making historical responsibility part of the solution

friends of the earth international

december 2005

This report presents the relationship between historical responsibility and climate debt as it has evolved from the focus on ecological debt and climate justice to where it stands today. Many people and organizations, including Friends of the Earth International, have worked on these concepts, examples of which are presented within the main text and in the included annexes. Historical responsibility remains a heated topic of discussion.

The main issue that raises questions is how to quantify and distribute this responsibility in the most effective way. Unfortunately, there is no clear answer. This report presents our ideas and recommendations about how to incorporate historical responsibility into a climate framework that will ensure a just transition from the current situation to a more equitable future one. what is climate debt? Climate debt is a special case of environmental injustice – where industrialized countries have over-exploited their ‘environmental space’ in the past, having to borrow from developing countries in order to accumulate wealth, and accruing ecological debts as a result of this historic over-consumption.

Clearly, although some nations have benefited vastly more than others from overusing global carbon sinks, all people bear the resulting negative social and environmental impacts, regardless of their greenhouse contributions. Further, due to the long lifetime of emissions in the atmosphere, the concept of climate debt is relevant not only to countries who have overused, but also to future generations, who will suffer as a result of emissions which they did not produce. Carbon debts are more specifically accrued as a result of industrialized nations’ unpaid overuse of carbon sinks both common goods of the global climate system. Additional ecological debts have arisen due to the local impacts of fossil-fuel extraction and the unequal exchange of energy-intensive products.

 Read the full document climatedebtFOEI