Report written by:
Name of author 1 (Affiliation)
Name of author 2 (Affiliation)
Name of author 3 (Affiliation)
Design:
Jacques bureau for graphic design
(Netherlands)
January, 2015
ejolt report
no. 18
Rikard Warlenius (coord.) with contributions from
Gregory Pierce, Vasna Ramasar, Eva Quistorp, Joan Martínez-Alier,
Leida Rijnhout, Ivonne Yanez
Ecological debt
History, meaning and relevance
for environmental justice
January - 2015
EJOLT Report No.: 18
History,
meaning
and
relevance
for
environmental
justice
Ecological
debt
Report coordinated by:
Rikard Warlenius (Lund University)
with contributions from
Gregory Pierce (Lund University), Vasna Ramasar (Lund
University), Eva Quistorp, Joan Martínez-Alier (Autonomous
University of Barcelona), Leida Rijnhout (European
Environment Bureau), Ivonne Yanez (Acción Ecológica)
Series editor:
Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
The contents of this report may be reproduced in whole or
in part for educational or non-profit services without special
permission from the authors, provided acknowledgement of
the source is made. Please send your queries about the
report series to beatriz.rodriguez@uab.cat.
This publication was developed as a part of the project
Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade
(EJOLT) (FP7-Science in Society-2010-1). The EJOLT
project (2011-15) has received funding from the European
Union’s 7th Framework Programme for research,
technological development and demonstration under grant
agreement no 266642. The views and opinions expressed
in this report the authors’ view and the European Union is
not liable for any use that may be made of the information
contained therein.
EJOLT aims to improve policy responses to and support
collaborative research and action on environmental conflicts
through capacity building of environmental justice groups
around the world.
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This document should be cited as:
Warlenius, R., Pierce, G., Ramasar, V., Quistorp, E., Martínez-Alier, J., Rijnhout, L., Yanez, I., 2015. Ecological
debt. History, meaning and relevance for environmental justice. EJOLT Report No. 18, 48 p.
Ecological debt: history, meaning and relevance for environmental justice
Abstract
The ecological debt concept emerged in the early 1990s from within social
movements driven by rising environmental awareness, emerging consciousness
of Western responsibility for past colonial subjugations, and a general sense of
injustice during the third world debt crisis. First developed organically, mainly in
locally-scaled, civil contexts, ecological debt has since gained attention in
academia and international environmental negotiations.
The concept of ecological debt requires further elucidation and elaboration,
especially in light of its historical interconnection with environmental justice. In this
paper, the development of the concept of ecological debt in both activist and
academic circles is described, theoretical building blocks for its operationalisation
are discussed and three brief cases illustrating its recent utilisation are presented.
Drawing on these building blocks, the concept of ecological debt has been used
as a biophysical measure, a legal instrument and a distributional principle. In
theory and in practice, it has much to offer to the global environmental justice
movement. We conclude by reflecting on some of the pros and cons of the
ecological debt concept as a tool to be used in fulfilling some of the goals of
environmental justice movements in the world today.
Keywords
Ecological debt
Climate debt
Carbon debt
Environmental Justice
sustainable development
debt cancellation
environmental movements
ecological economics
biophysical measures
Climate ethics
human rights
world economy
EJOLT Report No. 01
Ecological debt: history, meaning and relevance for environmental justice
Contents
Foreword
5
1
Introduction
7
2
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
11
2.1
1992: The cradle of a concept
11
2.2
‘Organic growth’: the build-up of a movement
14
3
Instantiating the past: from ‘organic growth’
to ‘collaborative strategising’
20
3.1
The activist Ecological Debt argument
20
3.2
Academic conceptualisations of Ecological Debt
22
3.3
Theoretical building blocks for ecological debt
25
4
Illustrating the present: three cases applying
the concept of Ecological Debt
27
4.1
Case I. Ecological Debt as a biophysical measure
27
4.2
Case II. Ecological and Climate Debt as legal instruments
29
4.3
Case III. Ecological Debt as a distributional principle
33
5
Final considerations on EJO utilisation
of the ecological debt concept
36
Acknowledgments
41
References
42
EJOLT Report No. 01
Ecological debt: history, meaning and relevance for environmental justice
Acronyms
ATCA
US Alien Tort Claims Act
AE
Acción Ecológica
ALBA
Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas
CBD
Convention on Biological Diversity
CBDR
Principle of common but differentiated responsibilities
CO2
Carbon Dioxide
COP
Conference of the Parties
EJOLT
Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade
EJO
Environmental Justice Organisation
ENRED
European Network for the Recognition of the Ecological Debt
EPA
Environmental Protection Agency
FOEI
Friends of the Earth International
GNP
Gross National Product
IMF
International Monetary Fund
KP
Kyoto Protocol
LDC
Least Developed Countries
MEA
Multilateral Environmental Agreements
NGO
Non-Governmental Organisation
OECD
Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation
PPP
Polluter Pays Principle
SAP
Structural Adjustment Program
SPEDCA
Southern People’s Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance
TWN
Third World Network
UN
United Nations
UNCCD
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
UNDP
United Nations Development Programme
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCCC
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
WWC
World Council of Churches
Page 5
Foreword
Foreword
Conflicts over resource extraction or waste disposal increase in number as the
world economy uses more materials and energy. Civil society organizations
(CSOs) active in Environmental Justice issues focus on the link between the need
for environmental security and the defence of basic human rights.
The EJOLT project (
Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade,
www.ejolt.org) is an FP7 Science in Society project that runs from 2011 to 2015.
EJOLT brings together a consortium of 23 academic and civil society
organizations across a range of fields to promote collaboration and mutual
learning among stakeholders who research or use Sustainability Sciences,
particularly on aspects of Ecological Distribution. One main goal is to empower
environmental justice organizations (EJOs), and the communities they support
that receive an unfair share of environmental burdens to defend or reclaim their
rights. This is done through a process of two-way knowledge transfer,
encouraging participatory action research and the transfer of methodologies with
which EJOs, communities and citizen movements can monitor and describe the
state of their environment, and document its degradation, learning from other
experiences and from academic research how to argue in order to avoid the
growth of environmental liabilities or ecological debts.
Thus EJOLT will increase the capacity of EJOs in using scientific concepts and
methods for the quantification of environmental and health impacts, increasing
their knowledge of environmental risks and of legal mechanisms of redress. On
the other hand, EJOLT is enriching research in the Sustainability Sciences
through mobilising the accumulated ‘activist knowledge’ of the EJOs and making it
available to the sustainability research community. Finally, EJOLT is also helping
to translate the findings of this mutual learning process into the policy arena,
supporting the further development of evidence-based decision making and
broadening its information base. We focus on the use of concepts such as
ecological debt, environmental liabilities and ecologically unequal exchange, in
science and in environmental activism and policy-making.
The overall aim of EJOLT is to improve policy responses to and support
collaborative research on environmental conflicts through capacity building of
environmental justice groups and multi-stakeholder problem solving. A key aspect
is to show the links between increased metabolism of the economy (in terms of
energy and materials), and resource extraction and waste disposal conflicts so as
to answer the driving questions:
Which are the causes of increasing ecological distribution conflicts at different
scales, and how to turn such conflicts into forces for environmental sustainability?
Page 6
Foreword
Among the different topics addressed in EJOLT, ecological debt represents one of
the most important cross-cutting issues. Not only does the project generate new
empirical evidence of North-South inequalities through activist research, but it also
reunites some of the organisations that have been particularly active in developing
this notion and in achieving its current influence on social movements and public
policies.
In particular, EJOLT has contributed to explore the legal implications of ecological
debt, by applying the principles of international environmental law and making
proposals to develop frameworks of international regimes for this purpose (EJOLT
report 11, Pigrau et al 2014). In March, 2014, a workshop on ecologically unequal
exchange and ecological debt took place in Lund, Sweden, Human Ecology
Division at the Lund University. Among other objectives, the participants
discussed possible policies for ameliorating asymmetries in the international trade
in ecological resources.
Now this EJOLT report 18 aims at bringing together these different voices,
pursuing several purposes. First, the contributors provide an overview of the
events in the short history of the ecological debt concept. Second, they summarise
the different perspectives the intellectual and practical application of the notion of
ecological debt. Third, and most importantly, they emphasize the prevailing validity
of the discussion, in face of the increasing pressures suffered by communities in
the Global South due to the socio-metabolic demands of the global economic
system.
Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
Series editor
Introduction
Page 7
1
Introduction
At least two reports on ecological debt were published in 1992: “Deuda ecológica”
(Robleto & Marcelo 1992) and “Miljöskulden” (Jernelöv 1992). The authors of
these reports, from Chile and Sweden respectively, were most likely unaware of
each other and their reports are quite different in approach and content. Robleto
and Marcelo's report was an interjection into the global environmental negotiations
going on in Rio at the time from a critical NGO, while Jernelöv's report was written
for the Swedish Environmental Advisory Council and largely intended for a
national audience.
The Chilean report reflected an ongoing debate on ecological debt that had
started in Latin America in the late 1980s and had intensified in the run-up to the
1992 Rio Earth Summit (Gudynas 2008)1. Although it presented ecological debt
specifically in the context of ozone depletion and the resulting costs to health in
Southern Chile, the concept was also generalized as, according to Robleto and
Marcelo, “
el patrimonio vital de la naturaleza . . . que ha sido consumido y no
restituido a ella” [“
the vital heritage of nature . . . that has been consumed and not
returned to it”; our translation].
The Swedish report, the title of which is translated as “The Environmental Debt”,
was, on the other hand, intended as a first attempt to calculate Sweden's debt to
future generations2. In it, ecological debt was defined as “
the restoration costs for
techno-economic environmental harms and the capital required to pay for
recurring repair efforts” (Jernelöv 1992:11, our translation). While Robleto &
Marcelo's report is often identified as seminal in campaigns calling for the
recognition of ecological debt, Jernelöv's conceptualisation of debt has had little
significance in international debates on the issue over the last twenty years,
though it is still occasionally referred to in Swedish research on sustainability.
1
According to Martinez-Alier (2002: 212), the first mention of ecological debt was, however, made by
German ecofeminist Eva Quistorp, a founding member of the Green Party (see
Box 1).
2
In the report, Sweden's 1990 environmental debt is assessed to ~SEK 260 billion, (roughly USD 40
billion), rising annually at a rate of ~SEK 6.6 billion, or USD 1 billion (at 2012 exchange rates)
(Jernelöv 1992:7-8).
Introduction
Page 8
Box 1 The concept of ecological debt, back in the 1980s
by Eva Quistorp
Within the preparations for Nairobi UN women’s conference in 1985, I organised a feminist working group on so-
called development politics, a topic that generated big debates in the left and alternative groups and greens and
churches in Germany at that time. I had developed an ecofeminist view on many problems of the world in the anti-
nuclear energy movement and the feminist movement since the early 70s. I wanted to change some of the world
views and debates within the left and the academia towards a more ecological direction, putting into question not
only the capitalist model but the models of progress and technologies and consumer life styles too.
Then maybe I had some different thoughts on debt, because I am a theologian and not an economist and not a
Marxist. My influences come from the early philosophical Marx, and Simone Weil, and Francis of Assisi, and Rachel
Carson, and Wanghaari Mathai, and my sisters in the global women’s and ecology movement and from those small
farmers women, and those like my grandmothers gardening and looking for livelihoods, who never used an airplane
or a refrigerator, or a car, or a cellular phone.
So I invented the term ecological debt as complementary to the debated financial debts and financial demands. I do
not like so much, that the term is now often used in the same sense as financial demands and less in political and
cultural and mental restructuring and changing life, consumption and production and reproduction patterns.
I was very happy, when my friend Christel Neusüss, who wrote the book “To put Lenin on his feet” , and who had
been a left political professor, immediately understood my new term and accepted it, with her more scientific view, as
well as my friend Helga Satzinger, a biologist and feminist writing a lot against genetic engineering too. So we
included the term with a text in a yellow booklet with the title “Women in movement”. We brought it to Nairobi, and it
was edited by the Green Group in the German Bundestag in 1985.
As a follow up of the brochure I offered a workshop in Nairobi on women, peace and ecology. It was the first one in
that direction at a UN Women’s Conference beside one Workshop of UNEP on environmental education. With the
term ecological debt I wanted women to get into strategic questions and look into our common ecological history of
the world, into our common goods (such as forests, and seas, and soil, and water), and not to degrade creation and
our common goods, or goods of the indigenous communities, or of land which should be owned by the women
farmers into ‘resources’, which is a technical, abstract, economic term. I did not want to use the term ecological debt
only for the old questions of who is guilty of colonialism, but look into the contradictions of societies too, within the
North and the South, because not all people misuse common goods and nature and atmosphere in the same way...
Partly in the Rio Conference in 1992 and in the 1995 Beijing conference the Women’s tent and the women’s agenda
integrated some of the issues and I am happy that Ecuador and researchers took up the term and it is going around
the world now. But I hate it, when the Chinese or Indian or Brazilian government elites are misusing it only to hide,
what they are doing with their coal mines, and forest killing and nuclear arms and so on.
The point in mentioning them together here is that they illustrate well the scope of
debates on the concept of ecological debt over the past twenty years. Indeed,
since 1992 the breadth and number of as yet unresolved questions relating to the
concept seem only to have grown: Should ecological debt mainly be expressed in
symbolic terms, or should it be quantified and monetized? Is it essentially a moral,
a political or an economic concept? Should it be applied mainly to the North-South
divide as a compensation for historical and ongoing injustices and inequalities, or
should it mainly be framed as an intergenerational debt owed to future world
citizens—or should it be a combination of the two? Should it be repaid, and how?
From whom, to whom?
Figure 1
Cover page of “Women in movement”
“We are the ones who are supposed to pay the debts of
an economic system that is increasingly being exposed
as incapable of guaranteeing the existence of human
beings and other living organisms on this earth. The
debts we are to pay are numerous: (…)
ecological debts,
caused by the plundering, pollution, and irreversible
destruction of our natural resources and making it ever
more difficult for women to secure the existential basis
for their lives and those of their children.”
Source: Laubach et al. 1985: 2
Picture: courtesy of E. Quistorp
Introduction
Page 9
This brief listing should by no means be considered comprehensive, and this
report does not pretend the impossible in attempting to definitively answer these
or other similarly difficult questions that continue to propel ongoing debates over
ecological debt. Rather, this report more modestly aims to provide an overview of
the development of the concept and to discuss some of the fields where it has
been or is currently being applied, especially in terms of the goals of the EJOLT
collaborative research project.
One of the primary goals of EJOLT, the Environmental Justice Organisations,
Liabilities and Trade research project, is to empower Environmental Justice
Organisations (EJOs) by elucidating scientific concepts and methodologies of
relevance to the often context-specific activities of such organisations. EJOLT's
2010 Proposal to the EU Commission makes this goal clear: “
There is a demand
from international EJOs and also from government officials for the instruction of
the methodology of such [academic] calculations in terms that activists and
citizens can understand” (EJOLT 2010:20).
Box 2 The relation between Environmental justice and Ecological debt
Source: Own elaboration
Environmental justice is a broader concept than Ecological debt, focusing more generally on the unequal distribution of
ecological burdens and benefits. It has its origin in struggles against the dumping of toxic waste in minority (mainly
African-American) communities in the US in the early 1980s, and was therefore originally aligned closely with
environmental racism). Since that time, environmental justice has spread beyond the US contexts of its origin and is
now widely used by activists and academics alike to call attention to how the distribution of ecological burdens follows
general patterns of power distributions (for a recent overview, see Martinez-Alier et al. 2014).
Ecological debt, on the other hand (and as focused on in this paper), is more often used as an indicator of the
cumulative, or net sum, of historical environmental injustices. Although not a defining condition of its usage, it primarily
focuses on historical geographical inequalities, as between specific countries or more generally between the global
North and South. Environmental justice can also be geographically oriented but is more likely to focus on categories
such as race, gender or class.
The aim of this report is therefore directly linked to the context within which it has
been drafted, as ecological debt (including climate debt) has been identified as a
key EJOLT concept, one that is in need of better elucidation if EJOs are to
operationalise its possibilities in their ongoing activities. Readers of this report
(and especially EJO activists) should in this way not only find themselves
introduced in a general sense to the concept of ecological debt but should also
find inspiration in reflecting on how the concept is already used or might be of use
in their ongoing struggles against inequality and injustice wherever they work in
the world. As such, the action research that EJOLT represents, which aims at
greater reciprocity and collaboration between academic theorisation and civil
practice, is further developed and normalised through the present text.
We believe that this aim of action research can also be better met by making the
‘activist knowledge’ practitioners in their work generate knowledge that is
unfortunately seldom recognised as such (and even less in demand) by academia,
more available as empirical data to more research-oriented activists. Such
academics, for their part, can in turn continue to work to develop and validate
more standardised methodologies and theoretical understandings based on this
Readers of this
report should not
only find themselves
introduced in a
general sense to the
concept of
ecological debt but
should also find
inspiration in
reflecting on how
the concept is
already used or
might be of use in
their ongoing
struggles
Introduction
Page 10
often place- and context-based activist knowledge in order to, hopefully, distil that
knowledge and make it available to a wider array of practitioners who struggle for
justice and equality within their own specific contexts around the world. By utilising
this distilled knowledge in those contexts, these activists can then generate further
sets of empirical data. And the cycle can continue.
Our hope is that the framing of this paper thus dialectically will initiate a more
enduring and fluid correspondence between activist and academic knowledge that
will continue into the future in building a collaborative framework for these two
different approaches to knowledge generation to achieve the shared goal of
environmental justice. We also believe that the development of such a framework
might provide a solid basis for moving forward in achieving the broader goals of
the EJOLT research project.
This report is organised into three main sections. After this introduction, the
second section gives an overview of the development of the concept of ecological
debt and the social movements that have brought it to the forefront. The third
section provides a glimpse at the current state of both activist and academic
knowledge types in terms of their claims for the concept, as well as theoretical
building blocks on which a foundation for operationalising ecological debt might be
formed. Thereafter, in the fourth section, three cases in which ecological debt has
been or can be utilised effectively in specific areas—as a biophysical measure
within sustainability science and ecological economics, as a legal tool within
international environment law and as a distributional principle within political
theory—are presented. Finally, we discuss some of the pros and cons of the
concept as a tool for fulfilling the goal of environmental justice in the world.
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 11
2
Historical
overview of the
concept of
Ecological Debt
2.1 1992: The cradle of a concept
In the early 1990s, with the convergence of three important historical drivers—
rising environmental awareness, emerging recognition of responsibility for colonial
subjugation, and unease during the debt crisis—the concept of ecological debt
was in the air3. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit, a follow-up to the first international
summit on the environment in Stockholm (1972), garnered a lot of media attention
for environmental and development issues, which in turn led for the first time to
the mobilisation of broad civil society on such issues. The Rio Summit was also
the event at which several struggles at different political and social scales that first
emerged in the 1960s and that had become significant issues around the world in
the 1970s and 1980s culminated. By the time of Rio, for example, many nations
had already acknowledged the impacts of emerging environmental issues and had
begun to take state-level measures to address them that had seldom before been
imagined possible. The founding of the US Environmental Protection Agency,
which was established in 1970 by the conservative Nixon administration, is an
illustrative example of the broad-based support for such initiatives.
Concurrent with these state-level political actions was the growing recognition in
social research of what in 1988 was termed by Peruvian historian Alberto Flores
Galindo ‘the environmentalism of the poor’. Because this form of environmentalism
grows out of “
local, regional, national and global distribution conflicts caused by
3
Colombia's president at the time, Virgilio Barco, used the concept in a speech in 1990. Fidel Castro
of Cuba used it in the Rio conference 1992 (Martinez-Alier 2002: 213).
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 12
economic growth and social inequalities” (Martinez-Alier 2002:14), the primary
actors in these conflicts—‘the poor’—tend not to regard themselves as
environmentalists per se, but rather as individuals and communities engaged in a
struggle to defend their very livelihoods. As ecological economist Joan Martinez-
Alier (2002:11) asserts:
[T]he main thrust of this . . . [environmental] current is not a sacred reverence for
Nature but a materialist interest in the environment as a source and a requirement
for livelihood; not so much a concern with the rights of other species and of future
generations of humans as a concern for today's poor humans . . . Its ethics derive
from a demand for contemporary social justice among humans (Martinez-Alier
2002:11).
The 1992 Rio Earth Summit should be seen here as illustrative of this point.
Perhaps the best known outcome of Rio are the conventions—on climate change,
biodiversity and desertification—that were adopted by the world’s state
governments.
Less well-remembered from the meeting, however, is that NGOs and grassroots
organisations also adopted a number of treaties of their own. Particularly relevant
within the context of this report was the adoption of the Debt Treaty, which frankly
stated that the “
planetary ecological debt of the North . . . is essentially constituted
by economic and trade relations based on the indiscriminate exploitation of
resources, and its ecological impacts, including global environmental deterioration,
most of which is the responsibility of the North“ (qtd. in Paredis et al. 2008:3). The
Treaty also demanded that pressure be put “
on international organisations for the
establishment, by the end of 1995, of a system of accounting of planet Earth in
order to quantify the cumulative debt of the Northern countries which results from
the resources they have levied and the destruction and waste produced in the
course of the last 500 years“ (Ibid:25).
Less well-
remembered than
the governmental
conventions from
the 1992 Rio
meeting, is that
NGOs and
grassroots
organisations also
adopted a number of
treaties of their
own, such as the
Debt Treaty
Figure 2
The UN Earth Summit in Rio
de Janeiro, 1992
Several environmental
conventions adopted during
the Summit were criticised for
being toothless. Greenpeace
protested with a banner
"SOLD" hanging from the side
of Sugar Loaf Mountain. But in
Rio, also NGO's and
grassroots organisations
adopted documents such as
the Debt Treaty.
Photo credit: Greenpeace /
Steve Morgan
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 13
To be sure, the irony of 1992, which marked the 500-year anniversary of the
‘discovery’ of the Americas by Columbus in 1492, was lost on neither the framers
of the treaty nor on others at the meeting. While Columbus’ landing in what would
become the West Indies was celebrated by some as auspicious in the shaping of
the modern world, others chose instead to celebrate 500 years of indigenous
resistance and commemorate the victims of a half millennia of colonialism and
oppression, of so many centuries of plunder and resource extraction in the
Americas in historical accrual by the Western architects of the modern state
system of an as yet unpaid ecological debt.
The early 1990s gave rise not only to such solemn remembrances of this history
of accrual, however, but also to growing acknowledgment of its persistence even
into the late-20th century, especially with the focus at the time on the debt crisis
that had by then all but consumed the global South. Briefly4, in the 1970s
international bankers, searching for lucrative capital investments after the
stagnation of industrialised state economies that resulted from oil price shocks,
began to offer cheap loans to developing countries, whose governments borrowed
heavily—at times in earnest response to growing international pressures to
develop, at others to satisfy decidedly less savoury compulsions. Responding to
this industrial stagnation and concerned over rising inflation, however, U.S.
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker resolved early in Reagan’s first term to
shift from Keynesian to monetarist policies in an effort to break this stagflationary
impasse. Volcker’s move, which steeply raised the federal funds rate from an
average of 11.9 per cent in 1979 to 20 per cent in 1981, succeeded in controlling
inflation, but at the same time it put heavily indebted third world countries in an
impossible situation in regards to debt repayment.
Faced with default, countries saddled with these heavy external debts found
themselves at the mercy of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), which set conditions for bail-out or further funding that mandated ‘structural
adjustments’ to liberalise national economies and governance structures. Such
adjustments, which led to the demise of the Keynesian state as a governance
framework around the globe, included massive cuts in public expenditures,
removal of state price controls and subsidies, comprehensive privatizations of
state-owned companies, currency devaluations and trade liberalisation.
Concurrent across the global South with the introduction of such economic
adjustment measures was as a direct result of those measures the rise of grave
social consequences, from reductions in health and education spending, to
growing malnutrition, to increased unemployment, to dispossessions of land and
tenure rights, etc. As standard practice, such structural adjustment programs also
tellingly forced developing countries to refocus their economic activities on
increasing exports of primary products through intensified resource extraction.
4
See George (1988) for a detailed history.
What made the
concept of
ecological debt so
brilliant was that it
suddenly made it
possible for the
developing South to
turn tables against
financial creditors in
the North
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 14
By the early 1990s, the ecological and social degradations that had at that point
already resulted from this mandated intensification of extractive activities lent even
further authority to the emergence of ecological debt as a concept that could
account for both historical and ongoing injustices levied on the peoples of the
global South by the seemingly unappeasable rapaciousness of the North.
Recognising the place of this contemporary injustice in history at least since
Columbus, one key paragraph of the 1992 Debt Treaty states that foreign debt is
only “
the most recent mechanism of the exploitation of Southern peoples and the
environment by the North“ (qtd. in Paredis et al. 2008:3).
What made the concept of ecological debt so brilliant in this context was that it
suddenly made it possible to turn tables against creditors in the North; while the
developing South had to this point in modern history always been framed as
indebted to the industrial North, that is, the concept of ecological debt effectively
reversed the direction of the arrow of arrears. Framed through an ecological debt
discourse, degradation of both environmental and social ecologies of the South
constituted an unpaid account of ongoing Northern accrual. The global North, in
other words, became historically reprobate, a delinquent debtor.
2.2 ‘Organic growth’: the build-up of a movement
Paredis et al. (2008:23) aptly describe the development of the concept of
ecological debt since the early 1990s as a process of ‘organic growth’. Surfacing
originally within different civil, locally-scaled contexts and even to this day not
having a standardised definition or truly anchoring personality, place or approach,
the concept has remained rather amorphous and flexible in its characterisations,
methodologies and practical applications. On this count, it deviates from similar
concepts such as ecological footprints and environmental space that were
conceived of by academic researchers and had already garnered restricted
definitions and unified methodologies before subsequently being adopted by
NGOs and other civil society activists and practitioners.
Indeed, only the Catalan ecological economist Joan Martinez-Alier (see
section 3)
has been recognised as the exception to the general rule of the disconnection
between academic and civil society treatments of the ecological debt concept. In
referencing its ‘organic growth’, therefore, Paredis et al. rightly suggest that the
development of the conception of ecological debt has been a bottom-up, inductive
process of reasoned knowledge generation through which original ideas and novel
practices have continued to emanate and flow out of the ground-level, place-
based experiences and concerns of campaigners and practitioners actively
pursuing ecological equity and justice in the world.
In the years directly following the 1992 Earth Summit, the concept of ecological
debt gestated within the context of then-prevalent campaigns for external debt
cancellation, growing through side events and networking opportunities at
conferences and through mention in publications calling for cancellation of the
global South’s external debt. A key actor in this period was the Ecuadorian NGO
and EJOLT partner Acción Ecologica (AE), which presented the statement “No
The development of
the conception of
ecological debt has
been a bottom-up,
inductive process of
reasoned knowledge
generation through
which original ideas
and novel practices
have continued to
emanate
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 15
More Plunder: They Owe Us the Ecological Debt” in Johannesburg in 1999 (AE
2000). That same year, representatives of Friends of the Earth International
(FoEI), while gathered in Quito, launched a campaign on ecological debt (FOEI
2003). Together, AE and FOEI organised a network of NGOs in founding the
Southern People's Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance (SPEDCA), the aim of which
was to push for the “
international recognition of the ecological debt, historical and
current“ (Paredis et al. 2008:4). Soon after, an alliance of ecological ‘debtors’
sympathetic to arguments for recognition of the concept of ecological debt, the
European Network for the Recognition of the Ecological Debt (ENRED), was also
formed (e.g. WCC 2002).5
Then, in 1999, at the peak of the Jubilee 2000 Debt Campaign, the brochure “Who
owes who?: Climate change, debt, equity and survival” (Simms et al. 1999) was
distributed. The brochure, which included an attempt to quantify the historical
carbon debt of the North in comparison to the external debt facing the South, was
one of the first publications in which the idea of a carbon (later climate) debt was
formulated, resembling the historical responsibility approach that had been
proposed by Brazil and included in the 1997 UNFCCC negotiations. In the debate
sparked by this idea of historical responsibility, as Roberts and Parks (2007)
explain, the notion of carbon debt was referred to by representatives from several
developing countries. The brochure also, importantly, marked a shift in focus from
the concept of ecological to that of climate debt, which provided the debt concept
with greater exposure and legitimacy in mainstream discussions at the time.
5
While SPEDCA seems to be active as of the writing of this paper insofar as regular updates are
made on their web page (http://www.deudaecologica.org), a glance at the ENRED site
(www.enredeurope.org) gives the impression that it, after an ambitious start at the European Social
Forum in Paris in 2003, ceased to be active in 2004.
Figure 4
In December 2009, 100,000 people marched in Copenhagen for
a climate deal
A great deal of the protests evolved around the concept of climate
debt
Photo credit: Benno Hansen / Wikimedia
Figure 3
The campaign on ecological debt
Thanks to the support of FoEI in Prague in 2000, the campaign on
ecological debt made a qualitative leap, founding the Southern
People's Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance
Photo credit: Acción Ecológica
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 16
Box 3 The concept of climate debt
Source: Patrick Bond, interviewed by Chandra Kumar (2010)
In an interview with Chandra Kumar (2010) – partially reproduced next -, Patrick Bond, from the Centre for Civil
Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban, explains he origins of the climate debt concept and how it can
be operationalized.
“Chandra Kumar: Climate talks broke down at Copenhagen. The G-77, representing 130 countries, suspended talks
because they felt the countries of the North – with the US and Canada being the most glaring culprits – were
unwilling to accept responsibility for their emissions. We heard the phrases ‘climate debt’ and ‘climate justice’ coming
from representatives of the South. What do these concepts refer to and how do you think activists in countries like
Canada should take them up?
Patrick Bond: ‘Climate justice’ is the phrase that was popularized as a movement slogan at the December 2007
launch of the network Climate Justice Now! in Bali. The idea of climate justice brings together radical
environmentalism with global justice currents such as those forged by Zapatismo, and by the protests in Seattle,
Quebec City, Soweto, Bhopal, the Narmada Valley, and several other cases of recent Indigenous activism and anti-
capitalism. The indigenous, small island, African, and Andean leadership we’ve seen is vital given this movement’s
need to take direction from those most adversely affected. […]
Another great boost for these efforts came from the research and eloquent reportage of Naomi Klein who in late
2009, assisted many in the North to realize how much they owe the South in damages for taking up too much
environmental space: that is ‘climate debt’. The phrase is most closely associated with Quito-based Acción Ecológica
and its advisor Joan Martinez-Alier of Barcelona, but Jubilee South chapters from Manila to Buenos Aires have also
made this a campaigning issue.
Last April, in an inspiring statement to the UN General Assembly, the Bolivian government played a leading role in
putting climate debt on the UN’s agenda. In September the World Council of Churches endorsed the idea despite the
opposition of some Northern members. But the big breakthrough in the last half of 2009 was the willingness of the
Ethiopian tyrant, Meles Zenawi, to demand a Copenhagen commitment to Africa of up to $100 billion per year by
2020, without which the Africans would walk out. They even did a November dress rehearsal at a preparatory
meeting in Barcelona. […]
As for the climate debt demand, some of us (including me) were naive to believe Zenawi, who detoured to Paris on
his way to Copenhagen and, with the enthusiastic support of Nikolas Sarkozy, promptly cut his demands in half by
accepting lower financial transfers and removing the walk-out threat. But now that the climate debt genie is out of the
bottle, US officials – in denial of course, refusing to acknowledge the concept – and Europe will continue to be
badgered to pay by CJ activists. So will South Africa, which owes the continent a vast amount, given that we emit 42
percent of Africa’s greenhouse gases but have less than 8 percent of its population.
One of the nuanced debates is whether the debt should take the form of individualized and potentially commodifiable
‘Greenhouse Development Rights’ or whether instead we can move toward more transformative and collective
strategies for claiming debt instead. Another debate concerns the form in which the climate debt would be paid, since
no sensible climate debt activist trusts the kinds of strategies that the likes of Hillary Clinton offer: CDM expansion via
carbon trading, or the traditionally corrupt, corporate-dominated, and geopolitically-influenced aid of the sort the
Canadian International Development Agency is infamous for. We’re even unsure of the reliability of the G-77 climate
financing demands, which include both public payments and market mechanisms.”
Just like ecological debt being closely related to the wider concept of
environmental justice, climate debt has developed in relation to climate justice, a
notion first used in the late 1980s and was picked up by the climate movement
around the turn of the millennium. The US-based Corporate Watch organised a
Climate Justice Summit in den Haag 2000 and inspired the adoption of “The
Climate Justice Declaration” by US EJO’s in 2004 (Roberts and Parks 2009:394-
395). The same year, an EJO meeting in South Africa adopted “The Durban
Declaration on Carbon Trading” with the headline “Climate Justice Now!” (DGCJ
2004). This developed into a global network – see www.climate-justice-now.org/ –
that was launched in Bali 2007 and has been a strong mobilising force for the
payment of the climate debt, particularly around the UN conferences on climate
change.
Not until 2009, in the run-up to the much-anticipated COP-15 meeting in
Copenhagen, did the concepts of ecological and climate debt really come into the
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 17
mainstream of discussions as a part of the global South’s negotiating platform (cf.
Bond 2010). At a meeting in Bonn in June of that year, for example, Bolivia’s chief
climate negotiator, Angelica Navarro, demanded the repayment of the climate
debt. Countries from both Latin America (e.g. Cuba, the Dominican Republic,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela) and South Asia (e.g. Sri Lanka) also spoke out
in favour of climate debt repayment, while Lesotho, on behalf of the world’s 49
least developed countries, similarly affirmed support of the concept (TWN 2010).
Also in 2009, the declaration “Repay the Climate Debt: A Just and Effective
Outcome for Copenhagen” (TWN 2009a) was drafted and signed by at least 254
organisations, most of which were from the global South (TWN 2009b). According
to the declaration, developed countries are actually in arrears to developing
countries for a two-fold debt: an emissions debt and an adaptation debt, which
together make up the total climate debt. Notably, however, this climate debt is
expressly seen as only one “
part of a larger ecological, social and economic debt
owed by the rich industrialised world to the poor majority” (TWN 2009a).
After representatives at the Copenhagen meeting failed to produce any
substantive outcomes, Bolivia's Evo Morales convened the People's World
Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which was held in
Cochabamba in April 2010. This initiative was supported by over 200 civil
organisations as well as by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA)-
affiliated states (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela). At Cochabamba,
a “People's Agreement” (PWCCC 2010) was adopted, which included a fierce
criticism of the UN climate negotiation process and eventually formed the basis of
a comprehensive Bolivian proposal submitted to that same process a year later
(UNFCCC 2010c:14-39). Climate debt is a central concept in both the “People's
Agreement” and the Bolivian proposal, which characterised ongoing Northern debt
accrual thusly: “
[B
]y over-consuming the available capacity of the Earth's
atmosphere and climate system to absorb greenhouse gases the developed
countries have run up a climate debt to developing countries and mother Earth“
(Ibid:15). Significantly, the final declaration of the People's Summit in Rio+20 in
2012 states its “
recognition of the historical social and ecological debt” (People's
Summit 2012).
Within UNFCCC negotiations the
Figure 5
The People's World Conference on Climate
Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
After the failed climate summit in Copenhagen,
Bolivia's Evo Morales (in the middle) invited to
“The People's World Conference on Climate
Change and the Rights of Mother Earth” held
in Cochabamba in April 2010. A "People's
agreement" was adopted, demanding an
acknowledgement of the climate debt
Photo credit: Kris Krüg / Wikimedia
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 18
concept of ecological debt lost some ground after 2009, but representatives from
the small island states at the Cancun talks in 2010 introduced as a third point of
negotiation to augment mitigation and adaptation the concept of ‘loss and
damage’, which in its original form resembles climate debt (as well as the
historical responsibility approach). Building on this development, the “Warsaw
International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” was then introduced at COP 19 in
2013. It seems to have stalled there, however, as the meeting’s final compromise
saw the Warsaw mechanism relegated to a sub-position under the adaptation
pillar, with no reference being made to historical liability or compensation for
accrued debt. As revealed by “The Hindu” (2013), an internal briefing by the US
State Department made it clear that the US government does not regard claims of
‘compensation and liability’ as a “
productive avenue for the UNFCCC to go down”.
To round out this brief history of the concept of ecological debt a further clarifying
comment on scale is appropriate here. Since its first articulations in the 1980s, the
concept of ecological debt has most commonly been used to express relations
between states or groups of states at the global scale; when considering the
concept more broadly, however, locally-scaled perspectives, although largely
ignored in the debate, are without doubt worth acknowledging and exploring more
fully. The idea is that although the extent of the ecological damages caused by the
actions of a particular industrial facility often cannot be confined to national
boundaries, much of the impact from such point-source polluters tends
nonetheless to be localised. To this effect, Paredis et al. (2008:5) have identified a
recent trend of applying the debt concept to situations in which corporations are
framed as being in arrears for their environmentally and socially localised but no
less harmful activities. Terming such a localised instance of ecological debt ‘the
private ecological debt’ or ‘the environmental liability’ Meynen and Sebastian
(2013:434) define this more limited formulation of debt as, at minimum:
The sum of all monetized ecological damages accumulated over a time in the
geographically defined surroundings of a certain extraction or production unit, where
the cause-effect relationship between the unit and the damages is sufficiently unique
and confirmed.
Due to the controversies surrounding ‘monetization’ of natural resources, the
above definition is contestable. Opposition to the definition can, however, be
contrasted with existing international jurisprudence, as many countries—and the
local actors/EJOs that work within them—now have environmental laws and
institutions designed to handle such cases of localised liability that might be
framed through the general concept of ecological debt. Admittedly, the potential
challenges actors face in moving forward with such liability claims are enormous
(i.e. lack of legislative comprehensiveness, lack of implementation capacity, lack
of political will, etc.) and each particular case and country will be different, but the
fact that such litigation falls now within the realm of possibility can be regarded as
Historical overview of the concept of Ecological Debt
Page 19
at least some small progress towards broadening the concept of ecological debt
through downscaling to more localised instances of socio-environmental arrears
(see Peralta, 2007).6
What this small progress might portend for the future is by no means
inconsiderable. Because the operations and influences of most EJOs is also
localised, the importance of the concept of ecological debt to such actors at local
and sub-national levels cannot be gainsaid. As such, the concept is immediately
useful as an increasingly more powerful and recognised tool available to such
organisations in their locally scaled struggles for environmental justice.
At the same time, operationalisation of the concept in this way might also more
robustly connect local organisations to the burgeoning international ecological
debt and justice movement, where they might find reinforcement in their struggles
through such possibilities as virtual eco-justice collaboratories, jurisprudence
cyber-workshops, knowledge- and experience-sharing forums, media kit templates
and guidance, etc. Like this, the goal of environmental justice that is so central to
the EJOLT research project can be furthered through empowerment and
collaboration across multiple scales of action. At the same time, the
mainstreaming of the concept to a broader audience, as with the prominent role it
plays in activist-author Naomi Klein’s book, “This Changes Everything” (2014),
further bolsters its legitimacy and increases its recognition beyond the core of that
international movement. In this way, small progress can lead to great outcomes;
the organic growth of history can lead to great movements of progressive change.
6 For an analysis of the strategies used by environmental justice organisations to economically
evaluate environmental liabilities, see the EJOLT report 16 (Zografos et al. 2014).
Figure 6
Mainstreaming the ecological debt
concept
In 2014 renowned author and social
activist Naomi Klein published the book
“This Changes Everything”. Her interest
in climate change started with a meeting
she had in 2009 with Bolivia's climate
negotiator Angelica Navarro who
explained the concept of climate debt
Source: www.thischangeseverthing.org
Page 20
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
3
Instantiating
the past
From ‘organic growth’
to ‘collaborative strategising’
Science for the sake of science is a principle grounded in a past often marked by
centrism and inequity. Science today must be understood more broadly and made
more useful to more people in the world, especially in this time of rapidly mounting
global degradations and injustices. The action research that EJOLT represents
aims to make science more useful to more people in part by establishing greater
reciprocities and collaborations between theorisation and practice. We believe that
this aim can be better met by synergising the ‘activist knowledge’ practitioners
generate in their work and the standardised methodologies and theoretical
understandings of academics.
An important task in thus fashioning such an activist-academic dialectic within the
context of this paper is to relate briefly and in broad strokes the current state of
both knowledge types in terms of their arguments for ecological debt. Our hope is
that framing these diverse types of knowledge in this way will initiate a more
enduring and fluid correspondence between them that will continue into the future.
By better understanding one another, in terms of both strengths and weaknesses,
a collaborative framework that grounds the best aspects of how civil organisations
and academic institutions approach knowledge generation can be built in pursuit
of the shared goal of ecological justice. The development of such a framework
might provide a solid basis for moving forward in achieving the broader goals of
the EJOLT research project.
3.1 The activist Ecological Debt argument
Despite the concept of ecological debt’s organic growth as recounted above, it has
always retained a stable conceptual core. Sociologist James Rice (2009), in
applying argument analysis to eight NGO policy papers that advocate for the
Page 21
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
ecological debt concept, describes the rhetoric of these papers as representative
of the stability of this core through their “
counter-hegemonic discourse calling for a
fundamental reappraisal of North–South political and economic relations” (Ibid:
249). In his analysis, Rice identifies four primary claims that underlie the eight
NGOs’ arguments in advocating for the ecological debt concept. Instead of
conducting another analysis of the EJO arguments, the following is based on
Rice’s study.
The first and most fundamental claim made in these policy papers is of the
existence of a
socio-ecological subsidy:
Northern historical development and present production and consumption levels are
reliant upon a socio-ecological ‘subsidy’ imposed on Southern countries. The socio-
ecological subsidy refers to the underpayment and, at times, explicit looting of the
natural resource assets and labor power of Southern countries (Idem: 233).
This subsidy, which began in the colonial era and continues unabated even today,
not only enriches the North but also “
impoverishes and degrades the land, culture,
and development potential of Southern countries”. Supporting this claim are
correlations between environmental degradation and trade relations with the North
as well as data on the North's disproportionate use of the global commons.
Important warrants, linking the data to the claim, are theories of ecologically
unequal exchange and deteriorating terms of trade (e.g. prices of Southern export
commodities falling as a result of increased competition). Another aspect of this
socio-ecological subsidy is the North's appropriation of a disproportionate share of
the global sink-capacity through its vast greenhouse gas emissions (Idem: 234-
235).
Figure 7
Ecological debt as an impoverishing socio-
ecological subsidy
According to the activists, the ecological debt is the
result of a socio-ecological ‘subsidy’ imposed on
countries of the South. This global inequality is also
illustrated by Jens Galschiøt-s and Lars Calmar's
sculpture Survival of the fattest
Photo credit: Wikimedia
Page 22
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
The second claim made by NGO advocates of the ecological debt concept
concerns
cancellation of the South's external financial debt. External debt is
viewed as the “
fulcrum whereby the current development model entrenches the
continuance of the socio-ecological subsidy” (Idem: 237). In order to repay their
debt, Southern countries are forced to accelerate extraction and export of their
natural resources, which, as the same development model is forced upon all
debtors simultaneously, tends to reduce the price of these resources on the world
market and thereby leads to further intensification of extractive efforts. In a truly
vicious circle, therefore, external debt repayment is shown actually to lead to an
increase in the ecological debt claim of the South against the accounts of the
North. The call for external debt cancellation should, consequently, not be seen as
a benevolence conferred upon the developing world but as an obligation for the
whole world if real action is going to be taken against ongoing ecological and
social degradations. Whatever the monetary value of such continued degradation
might be, it is likely many times higher than the financial debt now owed to the
North (Idem: 237-238). Framed in this way, the arrow of arrears can again be
shown to be reversed through the ecological debt concept.
The NGO advocates’ third claim is that
present levels of Northern production
and consumption are unsustainable over the long term, especially since they
are founded on the socio-ecological subsidy of the South. In this way, the
neoliberal development model can be shown to be at the root of not only the
impoverishment of the global South but also of the global ecological crisis. One
implicit target of this claim is the reductionism of neoclassical economics, with its
tendency to overlook the socio-ecological subsidy and insist “
on quantifying
everything according to a monetary metric” (Idem: 240).
The fourth claim collectively made by the NGOs is that
the ecological debt must
be paid. As Rice argues, “
equity for present and rational obligations to future
generations demands Northern countries begin paying back the accrued socio-
ecological subsidy, an obligation that can be defined as an 'ecological debt'”
(Idem, 241). Closing the Northern account and alleviating the debt, it is argued, is
not only a matter of justice but could also be a first step in avoiding the anticipated
collapse scenario of the current development model. It would also represent a
move towards a more sustainable model of social organisation. As such, this claim
amounts to a moral demand, presenting a clear alternative to the neoliberal
worldview. Towards this goal, a first action might be the immediate cancellation of
the South's external debt followed by—in actively reversing the arrow of arrears—
the implementation of a much needed structural adjustment of the North, an
adjustment towards a way of life that is sustainable for all (Idem: 244).
3.2 Academic conceptualisations of Ecological Debt
Concurrent with the organic growth of the concept among civil and activist
organisations, ecological debt has also increasingly garnered widespread support
and legitimacy within academic circles. Indeed, academic investigations have for
In a truly vicious
circle external
debt repayment is
shown actually to
lead to an
increase in the
ecological debt
claim of the South
against the
accounts of the
North
Page 23
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
the most part attempted to more formally develop the claims of NGO advocates,
linking ecological debt to quantifiable tools within economics, material flows and
environmental resource accounting. Two significant contributors to the
development of our understanding of ecological debt have come from economic
historian and ecological economist Joan Martinez-Alier at the Autonomous
University of Barcelona and a group of Belgian researchers led by Erik Paredis at
Ghent University.
According to Martinez-Alier (2002), ecological debt is an economic concept that
arises from distribution conflicts of two kinds. The first is ecologically unequal
exchange, which can be defined as “
the fact of exporting products from poor
regions and countries, at prices which do not take into account the local
externalities caused by these exports or the exhaustion of natural resources, in
exchange for goods and services from richer regions” (Ibid: 214).
This concept has its roots in a structuralist world-systems analysis with a Marxist-
inspired, heterodox economic view of world trade. Through it, world trade is seen
as unjust because of power relations that enable core nations to establish
oligopolies and impose deteriorating terms of trade upon ‘developing countries’ at
the periphery of the system. In the 1980s and 1990s, political ecologists adopted
this framework for analysis, broadening it to include not only its traditional social
and economic factors but also introducing as a factor the ecologically devastating
aspects of the unequal exchange between the global North and South (cf. Bunker
1985, Altvater 1993, Hornborg 1998, 2011). The second conflict leading to
ecological debt according to Martinez-Alier arises in the tendency of wealthy
countries to disproportionately utilise environmental space without paying for it.
This tendency primarily refers to the use of carbon sinks and is an important factor
in the accrual of carbon or climate debt. Based on Martinez-Alier’s understanding
(though over-simplistically stated), ecological debt can therefore be described as
the cumulative result (or stock) of ecologically unequal exchange (flows), plus
carbon debt.
Significantly, the primary components of Martinez-Alier's conceptualisation of
ecological debt can be traced through the very real social and ecological instances
of injustice that are manifest around the modern world. Ecologically unequal
exchange, for example, is seen to emerge in the (unpaid) costs of reproduction or
maintenance or sustainable management of renewable resources that have been
exported from the peripheries of global South. It is also discernible in the costs of
the future unavailability of destroyed, non-renewable natural resources as well as
in the paltry compensation for, or (unpaid) costs for reparations of, the local
damages produced by exports or the present value of irreversible damage. Finally,
ecologically unequal exchange can also be seen to appear in the (unpaid) amount
of the commercial value of appropriated genetic resources. As for the
disproportionate use of environmental space, two important manifestations (a by
no means comprehensive list) in the world are notable: the (unpaid) reparation
costs or compensation for the impacts caused by imports of toxic waste, and the
(unpaid) costs of free disposal of gas residues (GHGs and other kinds of air
pollution), assuming equal rights to sinks and reservoirs.
Page 24
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
Martinez-Alier admits that quantifying ecological debt in monetary terms is knotty
but emphasises that the point is to “consider that the external debt from south to
north has already been paid on account of the ecological debt the north owes to
the south” (2002:233), implying that a detailed line-up of ecological debits and
credits is perhaps neither possible nor necessary. To those critical of the very idea
of monetizing nature's services, he entreats, “
mea culpa. My excuse is that the
language of chrematistics7 is well understood in the north” (Idem, 228).
The most comprehensive synthesis of earlier analyses of ecological debt, as well
as one of the most detailed attempts at quantifying the concept, has been
undertaken by a group of Belgian scholars led by Erik Paredis at Ghent University.
In their 2008 book “The Concept of Ecological Debt: Its Meaning and Applicability
in International Policy”8 (Paredis et al. 2008), they survey existing literature,
advance a synthesis definition (see below), propose methodological and
theoretical building blocks and discuss ecological debt’s status in international
environmental law. They also meticulously calculate two parts of Belgium's
ecological debt: 1) that accrued from its use of energy and consequent
contribution to climate change, and 2) that from its agricultural production and food
supply. The primary aim of their research is to remedy some of the weaknesses
they have identified relating not to the concept as such but to the
operationalisation of the concept. As Paredis and his colleagues argue:
The reality of ecological debt cannot be denied: the historical and current ecological
damage experienced by other countries and global ecosystems caused by
industrialized countries and the overuse of ecosystem goods and services are amply
documented. Besides, the concept . . . [is] a potentially powerful tool for reviewing
North and South relations or rethinking sustainable development policies (IX)
Moreover, the authors argue that a more precise working definition of ecological
debt must be drafted if current weaknesses that they have identified in the concept
are to be overcome. They conclude by submitting the following definition for
general consideration:
The ecological debt of country A consists of
1. the ecological damage caused over time by country A in other countries or
in areas under the jurisdiction of other countries through its production and
consumption patterns, and/or
7
Thought to have been originally introduced by Thales (5th century BCE), chrematistics can be
defined as the art of getting rich. Aristotle’s usage of the term is better known, however, mainly in its
being posited as the ethically reprehensible diametric to necessary economic activities,
”
oeconomia”.
8
The 2008 book was first published as a report (Paredis et al. 2004). Only the book will be
referenced here.
Page 25
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
2. the ecological damage caused over time by country A to ecosystems
beyond national jurisdiction through its consumption and production
patterns, and/or
3. the exploitation or use of ecosystems and ecosystems goods and services
over time by country A at the expense of the equitable rights to these
ecosystems and ecosystem goods and services of other countries or
individuals (Paredis et al. 2008:149).
The two key concepts in Paredis and his colleagues’ working definition are
‘ecological damage’ and ‘use at the expense of the equitable rights of others’. In
these terms, an ecological debt can be said to have accrued when one country
causes ecological damage in another country or to the global commons. Accrual
can also be said to have occurred in situations where disproportionate use has
been made of ecosystem services that could otherwise have been reasonably
assumed to be shared equally by all on the earth. This definition notably echoes
Martinez-Alier's conceptualisation of the two distributional conflicts that lead to the
accrual of ecological debt, where the first—the cumulative effects of ecologically
unequal exchange—consists of ecological damage, and the second—
disproportionate use of the global commons—results in situations of “
use at the
expense of the equitable rights of other countries”.
3.3 Theoretical building blocks for ecological debt
The development of ecological debt as a concept of consequential use to a
burgeoning movement will require that its ongoing organic growth be somewhat
tempered by the development of a solid theoretical foundation from which both
activists and academics can draw and to which they can refer regardless of where
they work and struggle for justice in the world. This is not to say that the concept’s
growth should be stultified; indeed, it should not be. But moving forward into the
future, it does need to be channelled appositely. In order to strengthen the
scientific foundations of the concept in this way, Paredis et al. (2008:72-81) have
thus proposed that ecological debt be recognised as resting on four theoretical
building blocks.
First, a rich theoretical tradition of
biophysical accounting systems already
exists and can be readily tied in to the ambitious project of measuring trade flows
in non-monetary, ecological terms. The relevance of these accounting methods
are largely justified through the theories of
ecological economics, which is the
second theoretical building block recommended by Paredis et al. Ecological
economists have long used biophysical accounting systems as a complement to
the monetary focus of conventional economics in order to account for nature and
ecosystems—or, more frankly, to illuminate the fundamental un-sustainability of
An ecological debt
can be said to
have accrued
when one country
causes ecological
damage in another
country or to the
global commons
Page 26
From ‘organic growth to ‘collaborative strategising’
industrial capitalism that is largely obscured by conventional economics (cf.
Martinez-Alier 1990).9
A third important foundation for the ecological debt concept comes from theories
of
environmental justice and human rights. Although the roots of ecological
debt are (primarily) in Latin American environmentalism, anti-colonialism and the
struggle for debt relief, the analysis bears striking resemblance to the thinking of
(primarily) North American environmental justice/environmental racism grassroots
movements. These movements focus on how the distribution of ecological
burdens are indurated by historically constituted power relations (Bullard 1990)
and often frame them as questions of human rights. Justification of ecological debt
can also draw on theories and cases of
historical injustices and restitution, the
fourth conceptual foundation for ecological debt as identified by Paredis and his
colleagues. There are cases—such as with war crimes, genocides and ecological
disasters—in which debts have been acknowledged as having arisen even when
no previous contract had been drafted (Paredis et al. 2008:73-82, cf. Martinez-
Alier 2002:228), bolstering the argument for the existence of an ecological debt.
In his sympathetic critique, Rice (2009:248-249) proposes an additional, fifth
theory on which to further build the debt concept: a broad, ecologically-oriented
world-system analysis framework. World-system analysis was developed
mainly by Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1970s and was reenergised by political
ecologists from the 1980s and onward. It has continued to ground relevant
research on ecological and social dimensions of unequal exchange and uneven
development within the world system (for overviews, see Roberts & Parks
2007:165-169; 2009).
9
One could argue that biophysical measures is an integral part of ecological economics, but the
division of them into two theories is preferred by Paredis et al. 2008.
Page 27
Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
4
Illustrating the
present
Three cases applying the
concept of Ecological Debt
The five theories mentioned in the section afore are distinct yet closely related to
ecological debt. They are all useful but not individually capable of illustrating the
particular, historical injustice that ecological debt is exposing. Since they are more
acknowledged by the scientific community, a further application of them on the
field of ecological debt can however be used to sophisticate and legitimise the
ecological debt concept. That is not to say that ecological debt and similar
concepts have not already been utilised practically; quite the opposite is true.
Illustrations of how these concepts have been used until now not only further
demonstrate their value as tools in the pursuit of justice but also helpfully provide
cases to which both activists and academics can refer and upon which they can
build in developing their own theories and projects, in making the change of the
future a reality now. In this regard, what follows are brief descriptions of three
distinct cases touching on how ecological debt has been or is being utilised: as a
particular type of biophysical measure within sustainability science and ecological
economics, as a legal tool within international environment law, and as a
distributional principle within political theory.
4.1 Case I. Ecological Debt as a biophysical measure
A methodological pillar of the ecological debt movement, the rich theoretical
tradition of biophysical accounting has existed for more than half a century. The
robustness of this tradition is evidenced, for one example, in how Georg
Borgström’s coinage of the term ‘ghost acreage’ in 1965 is now regarded as the
forerunner both to Hans Opshoor’s development of the concept of ‘environmental
space’ (Spangenberg 1995) and to Rees and Wackernagel’s (1992) formulation of
‘ecological footprints’. Since then, new methods have also been developed that,
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
for instance, now enable researchers to estimate a society’s social metabolism,
such as through material (and sometimes energy) flow analyses (Fischer-Kowalski
1998) as well as to measure human appropriation of net primary production,
HANPP (Vitousek et al. 1986, Haberl et al. 2007), energy returns on energy
investments (EROI) (Hall, Cleveland & Kaufmann 1986) Environmental load
displacements (Muradian, O'Connor and Martinez-Alier 2002) and time-space
appropriations (Hornborg 2006).10
Ecological debt and carbon debt have, respectively, also more and more often
been directly applied as biophysical measures. Azar and Holmberg (1995),
Jenkins (1996), Smith (1996), Torras (2003) and Paredis et al. (2008), for
example, have all made ambitious attempts to quantify portions of the North’s
ecological debt. The research of Srinivasan and his colleagues (2008), however,
has arguably been the most compelling to date (see
box 4)
Box 4 Rich nations owe the poor $1.8 trillion dollars in Ecological debt
Source: Own elaboration
Srinivasan et al. set out to quantify, in monetary terms, the ecological debt that rich nations owe to the poor. In
their 2008 article, they estimate the environmental costs of human activities from 1961 to 2000 for six major
categories—climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, agricultural intensification and expansion,
deforestation, overfishing, and mangrove conversion—and how the driving forces and damage impacts of these
activities are distributed among low-, middle-, and high-income nations. Their findings reveal striking imbalances
in the distribution of damage impacts, with low-income nations bearing a far greater portion of social and
environmental costs that even today are overwhelmingly driven by the other two groups’ activities.
In interpreting these findings, Srinivasan et al. conclude that the mounting climate damages impressed upon poor
nations will in the end far exceed the current foreign debt (USD 1.8 trillion) of those nations. As Prof Richard
Norgaard at the University of California, Berkeley, one of the study’s co-authors, explained in The Guardian
(2008): “
At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor and, in effect, there
is a debt to the poor /.../
That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor. You don't see it until you do the kind of
accounting that we do here.” Again, the arrow of arrears is reversed with a broader framing of such analysis.
To estimate total ecological debt is complicated, however. Researchers have
found that the more limited task of calculating carbon or climate debt is far easier
due to the greater accessibility of pertinent data. Such analyses are also highly
relevant because of the increasing sense of urgency that surrounds the climate
crisis and because the carbon debt has been shown to compose the largest
portion of the total ecological debt (Martinez-Alier 2009:59; Simms 2009:83).
Although several of the above mentioned publications include carbon debt in their
wider calculations of ecological debt, specific calculations of carbon debt have
been performed by Botzen, Gowdy and van den Bergh (2008) as well as by
several NGO initiatives, including Simms, Meyer and Robinson (1999), FOEI
(2005), the Jubilee Debt Campaign (2007), Christian Aid (2009), Simms (2009),
Action Aid (2009) and TWN (2009c). Furthermore, Bolivia has submitted such
debt calculations to the UNFCCC (2009, 2010c), while other calculations have
10
Several of these concepts (and many others) are explained in the EJOLT online glossary, see
http://www.ejolt.org/section/resources/glossary/ .
Estimating total
ecological debt is
complicated;
calculating
carbon or climate
debt is far easier
due to the greater
accessibility of
pertinent data
Page 29
Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
also been compiled by international institutions such as the UNDP (2007/2008)
and the UN (2009). Inclusion of papers on the closely related notion of historical
responsibility for climate change would only lengthen the list, including the 1997
Brazilian proposal to the UNFCCC, and articles by Enting and Law (2002), den
Elzen and Schaeffer (2002) and Müller et al. (2009).11
A synthetic proposal for calculating climate debt was made by Warlenius (2012)
and applied to 154 states. Here, debt is calculated in gigatons of carbon dioxide
and not converted into monetary terms. Following Paredis et al. (2008: 152-159),
climate debt is in this way seen as being composed of two distinct factors:
generational debt, which consists of unsustainable emissions and is owed to
future generations; and historical debt, which consists of unfair emissions (e.g. in
relation to the equitable rights of others) and is owed to low-emitting countries. In
2008, for example, the inhabitants of the North composed only 18.8 per cent of
world population but was accountable for 72.7 per cent of global CO2 emissions
since 1850. Based on these numbers, per capita debt is 594 tons of CO2, which is
roughly equivalent to 46 years of per capita emissions on 2008 levels. Of total
emissions, therefore, 60 per cent can be said to have been unsustainable and
thus comprises the generational debt, which on this level of abstraction accounts
for the vast bulk of the total climate debt (see
table 1).
Item
World
North i
South ii
a. Emissions from 1850-2008 (GtCO2)
1209.0
878.6
330.4
b. Share of emissions (%)
100
72.7
27.3
c. Population ratios iii (%)
100
27.7
72.3
d. ‘Sustainable’ emissions iv (GtCO2)
477
132.1
344.9
e. Total climate debt (a-d) (GtCO2)
732
746.5
-14.5
f. Historical climate debt (GtCO2)
0
14.5
-14.5
g. Generational climate debt (GtCO2)
-732
732
0
h. Total climate debt per capita v (tCO2)
128
594
-3.7
4.2 Case II. Ecological and Climate Debt
as legal Instruments
The aspect of ecological debt that has received most scholarly attention to date
from a legal perspective is climate change. Some legal scholars argue that at
some point “
there will be a general obligation of industrialised nations under
international law to compensate developing nations for damage resulting from
anthropogenic climate change” (Tol and Verheyen 2004:1109). Although many
11 For an overview of the historical responsibility argument within the UNFCCC negotiations, see
Friman 2013.
Table 1
Calculation of the climate debts
of ‘North’ and ‘South’
i Annex 1 excluding Iceland, Lichtenstein,
Luxemburg, Malta, Monaco, Slovenia.
ii The remaining countries in the study after
subtraction of Annex 1 states.
iii Average of 1870, 1950 and 2000 rates of
world population
iv 3 Gt*159 years/share of pop.
v Based on population 2008
Source: Warlenius 2012
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
problems must be solved before such an outcome can occur and many more
problems need to be addressed before the broader concept of ecological debt will
be viewed as a legitimate legal instrument, numerous principles already in place
provide the foundation for such developments. To be sure, certain principles and
concepts used in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and in
international legal practice more generally already bear striking resemblance to
ecological debt. In their survey of current MEAs, for example, although Paredis et
al. (2008:89) found no direct reference to ecological debt, they did extract several
concepts directly from the major MEAs that might provide the foundation for the
emergence of climate and ecological debt as legal instruments. Several examples
are as follows:
•
The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) was
first introduced in the Rio Declaration of 1992 (UNCED 1992 [Principle 7]) but
can be traced even further back to the Stockholm Declaration (UNCHE 1972
[Preamble Point 7]) twenty years earlier. Even today, it is commonly referred
to in many MEAs. The primary link between CBDR and ecological debt is
through the acknowledgement of historical responsibility of industrialized
countries for worldwide environmental problems, a postulate that implies that
developed countries have an obligation to take more far-reaching measures
than developing countries in responding effectively to such problems (Paredis
et al. 2008:89-90);
•
The principle of intra- and intergenerational equity is also part of the
original Rio Declaration (UNCED 1992 [Principle 3]) and has its roots in the
Stockholm Declaration (UNCHE 1972 [Principles 1 & 2]). It is also found in
the UNFCCC, CBD and UNCCD. It emphasizes that development cannot be
based on short-term ends but must also encompass and ensure protection of
the environment for present and future generations. Just as with ecological
debt, it addresses the problems caused by unsustainable production and
consumption patterns and promotes policies for restitution of past
degradations (Paredis et al. 2008:91);
•
The polluter pays principle (PPP) is at this point sufficiently well-
established in MEAs to be considered as a general principle of international
environmental law. First adopted by OECD in 1972, it is referred to in
numerous environmental treaties, such as the Rio Declaration and UNEP,
and within European as well as the national legislation of many countries
(Roberts & Parks 2007:146). Its main link to ecological debt is its allocation of
economic obligations for activities that are damaging the environment, with
prevention as an important and inherent aspect (Paredis et al. 2008:93;
UNCED 1992 [Principle 16]);
•
The Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol, which is funded by a 2
per cent levy on Clean Development Mechanism (UNFCCC 1998 [Article 12])
projects and thus financed by developed countries, is used for projects in
developing countries. Some consider it the first step in repaying the carbon
debt (Paredis et al. 2008:94); and
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
•
The Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD 1992 [Article 1])
establishes the principle of equitable benefit sharing, which states that
commercial use of certain natural—genetic—resources should be shared in a
fair and equitable way with the country providing those resources. In terms of
the concept of ecological debt, equitable compensation for extraction and use
of such resources should be made.
Grounded in the idea that contemporary international law is not enough, Pigrau et
al. (2014) argue for a more holistic approach that advocates a reinterpretation and
reconstruction of the current international order in terms of global
constitutionalism, Third World Approaches to International Law and an enhanced
human rights approach in order to address ecological debt and environmental
justice. They also envision increasing participation from the civil society and points
out that already the 1992 “Debt Treaty” identified a legal strategy: “
Work with
jurists and lawyers to establish regulations and legislation on international
transactions; put pressure to make them binding to nations and to corporations”
(qtd. in Ibid.:72). Several elaborations remain before the concept is legally
operationalised, such as debtor and creditor identification, definition of damage
and the content of repair, damage identification and determination of causal
relationship, identification of relevant ecosystems, and the definition of equitable
rights corresponding to country or individuals (Idem: 27). Nonetheless, the authors
argue that the main obstacle for operationalisation is political: “
the necessary
Figure 8
Oil pollution in the Niger Delta
Ecological debt has been used in litigation processes,
such as in the “Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum” case
where Nigerians suffering from the devastating pollution
caused by Shell's oil production have claimed their rights
Photo credit: Lucie Greyl
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
political conditions for opening up a formal debate about the concept in inter-
governmental forums do not exist” (Idem:102-103).
In their study, Paredis et al. also evaluate the main obstacles blocking acceptance
of ecological debt as a framework in international environmental law and possible
strategies for overcoming these obstacles. Among other things, they point out that
most of the links established thus far between ecological debt and legal praxis
have been future-oriented and mainly focus on pollution and environmental
damage. Ecological debt is, however, a highly retroactive concept, and besides
pollution it also regards the use of natural resources without equitable
compensation as part of the debt—a framing of resource use that hardly figures at
all in current environmental law (Idem: 111-112).
Importantly, other legal strategies beyond those seeking to develop the debt
concept as a legal instrument also exist, providing relatively untested options for
utilising the concepts of ecological and climate debt to achieve the end of
ecological justice through litigation. For example, several attempts have been
made to stop the environmentally harmful activities of transnational companies by
filing lawsuits under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). Though still holding
some promise, this approach “
has not proven to be a very good basis for securing
compensation for environmental claims” (Paredis et al. 2008:106), a position that
was firmly reinforced in 2013 when the US Supreme Court unanimously held in an
opinion joined by five justices (with several concurrences underscoring differences
in reasoning) that the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to claims
under the Alien Tort Statute and that nothing in the statute rebuts that presumption
(Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S.Ct. 1659 (2013)).12 By appealing to
the language of rights, this legal perspective is related to the approach of
environmental justice as human rights, confirming that this established legal
discourse can be used to strengthen the moral claims of ecological debt, as
mentioned in
section 3.3.
Box 5 Environmental justice through litigation
Source: Own elaboration
All over the world, people suffering from environmental harms seek redress through litigation. In EJOLT report no 4 –
“Legal avenues for EJOs to claim environmental liability” (Pigrau et al. 2012) eleven cases are presented and the legal
strategies used analyzed. Famous cases include the Chevron-Texaco pollution in Ecuadorian Amazonas and the Shell
oil spills in the Niger Delta. In these cases, the accused parts are corporations in the North and one important conclusion
is that EJO's use all types of political and legal avenues: national or international, territorial or extra-territorial, for seeking
to hold the perpetrators accountable. EJOLT report no 9 – “Digging deep corporate liability” (Greyl et al. 2013) – focus on
strategies for prosecuting oil companies and deepens the case of Niger delta in particular.
12 After assessing several legal attempts by NGO's to accrue the ecological debt through litigation,
Patrick Bond (2010:287) has come to the following conclusion: ”
There are quite obvious limits to
prospects for court relief under the Alien Tort Claims Act or NEPA, the two most advanced areas.
Hence it would be consistent to also proceed with more immediate strategies, as well as direct
action tactics.”
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
As pointed out in the “Financial Times” by professor Jagdish Bhagwati (2010) the
concept of strict liability is however inherent in U.S. Superfund legislation,
according to which hazardous waste must be cleaned up by responsible
companies “
even if the material discharged was not known at the time to be
hazardous (as carbon emissions were until recently)”. A clear analogue to current
climate negotiations, Bhagwati’s raising of this point intimates how continued
refusal by the US to accept any liability for its historical emissions is directly
incongruous with its own legal precedents let alone of those that have at this point
become more or less standard internationally.
Another strategy for those seeking to develop the debt concept as a legal
instrument has been to address environmental harms as abuses of human rights.
For instance, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
(Communication 155/96 2001) has stated that while involved in irresponsible oil
extraction in the Niger Delta the former military regime of Nigeria violated the
rights of the Ogoni people with regard to health and a healthy environment.
According to the recommendations of the commission, the new civilian
government should compensate the victims, clean up their lands and rivers, and
make sure environmental and social impact assessments are made a part of
future extractive operations (Paredis et al. 2008:107; cf. Pigrau et al. 2014:75-87).
Finally, a promising tendency, famously noted by Barkan in “The Guilt of Nations”
(2000), is the growing state practice of providing restitution for historical injustices.
To date, most cases—such as German reparations to Jewish survivors of the
Holocaust, the letter of apology and USD 20,000 paid to each Japanese-American
held in internment camps, and the humanitarian fund provided by the Swiss
Government for Holocaust victims who invested their money in Swiss banks—
have at this point been rooted in atrocities committed during World War II. Other
cases have considered the consequences of colonialism, such as with the
acknowledgement of land rights for Aboriginals in Australia and with British
apologies to the Maori in New Zealand. As Paredis et al. speculate (2008:113),
“
the question is whether the concept of ecological debt could one day become part
of this growing moral trend”.
4.3 Case III. Ecological Debt
as a Distributional Principle
The dominant practices of the contemporary Realpolitik were lucidly reflected
during the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit in a statement by the US Special
Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern: “
We absolutely recognise our historic role
in putting emissions in the atmosphere, up there, but the sense of guilt or
culpability or reparations, I just categorically reject that” (Reuters 2009). Stern’s
sharp statement is suggestive not only of the global North’s reticence in acting to
rectify the various harms of its historical practices. It also suggests that, just as
with legal practices, ecological debt-related issues have to some degree been
discussed in recent years without directly referencing the concept itself.
The legal
perspective is
related to the
approach of
environmental
justice as human
rights.
This established
legal discourse
can be used to
strengthen the
moral claims of
ecological debt
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
As such, ecological and climate debt can be seen as issues of distribution, both
spatially and temporally. In this way, especially within the growing field of
environmental political theory, different distributional principles for future
allocations of climate change burdens have been proposed and discussed. One
such principle that conceptually resembles climate debt has been referred to
alternatively as ‘polluter pays’, ‘contributor pays’, ‘historical accountability’ or
‘responsibility’. There has actually been a “
surprising convergence of philosophical
writers on the subject”, according to one of the most prominent of them, Stephen
M Gardiner (2004). As Gardiner continues, these writers “
are virtually unanimous
in their conclusion that the developed countries should take the lead role in
bearing the costs of climate change”, the main reason for which being that those
countries are responsible for the bulk of historical emissions.
Two important articles that are illustrative of this consensus in favour of historical
responsibility in a future allocation scheme are Henry Shue's “Global Environment
and International Inequality” (1999) and Eric Neumayer's “In Defense of Historical
Accountability for Greenhouse Gas Emissions” (2000). Shue starts off with an oft-
quoted analogy:
All over the world parents teach their children to clean up their own mess. This
simple rule makes good sense from the point of view of incentive: if one learns that
one will not be allowed to get away with simply walking away from whatever messes
one creates, one is given a strong negative incentive against making messes in the
first place. Whoever makes the mess presumably does so in the process of pursuing
some benefit—for a child, the benefit may simply be the pleasure of playing with the
objects that constitute the mess. If one learns that whoever reaps the benefit of
making the mess must also be the one who pays the cost of cleaning up the mess,
one learns at the very least not to make messes with costs that are greater than
their benefits (Shue 1999:533).
Shue then formalises this analogy in a first principle of equity: “
those who have
been unilaterally put at a disadvantage are entitled to demand that in the future
the offending party shoulder burdens that are unequal at least to the extent of the
unfair advantage previously taken, in order to restore equality” (Ibid:534).
Neumayer (2000:187-188), while holding to Shue’s articulation of this ethical
argument in favour of historical responsibility, which he refers to as “
the principle
of equality of opportunity”, also adds two further supports: science is indisputably
on the side of historical accountability in that global warming is a consequence of
greenhouse gases accumulated over time, and the long precedented legal
principle that the polluter pays must be conformed to in allocation schemes based
on the argument of historical accountability.
Some objections to the idea of historical accountability have been raised. In
box
6, these arguments are answered, mainly following Henry Shue's line of
arguments (1999:535-537).
Developed
countries should
take the lead role
in bearing the
costs of climate
change, because
they are
responsible for
the bulk of
historical
emissions
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Three cases applying the concept of Ecological Debt
Box6 Pro and contra arguments on ecological debt
Source: Own elaboration
C1 [Counter argument 1]:
Poor countries have also benefited from the enrichment of the developed
countries. Even though they might have been harmed originally, they are now able to catch up thanks to
the development. Therefore, no ecological debt has arisen.
P1 [Pro argument 1]: Whatever benefits poor countries have received, and in most cases they are few, they have
been charged for. Import commodities are paid for, technologies are patented and export markets surrounded by
customs duties. Any development has occurred in spite of, not thanks to, the ecological debt.
C2:
Any historical environmental damage done by rich countries was unintentional, and people cannot be
held responsible for harmful effects they could not have foreseen.
P2: This argument rests upon a false equivalency between punishment and responsibility—it is indeed common to
hold people responsible for the unintentional or unforeseen effects of their actions, though it would be unfair to be
punitive as well. If one unintentionally crashes his or her car into someone else's car, we expect compensation for
harms done, but not punishment. The same with the ecological debt.
C3:
It is unethical to hold people responsible for damage that they have no direct relation to. Holding the
current generation responsible for carbon emissions caused by earlier generations is therefore unfair.
P3: The argument is not wrong but inapposite because today's generation of people who live in industrialized
countries are anything but unrelated to the emissions of earlier generations. This generation is the beneficiary in
many aspects of their daily lives of earlier industrial activity. Statistics show how contributions to climate change
explain two thirds of the variation in per capita GNP in 1990 (Neumayer (2000:189). If they accept the benefits of
an early industrialization, they ought to also take responsibility for the negative consequences
The premise for the third counterargument in
box 6 is that generations today
continue to benefit from earlier periods of industrialisation. As has been pointed
out recently (Godard 2012:12), however, such benefit is sometimes uncertain and
possibly over-estimated. Shue does not reflect on the consequence for his
argument of the industrial degeneration of a country like Ukraine, which has a
massive responsibility for climate change from its past industrial activities even
though the benefits its people receive from historical emissions largely vanished
with the hard economic times Ukraine has faced for over twenty years now
beginning with the fall of the Soviet Union. In this case, holding Ukraine
accountable for past emissions that in no way benefit present generations in
deciding its current climate burden allocation may be unjust. This situation is
discussed at length in Warlenius (2013), whose tentative conclusion is that cases
of declining, de-industrialised economies point to the need to move away from
‘pure’, strict liability approaches to calculating climate debt by taking into
consideration the fundamental difference between ‘subsistence emissions’—
emissions that are the result of activities necessary for providing basic needs such
as food production—and ‘luxury emissions’ (cf. Agarwal and Narain 1991, Shue
1994, Vanderheiden 2008). The former is considered a basic right, so arguably
only the latter should be taken into consideration in allocation of historical
responsibility within a future burden sharing system. According to this proposal,
Ukraine's historical record of emissions would thereby be expunged and some of
its current emissions allowed for free (Warlenius 2013:41).
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Final considerations on EJO utilisation of the ecological debt concept
5
Final
considerations on
EJO utilisation of
the ecological
debt concept
According to sociologist James Rice (2009), there are “
several advantageous
characteristics of ecological debt as a tool for promoting a reconceptualisation of
North-South political-economic relations”; as this report has shown, such
advantageous characteristics might together further the struggle for environmental
and social justice in the world. It can do so in several important ways.
First, the ecological debt concept acknowledges the interconnections between
society, nature and economy that are so often held as separate, irreducible
objects within social science and policy making. Second, it brings a historical
dimension to discussions of sustainability and climate change, illuminating how
present divides and challenges are derived from long-term processes of capital
accumulation. Third, it does not appeal to charity or aid to settle the external debt
crisis but instead reframes the cancellation of external debt as a moral obligation.
Finally, it holds the potential to “
convey a new voice within the arenas in which
international development concerns are debated . . . a voice united by common
experiences and highlighting the social and environmental contradictions
expressed within Southern countries that advocates of neoliberal globalization
arguably overlook” (Rice 2009: 246).
In the preceding section, three applications of the ecological debt concept was
discussed: as a biophysical measure, as a legal tool, and as a distributional
principle. They are all important in their own right for claiming environmental
justice. Assessing the quantitative size of the debt is important
inter alia because it
turns a strong moral argument into a distinct measure, a hard-to-deny fact. It is
Assessing the
quantitative size
of the debt is
important:
it turns a strong
moral argument
into a distinct
measure, a hard-
to-deny fact;
it is also an
important ground
for claims on
repayment
Page 37
Final considerations on EJO utilisation of the ecological debt concept
also an important ground for claims on repayment. Investigating the
interconnections between ecological debt and legal practices is important since it
shows that it is not alien to established law, and is a necessary first step for
seeking redress through the court system. Finally, strengthening the ethical
foundation of ecological debt as a distributional principle is important for gaining
political support for the idea, both from the public, institutions and states.
Box 7 Calculations of the Ecological Debt – What are they for?
By Joan Martínez-Alier
The first principle of the Ecological Debt is that those who claim repayment of it do not want the Ecological Debt to
increase any further. It is large enough as it is, whatever number we put on it.
There is a similarity to large historical moral debts. Should descendants of slaves be compensated for the terrible
damage done to their families? Yes, perhaps, but such compensation in no way would allow slave traders to start
anew. It is not like the ‘polluter pays principle’, you pay and you pollute. If the German state after 1945 paid
compensation to the relatives of the victims of terrible atrocities, this does not erase the moral debt. It does not allow
incurring in similar behaviour again. It is not at all as paying off your mortgage to the bank and getting a fresh
mortgage. The difference is that in such cases money is a token of recognition of guilt.
Something similar applies to the calculation of environmental liabilities of companies such as Chevron Texaco in
Ecuador, Rio Tinto in Bougainville, Shell in the Niger Delta. If you bring the companies to court (in a civil suit for
damages) you have to submit a calculation of the liability. The civil suit could be complemented by a criminal case to
try to send those responsible to jail. Money could be used for reparations but in no way would such payments for the
liability allow the company to do the same thing again.
In the same way, in order to force recognition of historical responsibility, culpability and guilt, calculations have been
made of the climate debt or the carbon debt. One of the first by done by economist Jyoti Parikh in 1995 and it is still
relevant. She calculated the savings made by rich countries per year by not making the reduction in emissions they
should make.
Countries which historically have produced and continue to produce more carbon dioxide per capita than the rest have
a carbon debt. In 1995 average global emissions were about one ton of carbon per person per year (equivalent to 3.7
tons of carbon dioxide). There were six billion people. Industrialized countries produced three-fourths of these
emissions, instead of the one-fourth that would have corresponded to them on the basis of population. The difference
was 50 per cent of total emissions, some 3,000 million tons of carbon at the time. Large reductions of emissions had to
be made urgently to stop the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It was the rich who had to do the
reductions, not the poor. Contemplating the increasing marginal cost of reduction, the first 1,000 million tons could
perhaps be reduced at a cost of, say, only USD 15 per ton, but then the cost would increase very much. Taking an
average of only USD 25 per ton, and assuming that total emissions had to be reduced by half, then a total annual
subsidy of USD 75 billion was forthcoming from the poor to the rich, from the South to North, or in other terms, the
carbon debt was increasing by this amount.
This was an excellent argument to try and shame the diplomats of the rich countries. However, they are a shameless
lot. So, although claims for the ecological debt has been made very often at the COPs the principle has not been
adopted by the UN although sometimes there is talk about ‘loss and damage’, beyond mitigation and adaptation.
In any case, Jyoti Parikh’s pioneering calculations were useful. She did not mean at all that by paying that amount as a
fine, year after year, the rich countries would be entitled to continue with their level of emissions.
Obviously, the world system is not governed by principles, rights and ethics but by
force. Nonetheless, ideas of justice can sometimes mobilise people into becoming
a counter-force. Therefore, it is the combination of the above mentioned instances
of ecological debt that is particularly explosive. A tool that is conceptually clear,
legitimised by law and science, and politically and ethically persuasive can be of
great use for movements seeking environmental injustice.
Page 38
Final considerations on EJO utilisation of the ecological debt concept
Box 9 Political implications of Ecological debt
by Leida Rijnhout
For me, the concept of ecological debt is one of the strongest tools in my work, which is advocating sustainable
development, with a strong emphasis on the need for environmental and social justice. It is a convincing concept
to show people that there is an unfair distribution of wealth, not only since old colonial times, but also still at the
very moment. It shows clearly that the average lifestyle of people in the Global North is on the account of the use
and damage of natural resources of the countries in the Global South. It shows clearly that an active process is
going on of enrichment on one side and impoverishment on the other side, which is structural and institutionalised.
Only by exposing and stopping this ‘system error’, we will be able to make any advance in achieving environmental
and social justice.
Calculating ecological debt, even if the results can be discussed (what is a tree or a human life worth?), is
nevertheless helpful, as facts and figures of the existing impoverishment mechanisms are made more transparent
and do support the sense of urgency that fundamental change is necessary. It will stop the traditional ‘Aid and
Trade’ agenda of the development thinkers, and will reorient us towards a policy agenda in favour of fair sharing,
focus on wellbeing for all, sufficiency and the united defence of the global commons worldwide.
Corporate legal and financial accountability for any impact done on the environment or local communities has to be
so obvious, that this goes beyond the ecological debt concept. Considering environmental damage a crime is out of
discussion, and any doubt about that sounds really silly.
Still, relevant criticism of the concept as it has been articulated up to this point
provides several opportunities for making the concept of ecological debt even
more effective as a tool in the struggle for justice in the world. Rice agrees with
Paredis et al. (2008:247), for instance, that arguments for ecological debt are not
sufficiently developed to be operable as a viable tool in international negotiations.
At this point, it is backed only by a limited numbers of experts, and the statistical
evidence supporting its claims remains too patchy to really legitimise it as an
approach within international policy arenas. This weakness may be remedied, the
Ghent researchers argue, through a stronger link between ecological debt as a
campaign tool and as a scientific method. In overcoming this weakness, EJOLT,
as a research project that brings EJO activists together with progressive scholars
through a dialectical dynamic of activist and academic knowledge generation,
should play a significant role in both refining the concept and linking it to political
campaigning.
We caution that this dynamic will likely have to contend with criticisms of the
(academic) conceptualisation of the concept of ecological debt that are quite the
opposite of those discussed by both the Paredis research group and Rice. This
criticism concerns the inherent tendency or at least potential risk of the ecological
debt concept to amplify the general tendency within environmental policies to
objectify, quantify, monetize, and in the end commodify nature. We share this
concern and are highly skeptical of, for instance, the market mechanisms of the
Kyoto Protocol and the nostrum of the ‘green economy’ that was hailed at the
Rio+20 Conference in 2012.
We do, however, believe that it is possible to draw a sharp line between
monetization and commodification. The long tradition within ecological debt
thinking—going back at least to the “Debt Treaty” of 1992—to provide more or
less detailed quantifications of debt accrual are politically important and
scientifically interesting. Even the monetization of the debt, which is
methodologically more daring, has political advantages since, as Martinez-Alier
Page 39
Final considerations on EJO utilisation of the ecological debt concept
(2002:228) noted, “
chrematistics is well understood in the north”. A precondition
for maintaining the sharp line between monetization and commodification can
therefore be understood as being an effective means by which to clarify the
difference between reparation and payment.
Severe ecological damage because of either colonial plunder or structurally-
enforced extraction can never be fully remunerated through economic
transactions; in this way, a reparation paid for historical abuses should be
regarded not as a full compensation but as a recognition of wrongdoing. Suitably
framed in this way, monetization of the ecological debt need not risk becoming a
pretext for further commodification of nature. That much said, money value is only
one of several, perhaps innumerable, ways of valuing ecosystems, and it should
not have a privileged position or function as a common unit in which all other
values can be expressed. Multi-criteria evaluation and respect for
incommensurability of values remain an important cornerstone of ecological
economics (cf. Rodríguez-Labjos & Martínez-Alier 2012; Gerber et al. 2013;
Zografos et al. 2014).
The concept of ecological debt raises larger issues about the historical
indebtedness of core sectors of the world economy to their peripheries. In point of
fact, capital accumulation in a certain area inevitably relies on a net appropriation
of embodied labour time and/or natural space from its hinterlands. Noteworthy, on
the one hand, is that the identifiable asymmetry that forms the basis of this social
relation, as in, for instance, the indebtedness of the eighteenth century British
textile industry to the millions of Africans enslaved in the cotton fields of the
Americas (and their descendants), has not become ubiquitous in discussions of
ecological and social justice in the world today.
On the other hand, considering the moral and legal implications that would ripple
out with its acceptance, just why the notion of ecological debt has often been met
with keen opposition is quite understandable. Indeed, a can of long-accruing
worms would, as it were, be opened! For how much is the core in arrears to the
periphery for its very existence as such? If ever accurately quantified the figure
would be almost unfathomably mind-boggling. But, significantly, so too has been
the suffering of those many billions who for generations have borne the brunt of
injustices unquantifiable, both social and ecological.
Having all these elements in mind,
Box 10 closes this report underlining why
recognition and restitution of the ecological debt is nowadays more valid than
ever.
Reparations for
historical abuses
should be
regarded not as a
full compensation
but as a
recognition of
wrongdoing.
Monetization of
the ecological
debt should not
becoming a
pretext for further
commodification
of nature
Page 40
Final considerations on EJO utilisation of the ecological debt concept
Box 10 Ecological Debt and rights of nature:
Why recognition and restitution of the ecological debt is more valid than ever
By Ivonne Yánez
In 2003, the Ecuadorian EJO Acción Ecológica, as part of the demand for recognition of the ecological debt, made
the exercise of estimating the debt of Texaco to the peoples of Ecuador and Amazon (Acción Ecológica 2003). The
result was that the corporation, now Chevron, owned nearly 110 billion dollars. That figure is 11 times bigger than
the amount that an Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron to pay to the plaintiffs for damages caused in the
Ecuadorian Amazon. The vast difference is due to the fact that AE accounted for elements such as direct impact
on the environment – rivers, air, soils, etc. – and not only on human beings. This does not mean that the claim on
Chevron necessarily must be paid in money, but entails a process of integral reparation of the rivers, the soils and
so on.
The ecological debt transcends the restitution of human rights. Those affected cannot be considered as fully
compensated if the state of the ecosystems is not restituted to the situation previous to the damage. While it is true
that the value of human life is incommensurable, or that environmental damages are likely to be irreversible, the
human dimension of integral reparation goes hand in hand with seeking the recovery of personal and collective
dignity. In the case of nature, reparation means the regeneration of vital cycles and the capacity of reproducing life.
This needs to be accompanied with a process of natural healing, leaving the rivers and forests to recover from the
trauma suffered, which unavoidably entails stopping all kinds of oil extraction in that area. In the case of Ecuador,
this is consistent with the rights of nature recognised in the Constitution, namely the right to be repaired regardless
the civil or criminal damage that may exist.
That is why, in addition to the mentioned court decision - that could perhaps be seen as a part of the recognition of
the social and environmental debt of the corporation with Ecuador – plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit in the
International Criminal Court against Chevron CEO John Watson and other managers. The claim is based on article
7 of the Rome Statute, stating that a crime against humanity involves a severe and systematic attack against life
integrity with knowledge of the facts. A sentence would include the repair of the damage and a compensation,
including imprisonment for managers who caused and are still causing an impact that generates this social and
ecological debt. Someday there will be an International Criminal Court for crimes of against nature.
In the famous case of the Yasuní, the relation to ecological debt is also very clear. Among the arguments of the
Yasuní-ITT initiative, there was the recognition of the ecological debt as it was conceived by Oilwatch and Acción
Ecológica. A redress of this debt would in practice contribute to help Ecuador to prevent more oil extraction from
the Yasuni. This proposal is also a step to implement the rights of nature. The proposal remains valid despite the
unfortunate decision of the Ecuadorian government to disarm the initiative.
We can also see this link between oil extraction and ecological debt in e.g. the demand for the rights of the sea, as
in the case of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the year 2010. Aside from civil damages that the company
made to local populations, and relying on the international jurisdiction of the rights of nature, a lawsuit was filed in
the Constitutional Court in Quito. It says that one of the ways to repair the sea area in the Gulf and the life there
would entail that BP leaves the same amount of oil barrels that were spilled under the ground. In this way, the
corporation would be recouping the debt with the sea and the sea life of the Gulf.
During the years of the campaign for recognition and compensation for the ecological debt, it was important to
identify the debtors and the creditors. In this respect, we are now giving a very important impetus when considering
that also the nature is a creditor. There is not only a debt of the industrialized North to the peoples of the South,
there is also a debt that oil capitalism owes nature.
The oil companies, the industry, the financial system, and other debtors have a responsibility for the planet. The
activities of the oil industry are attacks on human and non-human life (including stones, beings, the dead...), but
they also affect the Earth in its ability to recover, for example through the carbon cycle. They also affect the sea
world, where there are no national borders.
Just as slavery generated a huge historical and social debt, a debt also exists in relation to nature. Just as slavery
allowed an accumulation of capital through the appropriation of human labour, accumulation is created by the
appropriation of the very functioning of nature turned into servitude (the so-called environmental services) and thus
a huge debt is being created.
Page 41
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Joan Martínez-Alier, Andreas Malm, Martin Oulu, Alf Hornborg
and the participants of the EJOLT workshop on Ecological Debt in Abuja, Nigeria
in March 2013 for their comments on an early draft of the paper. Another, shorter
version of the text is published as an article in the journal Global Environmental
Change (Warlenius, Pierce and Ramasar 2015), and we acknowledge the
beneficial recommendations made by the GEC editors as well as by two
anonymous reviewers.
The version here presented was carefully read and improved by the EJOLT report
series editor Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos. She also made the necessary contacts
with the various the contributors preparing text boxes along the report. Any
mistakes remain the sole responsibility of the authors.
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