half million.

We have a long history of ecological degradation in South America. Well known examples are: mercury contamination from silver mining in Bolivia and from the exportation of gold in the Minas Gerais in Brazil, rubber production in the Amazon, guano from Peru, quebracho from Argentina, cutting quinine trees in the Andes, and later the pollution of water and the air in copper smelting in Peru or Chile, among others. These are ther open wounds of Latin America, which are still increasing.

- INTELLECTUAL APPROPRIATION OF ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE

Ecological Debt means also to claim the debt that industrialized countries of the North have with the South for the intellectual, historical and present appropriation of ancestral knowledge.

The main knowledge that is being appropriated illegally and illegitimately is that knowledge which is related with the improvement of seeds and medicinal plants, nowadays used to sustain the modern biotechnology and agricultural industries, for whose products we must pay royalties.

Northern countries have been enriched because of the commercial appropriation of biological diversity extracted from their centers of origin, including crops and biodiversity found in the wild and the knowledge connected to these.

The former secretary of state of the United States, Warren Christopher, valued at 7 billion dollars the annual contribution of foreign corn germoplasm to the benefit of the economy of the United States. The United States never paid for this. However, since corn is now part of the commercial trade agreement within NAFTA, since 1994, millions of poor farmers in Mexico, have been affected because of the importats of corn from the United States (including transgenic corn, a new form of "pollution").

It has been calculated that the value of germoplasm from the Third World that is being used by the pharmaceutical industry is more than 47 billion dollars every year. Information with respect to the use and knowledge of plants that local communities possess, especially shamans and other traditional healers, has been given freely, and now often leads to patents in the North. This is biopiracy.

With the development of biotechnology, the eyes of transnational firms have turned with even more interest towards biodiversity in the South as a source of wealth and knowing that (despite the Convention of Biodiversity of 1992) they have in fact free access and control over this biodiversity. The new varieties that are the product of biotechnologies will replace traditional varieties, speeding up the process of genetic erosion and threatening food security.

FTAA and similar trade treaties, with its rules on Intellectual Property, will permit the application of patenting laws of the United States and all of the Northern hemisphere to our own genetic resources.

- USE OF NATURAL GOODS AND SERVICES SUCH AS SOIL, WATER AND AIR

Ecological Debt means to claim the debt that industrialized countries of the North have with the South for the use and degradation of our best land, water, air and human energy.

The countries of South, in order to take care of basic needs under the heavy burdens of the external debt, are forced to produce goods for export. The current model of development is based on increasing exports of primary materials and fossil fuels, of agricultural products such as food, flowers, wood and shrimp.

These monocultures use the best soil, water and low-paid labor in order to ensure exports. These crops use technological packages based on "improved" seeds or transgentic seeds, as well as agrochemicals, contributing to the pollution of the soil, water and air, and affecting the health of the workers and local communities, while using great amounts of energy.

Monocultures put at risk the food and cultural sovereignty of local communities since they affect the traditional forms of production and provision for local and national markets, affecting the dynamics of the lives of these producers, as well as causing loss in soil fertility, desertification and contamination.

The paradox is that agricultural countries in South America suffer from malnutrition; in some parts as much as 50% of the population is malnourished. Meanwhile, the export products contain high amounts of proteins, vitamins and minerals.

The immense forest plantations of eucalyptus and pine feed the paper industry and have displaced large areas of natural forests, other natural ecosystems and agricultural land in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay as well as other parts of the world. It is estimated that industrial plantations occupy almost 100 million hectares of tropical and non-tropical regions. Peasants in many countries, such as Thailand, have resisted these trends.

In Argentina, small agricultural production units have been replaced by large units of transgenic soybeans for export, displacing the livestock and wheat crops, which constitute the base for food security. Argentina exports also the nutrients from its fields. This transformation is one of the causes of the crisis of that rich country that absurdly has lost its capacity for self-sustenance. This is the Ecological Debt that the countries of the North have with Argentina.

- CARBON DEBT

Ecological Debt means also to claiming the debt that industrialized countries of the North have with the South for the disprortionate appropriation of the atmosphere and the capacity of oceans, soils and new vegetation to absorb carbon dioxide.

The countries of the North act as if they were the de facto owners of all carbon sinks and reservoirs. They are for the most part responsible for climate change, due to their production of carbon dioxide, emitted by their industries, the burning of fossil fuels as a source of energy and for a way of living that is not sustainable. Their per capita emissions, historically and at present, is much larger than those of other countries. Rich countries import fossils fuels from the South, causing great local damage, then they burn them and produce excessive amounts of carbon dioxide. They should pay back their ecological debts.

The impacts of climate change at a local and global level can be seen by the decrease in rain in deforested areas, floods in coastal areas, more frequent desertification, intensification of climatic events such as hurricanes, El Niño, storms, the melting of the polar ice caps and the elevation of sea levels. These impacts translate into the loss of human lives and of agricultural crops, as well as the destruction of roads and houses. For instance, Bangladesh will be heavily affected while it contirbuted little to climate change. An ecological debt is due. Instead, in order to prevent and reconstruct the damage from these changes, a lot of the time Southern countries need to resort to foreign debt.

- DEBT FOR THE PRODUCTION OF TOXIC WASTE AND CHEMICAL AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Ecological Debt means claiming the debt that industrialized countries of the North have with the South for the production of toxic waste, chemical weapons and nuclear waste and testing.

The countries of the North have converted many countries of the South into toxic waste dumping grounds.

All of the social and environmental effects from the death products and toxic waste produced in the North are part of the Ecological Debt that the North has with the South, as they put at risk the planet and its local populations where the waste is deposited.

The erosion of the ozone layer due to atmospheric pollution, principally from chlorofluorocarbons, gives rise to another ecological debt that Southern countries can claim. Chile and Argentina are the most affected countries in South America for the destruction of the ozone layer and are creditors of this ecological debt.

- THE RELATION BETWEEN EXTERNAL DEBT AND ECOLOGICAL DEBT

In order to carry out the obligations and pay the interests of external debt, Third World countries are pressured to export more and more of their resources, generating even more ecological debt.

For instance, the volume of exportations from Latin America increased from 1980 to 1995 some 245%. From 1985 and 1996, in 12 years 2,7 billion tons of basic products, the majority non-renewable, had been extracted and exported. This does not take into consideration how much material is transformed, destroyed or displaced in order to achieve these exportats and does not take into consideration the populations that have been affected or displaced.

As an example we can quote that in this same time period between 1982 until 1996, in fourteen years Latin America has reimbursed 740 billion dollars, in other words, more than double what it owed in 1982 that was 300 billion dollars. However, the debt did not diminish but instead increased to 607 billion dollars.

WHAT DOES THE SOUTHERN PEOPLES ECOLOGICAL DEBT CREDITORS ALLIANCE PROPOSES

Friends of the Earth International considers it evident that the current model of economic development is bringing us to world collapse. But even though it is a collapse it is still unequal. The ecological and social impacts, the loss of sovereignty, and the increase in poverty in the Third World is on a larger scale now.

The objectives of the Campaign are:

• establish what the obligations and liabilities are of industrialized countries in terms of repairing and detaining the damages caused to the biosphere and to the Third World from Ecological Debt that is putting the human livelihhod and the entire planet in danger.
• - Provide evidence that the external debt as a way of extraction that increases ecological debt is Illegitimate .
• protect our cultural and natural heritage and strengthen its diversity for present and future generations.
• - recognize that the Ecological Debt is historical, and linked to colonialism and racism.
• - demand that transnational corporations are accountable for the damage they do.
• - increase consumer awareness in the North, of the environmental and social conditions under which imports from the South are produce.

- MAKE THE FOLLOWING DEMANDS TO NORTHERN COUNTRIES:

• To give back the cultural and natural patrimony: genetic and biological material.
• Restoration of affected areas of Southern countries, for the extraction of natural goods and monocultures for exports, and to help local and national communities recuperate their capacity for self-sufficiency.
• Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the North by the required amounts (much larger than the Kyoto promises), and the total elimination of products that generate ozone layer depletion.
• The elimination of all weapons, products and toxic substances that are a threat to life on the planet.
• make a call to the people and the governments of the Third World and to the organizations in solidarity from the North, to:
  • mobilize in defense of life and to disobey all politics that international organisms such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization and FTAA impose, including all economic programs that threaten ecological balance and human survival.
  • refuse programs and credits that promote the extraction of natural goods and monocultures at the cost of social and environmental destruction.
  • stop the flow of primary material, food and finances to the exterior, stop ecologically unequal exchange, and work for a self-sufficient and independent economy that prioritizes the necessities of the national population in harmony with the environment.
  • Provide evidence of the injustice of the current model, and promote resistance to the imposition of this model that is based on money and the market and which goes against cultural diversity, the wellbeing of communities and environmental sustainability.
  • protect and promote communities that are ecologically sustainable. Recognize peasant and indigenous communities for the preservation of agricultural and wildlife diversity.

• AND BUILD THE ROAD TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES IN OUR COUNTRIES

• Creating and strengthening democratic spaces in order to impose limits on this model, with new policies to protect life and to protect the planet.
• Closing the cheap flow of energy, natural goods, food, manual labor and financial resources from the South to the North. Prioritize food, energy and economic sovereignty. Insist on the cancellation of illegitimate external debt.
• Turning our eyes inward. We need to replant our own development at the local level, national level and regional level. A fair development, based on solidarity; a development for all. A development that respects all life on this planet.
• This requires great conviction. Believe in alternatives; many of them already exist and are threatened. Others need to be built.
• A change in the international economic relations based on the acknowledgement of the ecological debt that the North owes to the South, stopping the pressure to pay external debt