The origin of environmental problems is the desecration of life. 

Life is sacred. The ancestral peoples and their descendants know this, and so they maintain a close relationship with the natural world; they know it and respect it, they celebrate the sun and the water, the sowing and the reaping, fertility and death, they live in harmony and inter relationship with nature, they nurture her and call her mother earth, father sun, and grandmother moon. 

We ourselves know this in the deepest recesses of our hearts, there, where we perceive fullness, unity and the abundance of life. We can not help but marvel at creation: the immense variety and diversity of flowers, fruits, animals, trees, landscapes, human beings; the most varied and unimaginable combinations of colours, forms, textures and sizes; the most diverse and exquisite flavours; the purity of the air and water, the most varied fragrances, the smell of the earth,; the warmth of the sun, the freshness of the breeze.......

When the consciousness of mankind as part of this natural world, of creation, is broken, harmony is shattered, respect is degraded, life become merchandise, and is destroyed. 

How many mysteries has mankind destroyed by separating from, and interfering in creation, without knowing it, without discovering so much diversity, so much wisdom, so much beauty!

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND WHEN LIFE'S ABUNDANCE  HAS BEEN CUT OFF , ALTERED OR DESTROYED?: 

When our countries were violently looted, destroyed and devastated, and our peoples enslaved, exploited and eliminated during the times of conquest and colonisation. 

When ancestral knowledge and seeds have been appropriated and utilised. 

When science is used to produce hybrid or genetically modified seeds, breaking reproductive cycles for the benefit of transnational corporations which patent life, and attack the food sovereignty of the peoples. 

When monocultures are promoted and agro toxics are made in order to alter life's natural cycles, degrading the land, the water and the air, and affecting the health of the campesinos. 

When natural goods are extracted in order to feed industry, at the cost of the social and environmental destruction of the countries of the Third World and the planet in general, and an environmentally unequal trade is established. 

When even the planet's atmosphere and carbon sinks are appropriated without assuming any commitment or responsibility for their destruction, and for the effects of climate change. 

When toxic waste is produced and deposited in Third World countries, especially in the poorest areas. 

When the illegitimate, inhuman, and immoral, external debt, which has already been paid, is used to enslave people to the service of capital and to sustaining this flow of natural goods, cheap labour, and financial resources from South to North. 

When chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are produced, and tested and sold to our countries and when they make loans to buy this weapons. 

When due to this flow of cheap resources, over production is encouraged, and as a consequence over consumption and over generation of waste which are destroying our sources of livelihood and the life of the planet. All of which they now intend to sell us as "Free Trade". 
When the desecration of life has reached such a point that the industrialised countries have even stolen the genes of the most isolated indigenous communities for the human genome project. 

And now they dare to publicly state that they have deciphered the language of God! 

All these forms of appropriation, destruction, and alteration of life, carried out principally by the industrialised countries of the North, are what we call the ecological debt, which those countries owe to the countries of the Third World and the planet. 

The industrialised countries maintain and impose an economic and productive model based on  interference with the life's natural cycles, on looting, on the destruction of the sources of life, on the pollution of the air, the water, the earth, and on threats to communities which have cared for the earth, and have lived in exchange and harmony with their environment,. 
 

THE ECOLOGICAL DEBT, A  DEMAND FOR LIFE. 

If environmental problems are rooted in the desecration of life, what we seek to recover and defend is the value of the sacred. 

To recover our relationship with creation, with the all. To know that when the natural world is being affected anywhere on the planet, we ourselves are affected, as we are part of creation. 

To such an extent that the damage done to nature is rebounding on us. All our basic needs for life are affected in some way by this model based on destruction, accumulation, and "comfort": the air, the water, the earth, the food....... 

It is now essential that we recover our most basic values: respect for life, natural and cultural diversity, and the search for collective welfare in harmony with the natural world. 

To respect and defend communities which have cared for the earth and its diversity, and which are now threatened by this commercial vision of life. The U'wa people of Colombia, who have resisted Occidental and its oil operations, provide us with a great example, as for them the earth is sacred. 

According to Ghandi, "Nature produces our everyday needs in sufficient quantities, and if each one of us would be content with what they need, and nothing more, there would be neither poverty in this world, nor would anyone die of hunger. If we continue to maintain this inequality it is because we are thieves". 

The ecological debt is, above all, a demand for changes  to unsustainable lives and for the defence of sustainable forms of life. We now talk of ecologically sustainable communities, which means that societies and the natural world must be sustainable. 

The ecological debt is the counterpart of the external debt. Where the creditors are those peoples which have been historically exploited by the ecological debtors of the North, allied with national elites. 

We try to visualise the magnitude of the ecological debt, to talk about it, about its causes, its impacts, of those responsible, of the creditors, of the way in which the damage can be restored,  and its increase halted. 

The ecological debt is a debt of life, while the external debt is a fictitious debt, a speculative immoral and violent game in which money has been given a "life of its own", when in reality it is, and should be, simply a means of exchange. The ecological debt is to talk  the language of defence and respect for life and diversity, and to not allow oneself to be trapped in the language of money and the market. 

In fact, the external debt increases the ecological debt, and for this reason we demand the immediate annulling of the external debt, and therefore the end of the structural adjustment programmes; and the reparation of the damage caused by it, such as the increased impoverishment of Third World peoples, the deterioration of their sources of life, the destruction of nature and of the reduction of the possibility that present and future generations can achieve a sustainable life. 

The increase in the Ecological Debt must be halted, by avoiding the credits and the projects and programmes of the IMF/WB/WTO/FTAA/IDB, of the transnational corporations, of the international banking system, and of the industrialised countries, which involve social impacts, environmental destruction, and which affect the sovereignty of Third World peoples. 

The social and environmental damage caused by those responsible for the ecological debt must be repaired, as it is time to put an end to environmental impunity. 

The inequalities of the model must be made clear, and resistance to the imposition of a monoculture based on money and the market, and which attacks natural and cultural diversity, the welfare of communities and environmental sustainability, must be promoted. 

The concentration of wealth, and the systems which encourage it, must be eradicated,  as it is the principal sources of impoverishment. The majority of Third World peoples, above all those who have the most biodiversity and natural wealth, have seen themselves impoverished, as the concentration of wealth is promoted by transnational corporations and Northern and Southern elites, by unsustainable forms of life whose cost is social exploitation and the exploitation of the environment of the rest of the world. 

The time has come to call this an economic and ecological war, a war which is costing the lives of thousands, due to extremes of economic impoverishment and the deterioration of natural sources of livelihood, as well as to the desire to emigrate to the countries of the North whatever the cost. Thousands of families undone, and indebted, in order to find the means to emigrate, as our wealth is in the North. They are all refugees from this war. 
 

ALLIANCES: A PRIORITY FOR THE CLAIM FOR THE ECOLOGICAL DEBT 

As never before, we are living the precise moment in which to join forces against the destruction of life. 

The Jubilee 2000 campaign was able to mobilise the organisations of the North and South in order to sensitise them about the serious social, environmental and economic effects generated by the external debt, and to place this issue on national and international agendas. 

Jubilee South brought the southern organisations together to analyse the problem from a Third World perspective, strengthening the campaigns with solid arguments which demonstrated the slavery of the external debt and its perverse interests. It also strengthened the idea that it is us, the peoples of the Third World, who are the real CREDITORS of the historical, social and ecological debts. 

The anti-globalisation movement is growing, and identifies the IMF/WB/WTO/FTAA/IDB, the G7, the transnational corporations, the science and technology of domination and war, and the industrialised countries of the North, as those responsible for the serious social and environmental impacts that their economic policies are generating in the entire world. 

The arguments for the ecological debt are extending both from the South and within the North: the report written by John Dillon of the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative, and this invitation, are examples, as are the contributions of Juan Martinez Alier, Christian Aid, the interest of Friends of the Earth International, the inclusion of the claim for the ecological debt as one of the main pillars of the Jubilee South's campaign, and the interest of the World Council of Churches in reflecting on the issue. 

An event which marked the Campaign for the Recognition and Claim for the Ecological Debt, was the launching last September, in Prague, of the Ecological Debt Southern Peoples Creditors Alliance. An alliance which must be consolidated and strengthened. 

The raising of awareness and the mobilisation are under way. It is therefore the most appropriate time to strengthen the South - South Alliances, and on this basis to call on the conscientious people of the North who are willing to reverse the reality that we live today, and which is leading us to the most serious global crisis we could have imagined. And to maintain the interest and the sensibility that the campaigns have generated both in the North and the South, and to continue on together until we resolve the perverse game of the external debt. 

It is the moment to come together and strengthen the legitimate demands of the historical, social, and ecological debts; to demand that these debts of life are debated; that those responsible be identified; to demand a change in unsustainable life styles; to stop the extreme impoverishment of our peoples and the destruction of our sources of life; and to repair the damages caused ....... to recover the sacredness of life.