NO MORE
LOOTING!
Third World Owed an Ecological
Debt
There is no doubt that the planet is
deteriorating environmentally. The
production and consumption patterns that
drive and sustain northern economies have
altered the world's natural cycles. Climate
change, the product of excessive carbon
dioxide emissions, has been scientifically
corroborated. Its disastrous impacts -
changing weather patterns, floods,
hurricanes, increasing sea levels - are
felt daily, and have wiped out entire
peoples and their sources of
livelihood.
The list continues: deforestation,
environmental pollution, the intensive
extraction of natural resources at an
increasingly rapid rate. All of these
result from a development model that
benefits the few at the expense of the
majority of human beings and the planet's
natural capacity for regeneration.
According to the United Nations, the
richest 20 percent of the world's
population, the vast majority of whom are
to be found in northern countries, consume
80 percent of the planet's natural
wealth.
What is the Ecological Debt?
The cumulative responsibility of
industrialized countries for the
destruction caused by their production and
consumption patterns is called the
'ecological debt'. Natural wealth extracted
by the North at the expense of southern
people has contaminated their natural
heritage and sources of sustenance. The
ecological debt also includes the
illegitimate appropriation of the
atmosphere and the planet's absorption
capacity by the industrialized world. This
debt is the result of a development model
that is being spread throughout the world
and which threatens more sustainable local
economies.
Concretely, some of the major reasons
for the ecological debt are the
following:
* The looting, destruction and
devastation carried out by the rich
countries during the colonial period.
* The extraction of natural
resources (petroleum, minerals, and
marine, forest and genetic resources) that
continues to destroy the basis of survival
for southern people.
* Ecologically inequitable terms of
trade, whereby goods are exported without
taking the social and environmental impacts
of their extraction or production into
account.
* The intellectual
appropriation and use of traditional
knowledge related to seeds and medicinal
plants, upon which biotechnology and modern
agro-industries are based, and for which
Third World countries are expected to pay
royalties.
* The use and
degradation of the best lands, and of
water, air, and human energy for the
development of export crops, thus putting
the food and cultural sovereignty of both
local and national communities at risk.
* The contamination of
the atmosphere by industrialized countries
through their disproportionate emission of
gases causing climate change and ozone
depletion.
* The illegitimate
appropriation of the atmosphere and of the
carbon absorption capacity of oceans and
vegetation.
* The production of
chemical and nuclear weapons and
substances, and the toxic wastes that are
deposited in the Third World.
Indeed, the living standards enjoyed by
the industrialized countries owe a great
deal to the immense flows of natural and
financial resources and labour (either
slave or underpaid) from the Third World.
These flows do not take into account the
social and environmental damages caused by
resource extraction. In other words, the
impoverished countries of the South are
subsidizing the rich countries of the
North!
While during the colonial period the
extraction of precious metals and other
resources was an openly violent affair,
today's looting uses methods that are more
subtle. International organizations such as
the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade
Organization seek to dictate world economic
policy in order to maintain a system of
dominance and control over the trade in
financial and natural resources .
This is carried out through various
mechanisms, including the following: the
foreign debt promoted by the northern
countries; the arrangement of the
international market on terms favouring
northern economies; foreign investment
flows; the privatization of energy,
communications, water, and the earth; the
'green' revolution in agriculture; the
practice of 'free' trade; the reality of
technological dependence; and intellectual
property laws.
Presently, under the guise of complying
with obligations related to their external
debts, Third World countries are being
pressured to increase exports. The
consequent social and environmental impacts
are well documented. And the more they
export, the less these countries receive.
For example, between 1980 and 1995, the
volume of exports from Latin America
increased by 245 percent. Between 1985 and
1996, 2,706 million tons of basic
resources, most of them non-renewable, were
extracted and exported. The amount of
resources that were transformed, destroyed
or moved in order to produce these exports
has not been calculated, nor has the number
of people affected or displaced.
Meanwhile, between 1982 and 1996, Latin
America has repaid US$740 billion in debt,
more than double the $300 billion that was
owed in 1982. Yet the debt has not
diminished, but has rather increased to
$607 billion due to an arbitrary rise in
interest rates.
The external debt has already been paid
a number of times over, both in financial
terms and in terms of the immense flow of
natural goods and cheap labour leaving the
Third World. And it has been paid despite
the fact that it is illegitimate, due to
the conditions under which the loans and
credits were contracted, corruption in loan
contracting, and speculation on financial
markets. The ecological debt adds yet
another vast layer of obligation from the
industrialized countries to the Third
World.
Aurora Donoso, FoE
Ecuador
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At its last Annual General Meeting,
FoEI launched an advocacy programme
for the recognition and payment of
the ecological debt. This initiative
has a number of objectives:
* To stop the
increase of the ecological debt.
* To restore the
areas in southern countries affected
by the extraction of natural
resources and export monocultures so
that local and national communities
are able to recover their capacity
for self sufficiency.
* To repatriate
cultural (plundered historical
memory) and natural (genetic and
biological material) heritage.
* To restore the
areas affected by climate change,
reduce CO
2
emissions, and
totally eliminate ozone-depleting
products.
* To eliminate all
weapons, products and toxic
substances that threaten the life of
the planet.
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