By Raina Davis
In his monthly Deep Green Column for Greenpeace, Rex Wyler argued against a plan presented by executives at the World Economic Forum to increase international debt by 100 trillion US dollars. He discussed the human and ecological implications of extended debt, especially in developing countries, and the injustice of large banks profiting from loans based on synthetic currency, money essentially created "out of thin air."
By loaning currency rights to national treasuries, the bankers create $100 trillion with a few computer keyboard strokes. Then, they loan the fabricated money, collect interest payments and demand the principal back in real money from the debtors. Interest payments alone on $100 trillion debt (at a modest 5% annual rate) comes to $400 billion a month.
Debt pressure drives nations deeper into the ocean for oil and gas and deeper into wilderness for minerals. Desperate nations bulldoze forests for cash crops, dam rivers and burn coal for energy, open parks to mining and logging and obliterate national treasures to create cash to pay interest on debts.Some African nations spend 40% of government budgets on debt service, draining money from much needed health and education, which average about 14% of budgets. Debt breeds poverty.
Continue reading "Deep Green: Debt, Human Rights and Nature"
Wyler brings up some critical issues facing developing countries burdened by debt. His discussion of the ecological effects on highly indebted poor countries are especially well thought out. What the blog overlooks, however, are the root causes of and solutions to the climate challenges many poor countries face. There is a climate debt owed to developing countries.
The nations of the global North, especially those of the G8, are most responsible for the increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere but are the least affected by the resulting global climate change. Over the last 35 years, warmer and wetter weather has spread diseases like malaria to previously unaffected highlands, and higher temperatures at the sea surface have led to twice the number of Katerina-sized storms. Food supplies have suffered from cycles of drought followed by heavy rains and flooding, and the availability of fresh water has decreased as a result of changers in rainfall, snowfall, glacial melt, and snowmelt. Poor countries cannot afford to provide large-scale disaster relief, and thus the people who contribute the least to the problem suffer the most. Illegitimate debt is a global predicament and can only be alleviated with a united international front. Jubilee USA applauds Wyler's appeal to the UN to manage international debt and enforce international banking schemes that support local enterprise and community development. We also recognize the necessity of ensured disaster relief and call upon the global North to take responsibility for its past environmental abuse.
To learn more about Climate Debt, read Jubilee's resource on it here.
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