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What is Ecological Debt?
From 'Who's in the red now?' by Andrew Simms, November 2001
If you use more than your fair share of natural resources in a delicately balanced ecosystem you run-up an 'ecological debt'. It's a one way ticket to view a world turned upside down. And climate change is the key to understanding it.
In 1998 when Hurricane Mitch hit Central America, the Honduran President Carlos Flores commented: "We lost in 72 hours what took more than 50 years to build". Hurricane Mitch struck at the end of a decade in which climate-driven natural disasters had increased enormously. The financial services initiative of the UN Environment Programme estimates that the extra economic costs of disasters attributable to climate change are running at over $300 billion annually. The best guess of development groups is that climate change could cost developing countries up to £6.5 trillion over the next 20 years, many times anticipated aid flows.
It is generally accepted by climate watchers that, historically at least, industrialised countries are almost entirely responsible for human-driven global warming. So, in addition to having to pay to service dubious foreign debts, the poorest people in the poorest countries are also paying the price of global warming, or in other words, the interest on the ecological debts of the rich world. Of all deaths from natural disasters, 96 per cent occur in developing countries.
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