‘Recognition of ecological debt should be a part of climate justice. We are demanding what they owe and this is a feasible political process,’ she said at a panel discussion in Dhaka on Monday evening, emphasising the importance of making the movement international. A coalition of rights organisations organised the discussion titled ‘Ecological Debt: We are the Creditors’ at the National Press Club to build awareness of the rational demands of Bangladesh as a vulnerable country prior to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009.

Lidy Nacpil, convener of the Jubilee South Asia-Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, identified the governments of the industrially developed countries and international financial institutions, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and trans-national corporations as the debtors. The Latin American countries of Bolivia, Venezuela and Paraguay and also two Asian countries — Malaysia and Sri Lanka — have already formally claimed the climate debt at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, she pointed out. Referring to $3.1 trillion external debt at present, Lidy explained that this was not debt and that this amount would be ‘very small’ if the losses incurred by Third World countries were calculated and added up.