• put a halt to a development model that is destroying the life of the planet,
• stop the unequal flow of energy, natural and financial resources from the South to the North,
• make evident the illegitimate nature of the Foreign Debt.

What is the Ecological Debt?

• The extraction of natural resources : such as the petroleum, minerals, marine, forest and genetic resources, that is destroying the basis of survival of the people. 
• The ecologically unequal terms of trade caused by goods being exported without taking into account the social and environmental damages caused by their extraction or production.
• The intellectual appropriation and the use of ancestral knowledge related to seeds, the use of medicinal plants and other knowledge, upon which the biotechnology and the modern agro-industries are based, and for which , we have to pay royalties
• The use and degradation of the best lands, of the water and air, and of human energy, for the development of export crops , thus putting at risk the food and cultural sovereignty of both local and national communities.
• The contamination of the atmosphere by the industrialised the countries through their disproportionate emission of gases, which are the main cause of Climate Change and of the thinning of the ozone layer.   For the illegitimate appropriation of the atmosphere and of the carbon absorption capacity of the oceans and vegetation.
• The production of chemical and nuclear weapons, substances and toxic residuals that are deposited in the countries of the Third World.

Indeed the living standard that the industrialised countries of the North enjoy owes a great deal to the immense flow of natural resources, financial resources and work, (either as slave labour  or simply badly paid) of the countries of the Third World, which do not take into account the social and environmental damages caused by the extraction of these goods.  That is to say that we, the impoverished countries of the South, are subsidising the rich countries of the North. 

The current form of looting uses subtler methods than those employed during the conquest. For example: 

• the foreign debt promoted by the countries of the North.
• the promotion of the international market on terms which favour them.
• the flow of  foreign investment.
• the privatisation of energy, communications, water, and the earth.
• the green revolution.
• the practice of “free trade”
• the reality of technological dependence, and 
• the laws of intellectual property, amongst many others.

However, hope for a dignified life for all is renewed when resistance movements with their varied proposals call into question the dominant homogenising model, and demonstrate that there is an alternative: the Zapatista movement in Mexico, the claims of the Sem Terra movement in Brazil, the force of the indigenous movement in Ecuador ( for instance the proposal for the intangibility of the territories of the amazon peoples, the Shuar, Achuar, Kichwas, Cofanes, Siona, Secoya, Záparas, Huaorani), the resistance of the U´wa people of Colombia to oil activity in their territory because their territory is Sacred.... 
 

VODO, Belgium

What is ecological debt ?

Ecological debt is a different way of understanding international economic relations. The idea of ecological debt has several historical roots and various expressions. Though rising in awareness it is not a new concept. In the nineteenth century observers of the British empire noted that "all parts of the world are ransacked for the Englishman's table." In the 1960s Georg Borgstrom shone a light on the "ghost acres" that countries such as Britain depended on in other lands to feed their people. Britain required an even larger area of land overseas to meet domestic demand than it had under cultivation at home.

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