CARBON EMISSIONS - ECOLOGICAL DEBT - KYOTO PROTOCOL - ANDREW
SIMMS - ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES - GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE -
Carbon
emissions: debtors and creditors*
World
Guide |
The Tuvalu authorities have already established
an evacuation plan with New Zealand and Australia. However, it
is not just small islands that will suffer the effects of rising
waters; in Bangladesh, some 20 million people could become environmental
refugees |
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Decades of dubious global financial management by the multilateral
banking
institutions
have made Africa and Latin
America into debtors to the developed world. However, this familiar
scenario of international relations (in which the creditor is invariably
in the North)
could change radically. The impacts of global climate
change
could invert the situation, with the creditors of the North becoming
ecological debtors to the countries of the South.
In the Pacific Ocean, the archipelago of Tuvalu -a member of
the United
Nations
since 2000- may soon be considered the largest ecological creditor
in the world. The rising sea levels caused by global warming
threaten to erase this set of islands located between 6°
and 11º latitude south. The Tuvalu authorities have already
established an evacuation plan with New Zealand and Australia.
However, it is not just small islands that will suffer the effects of rising
waters; in Bangladesh, some 20 million people could become environmental
refugees.
The Canadian International Development Agency has proposed
to cancel US$680,000 of Honduras' total $11 million debt to Canada
if the Central American country sets up an office to promote
reforestation and oversee forest conservation -a deal encouraged
under the Kyoto Protocol. In exchange, Canada would obtain credits
for ‘reducing’ its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse
gases without having to alter any of its industrial practices
at home.
Staking their bets on the Carbon Emissions Market, the
wealthy countries are aiming to evade their historic debt incurred by
their abusive use of shared natural resources. It is not
an exclusively economic debt, given that the disappearance of
a country, in other words, a culture, cannot be
compensated by any sum of money. Andrew Simms of the New
Economics Foundation has stated that ‘Third World
debt pales into insignificance in the face of the ecological
debts of industrialized countries.’
The ecological debt -incurred by the rich who have taken a larger
share of the environmental wealth than a logical distribution
would have granted them -gives the countries of the South a moral
advantage in international negotiations. As Simms says, arealistic
global solution to the ecological
debt should include recognizing the right of all to share the
common natural goods and the economic benefits they bring, as
well as a plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
*Published in The World Guide
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