There is an increasing concern that the
debt problem for both poor countries in
particular and the developing countries
in general will not be resolved.
Debt Activists have proposed a number of
solutions. First, they campaigned for total
cancellation of all illegitimate debts.
Others have proposed a fair and transparent
arbitration mechanism under either the UN
or under the parties concerned as deems
appropriate. Yet others have demonstrated
that debts have already been paid many times
and hence the need for repudiation by way
of building debt cartels.
The ecological debt is slowly gaining ground
as another model of resolving the debt issue.
This is closely linked to the injustice
done to developing countries before, during
colonialism and today’s economic globalization.
Through unjust trade and so called Foreign
Direct investment, resources continue to
flow from the South to the North. Secondly,
due to overproduction and consumption in
developed countries, their corporate extension
in the South, the South suffers from the
impact of environmental destruction but
consequently turns the countries of the
South to be ecological creditors and the
North debtors.
It is this link between production, consumption,
trade and debt that calls us to think of
an alternative to the ongoing debt cancellation
initiatives today. How can we link debt
and trade campaign effectively? This is
the main focus of the Seminar.
This seminar will present the reality that
Southern peoples are not debtors, on the
contrary we are creditors of an enormous
Ecological Debt which Northern governments,
IFIs, corporations and peoples owe them.
The notion of Ecological Debt is both moral
and economic.
The debtors become creditors, the creditors
become debtors, even though many items of
the Ecological Debt cannot be monetarized.
Southern peoples demand payments but even
more they wish to stop the Ecological Debt
from increasing any further.
Such are the crucial issues competently
discussed in this seminar and in the book
to be presented there, linking around the
world the fight against growing or persistent
poverty with the struggle for environmental
sustainability.
Among other, at the Seminar will
be present:
