Laura Yanela

Jubilee South

Minga Informativa

Representatives of diverse social movements and networks from the entire continent spoke out that the people of the south are the actual creditors of all historical, social and ecological debts.

The participants in the Assembly spoke about the need to coordinate strategies in order to obtain reparations and restitutions for all the harm done and goods plundered in the South as a consequence of the payments made on foreign debts.

A. GENERAL INFORMATION

• Debtor (country, company, IFI, etc.)

• Country or creditor people

• Creditor community

• Number of people affected

• Eco-systems affected

• Time of intervention

• Information on those responsible for damage

• Extent of ecological damage

• Cultural damage (size)

• Damage for future generations

• Indirect impacts

• Relationship to foreign debt

paper from Christian Aid, 1999

The declining health of frog populations globally is an unlikely indicator of how chemical pollution has eroded the ozone layer that protects the earth from ultraviolet radiation.(4) When the weather phenomenon El Niûo hit Indonesia it caused the worst drought for fifty years and created a super-disaster domino effect. The rice crops failed, the price of imported rice quadrupled... food riots erupted in the capital, Jakarta, and in the countryside, massive forest fires burned out of control, paralysing parts of the country with a toxic layer of smoke,' said the 1999 World Disasters Report. Economic damage from the climate-related problems can only have worsened the financial crisis the country was undergoing. Different problems are often unexpectedly related.  

We are surrounded by both virtuous and vicious cycles. Two of the great environment and development challenges of today could be related, both as problems and by possible solutions. Global warming and unpayable poor country debt have a huge impact on Christian Aid's partners internationally and are the site of great international struggles to find effective solutions. Characteristic of both the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the highly indebted poor country initiative (HIPC), is a meagre and bureaucratic response to life threatening phenomena, whether economic or climatic. 

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