paper from Christian Aid, 1999

The declining health of frog populations globally is an unlikely indicator of how chemical pollution has eroded the ozone layer that protects the earth from ultraviolet radiation.(4) When the weather phenomenon El Niûo hit Indonesia it caused the worst drought for fifty years and created a super-disaster domino effect. The rice crops failed, the price of imported rice quadrupled... food riots erupted in the capital, Jakarta, and in the countryside, massive forest fires burned out of control, paralysing parts of the country with a toxic layer of smoke,' said the 1999 World Disasters Report.

Economic damage from the climate-related problems can only have worsened the financial crisis the country was undergoing. Different problems are often unexpectedly related. We are surrounded by both virtuous and vicious cycles. Two of the great environment and development challenges of today could be related, both as problems and by possible solutions. Global warming and unpayable poor country debt have a huge impact on Christian Aid's partners internationally and are the site of great international struggles to find effective solutions.

Characteristic of both the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the highly indebted poor country initiative (HIPC), is a meagre and bureaucratic response to life threatening phenomena, whether economic or climatic. The burden of debt leaves millions in the countries where Christian Aid works with inadequate health and education services. The poorest people are left struggling through their taxes to pay for debts which were somebody else's fault. The UN suggest that seven million childrens' lives could be saved each year if unpayable debts were written off. Millions more, forced to live in environmentally vulnerable areas due to poverty, are falling victim to extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change.

From Central America to Bangladesh and the various countries affected by the worsening El Niño phenomenon, many fall into both categories - in debt and struggling against an increasingly hostile environment. We are surrounded by both virtuous and vicious cycles. Two of the great environment and development challenges of today could be related, both as problems and by possible solutions. Global warming and unpayable poor country debt have a huge impact on Christian Aid's partners internationally and are the site of great international struggles to find effective solutions. Characteristic of both the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the highly indebted poor country initiative (HIPC), is a meagre and bureaucratic response to life threatening phenomena, whether economic or climatic.

The burden of debt leaves millions in the countries where Christian Aid works with inadequate health and education services. The poorest people are left struggling through their taxes to pay for debts which were somebody else's fault. The UN suggest that seven million childrens' lives could be saved each year if unpayable debts were written off. Millions more, forced to live in environmentally vulnerable areas due to poverty, are falling victim to extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change. From Central America to Bangladesh and the various countries affected by the worsening El Niño phenomenon, many fall into both categories - in debt and struggling against an increasingly hostile environment.

Because the climate system is owned by no one, and yet needed by everyone, it is only fair that we should all have an equal stake in the services it provides and in its protection. Yet the simplest of figures on the use of fossil fuels show that the truth is the opposite, and that rich countries today owe a vast environmental debt to poor countries. It is another reason why the unpayable foreign debt of the least developed countries and the unbalanced leverage it buys for creditors should be ended. Progress on debt cancellation would also remove one of the obstacles to more full participation by poor countries in international environmental negotiations. An approach to cutting the kind of pollution which adds to global warming, based on the idea that no one person has a greater right to use the earth's resources than any other, seems to offer the only pragmatic way forward.

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