The arguments for the claim for the ecological debt

During the colonial period the European countries took possession of the gold, silver, precious stones, fine wood, genetic resources (potato, corn, tomato, bean and others) which were plundered from the American colonies.  Added to these was the imposition of the payment of tithes by the local populations to the European conquerors. Extractive and production models that corresponded to the needs of the European economy, and which facilitated the industrial revolution, were also imposed on our lands. 

The cost of this plunder was the death and slavery of the original peoples. At the time of the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, the population of  the native people of the Americas was not less than 70 million,  although some maintain that the native population could have been as high as 180 million. One hundred and fifty years later that population had decreased to only 3 and a half million. 

There is also a long history of ecological degradation:  the mercury contamination caused by silver amalgam in Bolivia ;  the export of gold from Minas Gerais in Brazil, of rubber from the Amazon basin, of guano of the Peru, of the Quebracho tree from Argentina, of the bark of the Andean quinine tree, ; and the sulphur dioxide contamination from the copper foundries of copper of Chile etc., etc. 

The conquest was based on violence and dominance, on the desecration of life, on the imposition of  one  culture on others by subordinating, marginalising or eliminating them. 

And the whole of this story of devastation has been shrouded in impunity. 

If we look at our history, from the Colonial up to the present time, the situation has become even worse.  We have now become the neo-colonies of  the industrialised countries, in particular of the United States, and of the transnational corporations.  And meanwhile, the methods used to restrain us and to create dependence are that much subtler. 
 

2.  The Ecological Debt involves the claim for the debt that the countries of the North have with the Third World for : the extraction and export of their natural resources, such as petroleum, minerals, forest, marine and genetic resources, processes which are destroying ecosystems and the basis of the survival of the peoples of the South ;  for the ecologically unequal terms of trade, because these goods are exported without taking into account the social and environmental damages caused by their extraction and production. 

The Industrial Revolution accelerated the process of the extraction of natural resources.  From that time until the present, the countries of the Third World have been the main suppliers of these goods to the industrialised countries by means of an ecologically unequal exchange. Unequal because the price of the resources does not take into account the social or environmental damages that are caused on both a local and global level by the processes of extraction of the exported goods. And the more we export the  less we receive. 

On the other hand, the products that we buy from the North, made with the cheap primary materials from the Third World, and often with the cheap labour of the people of the south, are increasingly expensive.  In order to buy a computer (US$2.000) we need to sell a hundred barrels of petroleum (at US$20 per barrel).  Or to buy a tractor (US$200.000) we need to sell 10.000 barrels of petroleum (US$20 per barrel).  That is to say that the value of the technology and the manpower of the North is recognised and even overvalued , while the value of a non renewable resource, and the centuries that nature has taken to make it, is ignored, and that the manpower of the south is under-valued. 

When compared to all the goods that people in the South consume, oil, the main energy source presently used in the world, has a low price. This absurdity of market logic can only be understood when we think of who controls hydrocarbon production, the same people that use this energy in order to move the wheels of the great consumption machine. With cheap energy, consumerism reproduces itself without any problem, while itself continuing to consume the natural world . 

Large transnational companies have settled in the third world, due to the availability of  the cheap labour, the lack of controls on social and environmental impacts, the availability of natural resources and availability of local politicians that favour foreign investment. These transnationals have been responsible for  producing disasters such as those caused by Texaco in the Ecuador, the Southern Copper Mining Corp. in Peru, among others. 

Texaco extracted more than 1.000 million barrels of petroleum in 20 years of operations in Ecuador.  During this time a million hectares of tropical forest was deforested, 16.8 million gallons of petroleum and 19,000 million gallons of  liquid waste were dumped into to the Amazon river system , 235 ,000 million cubic feet of gas was burnt off,  and more than 600 pools of toxic waste were dug. Irremediable dameges were produced to the Siona, Secoya, Cofán, Quichua and Huaorani peoples. 

In the 40 years of operation of the Southern Perú Mining Corp., a subsidiary of the U.S. company ASARCO, Inc., 350 Ha. of productive lands were lost in Hilo on the south coast of Peru, together with 208.000 high Andean pastures where Alpacas and Llamas were raised. The destruction of these lands also involved the loss of  cultural and technological ways of life which had been developed over centuries by local communities. Area species were also lost, together with water for domestic and agricultural use, while at the same time 47.000 m3 of tailings were dumped into the sea on a daily basis. 

The World Bank with the co-financing of the Swedish and British Governments has provided 24 million dollars for a number of projects, amongst which is the adoption of a new Mining Law that favours foreign investment in the Ecuador. 

A multinational consortium comprised of Dow Chemical, Western Petroleum, Standard Fruit, United Fruit and Shell, faced a trial brought by Costa Rican banana workers affected by DBCP, a nematacide that caused sterility in the workers, which produced and marketed in the Third World by the Consortium. A similar case was later presented by Ecuadorian banana workers against the same Consortium. 

Timber exploitation in Ecuadorian forests has caused the disappearance of enormous amounts of primary forest in all regions of the country.  In 1962, the forests occupied an area of 15.642.000 Ha. which figure has decreased at the present time to 11.473.000 Ha. The rate of deforestation in Ecuador is presently in the area of 2.4% annually,  i.e. 340 thousand hectares of forests are lost every year. 

Since 1970 200million hectares of forests have been lost in the world,  and deserts now cover about 120 million hectares.  From 1991 to 1995, in only four years, more than 11% of all the forests areas in the world disappeared. 

A recent report of the FAO revealed that of the 17 well-known fisheries in the world, 9 have been exhausted. The increase of the fishing fleets, especially those of Europe and Japan, and the technology which has been developed to use satellite information and traul nets equivalent to the size of eight soccer pitches, have been the main causes of the over fishing. 

Oil, mining, timber, and fishing extraction plus energy mega-projects such as hydroelectric dams, involve the destruction of biodiversity, the contamination of the environment, damage to the health of local populations, the displacement of peoples and the consequent destruction of their cultures and sources of livelihood. 
 

3.  The Ecological Debt involves the claim for the debt that the industrialised countries of the North have with the Third World for historic and current intellectual appropriation of ancestral knowledge. Knowledge  mainly related to the improvement of seeds, the use of medicinal plants and other knowledge on which the biotechnology and the modern agro industries are based, and for whose products we have to pay royalties. 

The countries of the North have enriched themselves  through  the commercial appropriation of the ancestral knowledge of biological diversity extracted in the centres of origin of crops and biodiversity. 

The former-Secretary of State of the United States, Warren Christopher, valued the contribution made by the germ plasm of foreign corn to the economy of the United States at US $7 billion.  This has obvious importance for a country like the Ecuador, which has the third highest level of diversity of corn crops. 

Between 1976 and 1980 wild varieties contributed 340 million dollars per year to the agricultural economy of the United States.  The total contribution of wild germ plasm to the American economy has been calculated at around  66.000 million dollars, a figure more than the total of the foreign debt of Mexico and the Filipinos put together. 

It is calculated that at the beginning of the third millennium the value of Third World germ plasm that the pharmaceutical industry uses could be as high as $47.000 million. 

Shaman Pharmaceuticals (USA), has recognised that most of the investment in the discovery of new drugs could be saved if the search for a genetic resource is linked to traditional knowledge. Up to the present time Shaman has signed agreements with 261 indigenous communities around the world, and  has patented two active ingredients derived from the sap of the Sangre de Drago tree. 

With the development of biotechnology, the eyes of the transnational companies have become fixed with even greater  force on the biodiversity of the South as a source of  “inexhaustible” wealth,  and they are therefore looking for free access to, and control over, biodiversity. They are therefore pressing Southern countries to accept patent laws linked to the Intellectual Property Rights agreement of the WTO, that give them exclusive rights on life forms. Ecuador was put under strong pressure, and in 1998 was forced to adopt such an  Intellectual Property Rights law 

New bio-technologies, which include genetic engineering, have been able to break the natural limits between living beings, without taking the responsibility for the impacts that this can have. 

The new varieties that will arise as a product of biotechnological research will replace traditional varieties, accelerating the process of genetic erosion and threatening  food security. 

The transgenic soya of the transnational seed corporation Monsanto covered 7.8 millions of  Ha. in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Australia in 1998.  This area has increased in 1999. 

In the USA there also exists the Human Genetic Diversity project, designed, amongst other things,  to gather the genes of indigenous communities from all over the planet which have had little contact with the outside world.  These samples of human blood, hair, fingernails, etc. have become stuff of genetic investigation for the pharmaceutical industry. There is evidence that samples of some Ecuadorian indigenous peoples have already been taken, amongst which are the Huaorani and the Chachi. 
 

4.  The Ecological Debt involves the claim for the debt that the countries of the North have with the countries of the Third World for the use and the degradation of the best land, of the water and air, and of human energy, to establish export crops, putting at risk the food and cultural security of local and national communities. 

The current development model is characterised by waste and consumerism, and is based on the premise of increasing amounts of exports. Exports not only of traditional products but also the so called non traditional products amongst which are: tropical fruits, shrimps, and flowers. 

The plantations of the big investors, both national and foreign, are those that use the best lands, the water and badly paid rural manpower to produce for export. They also use the technological packages of the Green Revolution which include “improved” seeds and agro chemicals. These agricultural and forest monocultures use large quantities of energy, contaminate the soil, the water and the air, and also affect the health of employees and of the local communities.  

The plantations put at risk the food and cultural sovereignty of the local communities because they affect traditional forms of production and supplies of food for both the local and national markets.  A clear example is the cultivation of flowers for export, which now occupy the most fertile lands of the Andean valleys, land that was previously dedicated to the production of food. 

In order to cultivate shrimp for export, 70% of the mangrove forests in Ecuador have been cut down, affecting the communities whose livelihood depended on them, the fishing, and the protection of the shoreline. This was made evident during the El Niño phenomenon of 1998 which had more serious impacts due to the absence of the protection afforded by the mangrove. 

It is absurd that in an eminently agricultural country like ours, malnutrition affects more than 50% of the population, while at the same time we are the biggest exporters of proteins, vitamins and minerals in the foods that leave our shores. 

Immense forest plantations of eucalyptus and pine, planted in order to feed the paper industry, have displaced large areas of native forests, natural ecosystems and agricultural lands in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and other parts of the world. It is calculated that industrial plantations occupy 99.3 million Ha. in both tropical and non tropical regions. 

The effects of the green revolution technological package : biotechnology, the loss of soil fertility and agricultural biodiversity, desertification, contamination of the water and air, and the development of agricultural and forest monocultures for export, together with their social and environmental impacts, are all part of the ecological debt. 
 

5.  The Ecological Debt involves the claim for the debt that the countries of the North have with the Third World for the contamination of the atmosphere. The industrialised countries are , through their disproportionate emissions carbon dioxide, the main cause of the greenhouse effect, and through the production and emission of CFCs (chlorfluorocarbons) the deterioration of the ozone layer. They are also responsible for the appropriation of the atmosphere and of the carbon absorption capacity of the planet. 

The countries of the North are mainly responsible for the Climate Change due to the disproportionate emissions of Carbon Dioxide by their industries, cars, and lifestyles based on the limitless use of cheap petroleum, which comes in the main from the countries of the South. 

The manifestations of climate change at local and regional level are expressed in the decrease of the rains in deforested areas, floods in coastal areas, desertification, hurricanes and elevation of the snow line. 

The erosion of the ozone layer is especially due to atmospheric contamination by the chlorfluorocarbons used for the air conditioning of cars, the electronics industry, refrigeration, aerosols, all produced and consumed mainly in the industrialised countries. This damage is irreversible and therefore the total elimination of these emissions must take place. 

The effects of the thinning of the ozone layer has already been already felt in Chile, Argentina and Australia, where people suffer from burns to the skin, ocular damage and  an increasing incidence of skin cancer. 

The countries of the North have appropriated the atmosphere of the planet, and the free services of carbon absorption provided by the oceans and the new vegetation found mainly in the countries of the South. 

It is indispensable to make a more forceful demand that the North reduces its Carbon emissions because the life of the planet is at stake. 
 

6.  The Ecological Debt involves the claim for the debt that the industrialised countries of the North have with the countries of the Third World for the production of toxic wastes, chemical weapons and for the carrying out of nuclear tests. 

The countries of the North have a large  ecological debt with the countries of the Third World because they produce armaments, and toxic and radio-active substances whose wastes are sent to the Third World. 

They have transformed us into the garbage can of their toxic residuals.  They have carried out nuclear tests in the oceans, such as the case of the tests carried out by France in Mururoa in 1998. 

All the social and environmental impacts of the products of death and of the toxic wastes produced in the North, are part of the Ecological Debt because they put the whole of the planet at risk. 
 
 

External debt and ecological debt. Who owes whom?

To fulfil the obligations and the interests of the foreign debt, the countries of the Third World are pressed to increase their exports. But while they export more, they receive less for their exports. 

An example is the case of  petroleum.  In the seventies oil producing countries became indebted, among other things, in  order to create the facilities for the extraction of the oil itself , these credits were conditional on the use of  foreign technologies and advisers.  The  oil was also good as guarantee for the debts contracted.  However, as the price is not set by the exporting countries (although they could  through organisations like the OPEC – Organisation of  Petroleum Exporting Countries - if  the political will existed), but by the importing countries (which obviously need to keep the price low), the guarantee of the petroleum was not enough.  this is one of the causes of the heavy debt load. 

There  also exists an ecologically unequal exchange given that the price of the  goods does not take into account the social and environmental impacts generated by their extraction and by the production of agroindustrial monocultures for export. 

The volume of exports of Latin America increased 245% in the fifteen years from 1980 to 1995, From 1985 to 1996, in twelve years, 2.706 million tons of basic products, most of them non renewable, were extracted and exported. It has not been calculated how much material was transformed, destroyed or moved in order  to produce these exports, nor how people been affected or displaced. 

Meanwhile, from 1982 to 1996, in fourteen years, Latin America has repaid 739.900 million dollars in debts, more than double 300.000 million dollars that was owed in 1982, and yet the debt has not diminished but rather has increased to 607.230 million dollars, due to an arbitrary rise in market rates. 
 
 

It’s time to shut off the tap

The rest, the great majority, can not allow this to continue, we must therefore: 

• Create and strengthen democratic fora in order to limit this model. Formulate policies to protect life and the planet, such as the international agreements for the Conservation of Biological Diversity and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples amongst others.
• Shut the tap of the unjust flow of energy, natural resources, food, cheap labour and financial resources from the South to the North.  Prioritise food  sovereignty. Do not pay the illegitimate foreign debt.
• Look towards our own needs. Reconsider our own development at the local, national, and regional levels.  A fair, mutually shared  development for all.  Harmony with the natural world. A development in which the most important thing is the respect for life in all its aspects.

Why pay an illegitimate foreign debt?

Therefore we support the international campaign of the Latin American and Caribbean Coalition,  JUBILEE 2000. We also support the national and continental campaigns for the NON PAYMENT OF THE FOREIGN DEBT AND THE CLAIMING OF THE SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL DEBTS. 

We congratulate, and exhort, the Ecuadorian National Government to stand firm in its position of not paying the Brady Bonds, not simply due to  the impossibility of doing so, but due to the illegitimacy of the foreign debt itself and because it is already paid.