NO MORE DEBTS

The rights of peoples and the rights of nature should be the central
concern of policies and programs aimed at overcoming the climate crisis.

April 2010, Cochabamba, World People's Conference on Climate Change and
the Rights of Mother Earth


Jubilee South is taking on the problematic of climate change as one of its
permanent lines of action. Our main contribution is related to the links
between climate change and finance, their relation to illegitimate debt,
the demand for reparations of the ecological and climate debt owed to the
South and the need to strengthen the movements in the South to achieve the
systemic transformations that the peoples and nature need.

The depth of the financial-economic crisis has clearly led to the
understanding that it is a deeper crisis, a crisis of the capitalist
system, a civilizatory crisis, which is reflected in other consequent
crises, such as the ecological, food, energy, political and social crises.
While such crises have their origins in the North, in the role and
policies dictated and imposed by Northern countries, transnational
corporations and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) which
they control with the compliance of many Southern governments, it is
working people, fisher-folk, indigenous, traditional and forest
communities and women which are being forced to pay the greatest share of
the consequences and the costs, in particular the peoples of the South.
The climate crisis does not escape this reality.

Responses, however, have until now been aimed at reinventing and
relegitimizing the very system and institutions largely responsible for
this crisis. Debt has been used as an instrument to dominate and control
governments, peoples, and the resources of the South, including the
financing of projects and promotion of policies that have greatly
contributed to the exacerbation and escalation of climate change.
Nonetheless, climate change related programs continue to be loan financed
through the same IFIs, leading to even greater levels of illegitimate
indebtedness. Efforts are more focused on how to profit from climate
change than at getting to the root causes of the crisis and creating a new
system. False solutions, such as the carbon market, agrofuels,
hydroelectric power plants, coal and nuclear energy, are increasingly
being promoted. Carbon trading – which is central to these false solutions
- only allows transnational corporations and rich countries to buy the
right to pollute at the expense of the peoples and countries of the South.

Worse, carbon trading has spawned new and despicable instruments to
extract profits from pollution, akin to the proliferation of financial
derivatives that was a major cause of the recent financial and economic
bubble and crisis.

It is important to emphasize that climate justice - in particular the
costs of mitigation and adaptation to climate change - cannot be fully
analyzed without the broader perspective of ecological debt and its
relationship to financial debt and the global economic system. Just and
appropriate financing to address the impacts of climate change, for
example, has to be built in a completely different way from what has been
pursued so far. One cannot properly address climate justice, unless
climate impacts on human and nature rights in general, including the
regimes of food and water, housing, energy, transport and migration - the
ecological impacts- are adequately addressed in financial and economic
systems.

Jubilee South defends that:

- the struggle against climate change depend on the transformation of the
capitalist system of production and consumption and the growth paradigm
based on the belief that natural resources are unlimited;

- The rights of peoples and the rights of nature should be the central
concern of policies and programs aimed at overcoming the climate crisis;

- Real solutions to climate change do not lead to the further accumulation
of illegitimate debt or the generation of more ecological and climate
debt.

Jubilee South demands:

- Immediate and unconditional cancellation of the debts that the North
claims from the countries and peoples of the South at the cost of nature
and more specifically the climate;

- Guarantee restitution and reparations for the ecological and climate
debts owed by the northern countries, corporations and elites to nature
and the peoples of the South and all communities violated and exploited by
the process of accumulation that they lead;

- Resist and oppose efforts of northern governments to evade cuts in
emissions and divide countries of the South.

- IFIs out of climate as part of larger strategy to stop their operations
and intervention in the South.

- Reject market-based false-solutions (carbon market, Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest -  Degradation (REDD), agrofuels,
hydroelectric power plants, coal and nuclear energy).

- The construction and implementation of alternatives that are based on
the rights and needs of the peoples including community and
peoples´control over natural resources, family-based agriculture, the
protection of forests and a reverse path towards energy sovereignty and
non hydrocarbon energy dependent societies.

Strengthening the movement for Climate Justice
Peoples´ Tribunals

In September 2009, several organizations and movements in Asia held an
International Climate Tribunal in Bangkok, during the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) inter-sessional. In
October 2009, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, other networks and social movements
held a preliminary hearing of the International Peoples - Tribunal on
Climate Justice. In December 2009, in Copenhagen, an activity and a
strategy meeting "Towards a People's Tribunal on Ecological Debt and
Climate Justice" were held. In Copenhagen, the organizations decided to
move forward with the Tribunal in 2010, taking advantage of important
moments, such as the World Peoples - Conference on Climate Change and the
Rights of Mother Earth, to think about conducting a hearing in Cancun,
Mexico. Thus. Cochabamba will be an important opportunity to reaffirm the
consensus reached so far, share responsibilities and advance decisions in
regards to the framework of the prosecution and methodology.

The goal of a Peoples - Tribunal is to deepen understanding of the causes
and responsibilities related to ecological debt and climate change, and
advance strategies to halt and reverse the damaging processes and seek
reparations.

As Jubilee South we will continue to encourage and support initiatives
such as the peoples` efforts to establish an International Peoples´
Tribunal on Ecological Debt and Climate Justice - determined by multiple
networks and organizations at a meeting convened for that purpose in
Copenhagen - and the implementation of Climate and Ecological Debt Audits
and Peoples` Creditors Assemblies to move forwards in terms of strategies
and actions for restitution and reparations.

These are initiatives aimed at strengthening proposals and struggles for
ecological and climate justice which in turn contribute to the fight
against debt domination, for financial sovereignty, and the full exercise
of the rights of the peoples and nature. We call on all peoples´ movements
and organizations to participate in these and other initiatives,
mobilizing to change the course of the UNFCCC negotiations and achieve
real progress.

JUBILEE SOUTH - Abril 2010

Laura Yanella

-- 
Aurora Donoso

 This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
http://www.accionecologica.org
http://www.deudaecologica.org
http://www.ecologicaldebt.org