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Debt and Climate Change
December 8, 2007 Sanur, Bali, Indonesia
We, debt and development activists from different social movements and non-government organizations from Asia-Pacific join the growing calls of the international community to decisively address the paramount issue of climate change.
The climate crisis is the most blatantly repulsive result of a flawed
development paradigm imposed on us by global institutions, northern
governments and transnational corporations with the acquiescence and
collaboration of our local elites and neo-liberal economic apologists
We assert that debt has been used only as an instrument to dominate
government and peoples of the South but also to finance projects and
promote policies that have greatly contributed to the exacerbation and
escalation of climate change.
We call on international financial institutions like the IMF, the World
Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other regional development banks,
northern governments and their export credit agencies – TTO STOP ALL
FUNDING AND ALL PROGRAMS THAT HARM PEOPLES and the ENVIRONMENT.
We reject all IFI loans and “aid†supposedly for adaptation
measures and renewable energies as hypocritical measures - when these
same institutions continue to promote a development framework and pour
several times more of their funds towards projects and policies that
aggravate climate change.
We oppose carbon trading as a false solution that allows transnational
corporations and rich countries to buy the right to pollute at the
expense of impoverished peoples and countries. Worse, carbon trading
has spawned new and despicable instruments to extract profits from
pollution.
We demand the following:
Redirection of existing dirty energy financing to adaptation and
mitigation measures and energy efficiency projects as a form of
reparation to the decades of ecological debt owed by the north to the
south;
Financing of renewable energies as one form of restitution for
countless years of debt domination that hampered Southern countries
capacity to develop alternative technologies and development strategies;
The sovereign and democratic management and control of funds for
mitigation, adaptation and the development of clean, safe and renewable
energy; And for the World Bank, ADB and other similar institutions with
a horrible track record to be kept from any form of control and
inolvement over the disposal and use of these funds.
Stop to all false solutions such as agro-fuels and carbon trading
Rejection of all loans, aid and subsidies for fossil fuel extraction,
dirty technologies and exploitation of natural resources that violate
our national patrimony and the rights of indigenous peoples.
An end to imposition of all conditionalities (e.g. privatization,
liberalization and deregulation) by international financial
institutions and northern governments through loans, aid and debt
cancellation
Total and unconditional cancellation and repudiation of debts that have
contribute to climate change, and all other illegitimate debts and
“obligations†claimed from us by the north and lending institutions
Signed: Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement for Debt and Development
* GARPU Indonesia * KRUHA Indonesia * Freedom from Debt Coalition
Philippines * Rural Reconstruction Nepal * Equity and Justice Working
Group Bangladesh * Indian Social Action Forum * Action Aid Bangladesh
* Action Aid Nepal * Community Development Library Bangladesh *
Womyn’s Agenda for Change Cambodia * Nadi Ghati Morcha India *
Independent Fishworkers Forum Kerala * BUP Bangladesh * GCAP
Philippines * Sfchetan Bangladesh * LDC Watch * South Asia Alliance for
Poverty Eradication * Save Our Seahorses(SOS) Action Committee Malaysia
* Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement * Democratic Action Party,
Malaysia
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