As the wind and rain of Hurricane Maria whipped through the island of Puerto Rico on the 20th
of September, 2017, residents of Toa Baja hunkered down in their houses to brave the
storm.
Maria beat its full force against the coastal town, and a massive storm surge flooded Toa
Baja, trapping thousands.
In the aftermath, as the community picked up the pieces of shattered houses and mourned
the eight dead drowned by the wrath of Maria, anger, and resentment simmered.
How could a storm supercharged by climate change do so much damage to an island and
community that have done so little to cause the climate crisis.
Why do those who contribute little to the climate crisis bear the brunt of its force?
Today we will unpack that question and more.
Today, we reflect on climate debt.
What it is, why it's so important, and how we can make sure those at the frontlines of
climate chaos don’t have to brave the storm alone.
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What is Climate Debt: In 2010, a revolutionary proclamation was
forming under the shadow of the Andes Mountains.
30,000 people representing peasant groups, leftist movements, and governments in the
imperial periphery from over 100 countries converged on the Bolivian city of Cochabamba
to carve a new people’s conference that stood in opposition to neoliberal capitalist
politicking of the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks.
The result of this Cochabamban conference, known as The World People's Conference on
Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was a revolutionary document, a people's accord
that shunned the failing capitalist mitigation strategies and set a course for a liberatory
climate action plan that centered the rights of Mother Earth and its people to a good and
healthy life.
Max Ajl, author of A People’s Green New Deal calls this agreement our era’s Communist
Manifesto.
And within this revolutionary proclamation lies a crucial section about climate debt.
A concept first brought to the world stage in 1990 by non-governmental organizations
and argued for by Fidel Castro at the 1992 Kyoto Conference.
Climate debt is the idea that those in the Global North or the imperial core are not
only responsible for the vast majority of emissions and ecological destruction that
drives the climate crisis, but also that the climate crisis itself is derived from the
extreme exploitation of people and extraction of resources by the Global North in the Global
South.
On top of all of that, the climate crisis disproportionately affects the imperial periphery.
So, climate debt calls for reparations from countries in the imperial core to help countries
still reeling from the trauma of colonization to adapt, mitigate, and face the harsh realities
of climate chaos.
According to the 2010 People’s Agreement, climate debt includes emissions debts, meaning
over-emitting countries must compensate for their historical emissions through intense
carbon sequestration techniques; development debt, a transfer of patent-free clean technology
to the imperial periphery to compensate for imperialists’ historical use of fossil fuels
to build strong economies; adaptation debt, the payment for damages caused by a climate
crisis fueled by the imperial core; and migration debt, meaning emissions-heavy countries must
shelter and open their borders to climate migrants whose homes and livelihoods are shattered
by climate change.
Ultimately, the notion of climate debt emphasizes the inequality of the climate crisis.
It shows us the stark reality that countries in the imperial core have benefited from the
plunder of the atmosphere, land, and countries in the periphery for centuries, and must now
repay that debt that they have racked up.
But who must pay, and how much?
Who’s Responsible?
With each new Conference of Parties, from Copenhagen to Rio to Paris.
Bolivia, Venezuela, and other countries in the imperial periphery continue to push for
some sort of climate debt compensation from the United States and Europe, and again and
again, they are rebuffed.
A response that stings, when considering that that 80% of fossil fuels are located in the
periphery in countries like Bolivia and Iran, which means the Global North’s call for
a “ phase-out of oil dependency would lead to “massive economic and social displacement
and chaos.’”
So as countries like the United States enjoy infrastructure and economies built on the
foundations of fossil fuels, they’re simultaneously telling countries in the periphery that they
can no longer do the same, without any technology or monetary compensation.
To make matters worse, countries with some of the lowest emissions rates are usually
the ones impacted the most.
According to the African Development Bank, sub-Saharan African countries account for
15 percent of the global population and just two percent of energy-related carbon dioxide
emissions, yet they currently shoulder nearly 50 percent of global adaptation costs.
To put the sheer inequality of the imperial core’s hand in creating the climate crisis
into perspective, Swedish professor, Rikard Warlenius, calculated that, as of 2008, if
imperial core countries only used their fair share of emissions, they would have emitted
just 15% of their total historical emissions, while the imperial periphery, which includes
China, could have emitted 4.4% more.
Essentially, the imperial core has vastly overshot their emissions, and they refuse
to own up the damage that is causing across the world.
And if you're looking for a dollar amount to put to this debt, Warlenius calculates
that at a price of $50 per ton of CO2, the North’s debt would be $37.325 trillion.
But as Max Ajl points out in his book, A People’s Green New Deal, when you factor in the IPCC’s
carbon price to keep warming below 1.5° Celsius, that number balloons to a range of $112-448
trillion.
That is a staggering debt, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
Those dollar amounts only recognize emissions, and fail to capture the damage of centuries
of colonialist plunder, disasters supercharged by climate-change, and imperialist wars.
As Nicola Bullard writes in an article for the Transnational Institute, “the real debt
cannot be calculated.
It is much more than a number or money; climate debt symbolizes over 500 years of unequal
relations between North and South, between rich and poor, between exploiters and exploited.”
So, to truly repay the climate debt, the Global North needs to do a lot more than hand over
money.
It needs to reconcile with the exploitative reality of its colonialist, imperialist, and
capitalist pursuits.
How to Repay a Climate Debt Climate debt, at its root, attempts to address
the inequality between the imperial periphery and the core, a chasm so wide that no dollar
amount can come close to closing the gap.
This is why large-scale change both from within imperial countries like the U.S. and without,
are essential to truly repaying the climate debt.
This looks like sharing patent-free clean technologies with all countries and dissolving
borders for climate migrants whose lives are shattered by climate chaos, both of which
are argued for in the Cochabamba People’s Agreement.
But these are just smaller steps in a much broader picture.
Yes, the imperial core must pay their climate debt, but part of that also ensures that we
shatter the historic inequality forced onto the South by the North in the form of indiscriminate
resource extraction, military coups, and all-out country shattering wars so that no new debt
is accrued.
This requires massive transformation within imperialist countries.
It means demilitarization on an unprecedented scale, it means decolonization of the Global
South and for settler-colonial states like the U.S, it means decolonization inside its
borders as well.
But while we struggle for those futures, countries in the periphery are demanding monetary compensation
to tide them over while global capitalism still reigns.
Bolivia for example, alongside the knowledge transfer of sustainable technologies, demanded
an annual payment amounting to 6% of each developed country’s gross national product
to the global periphery in order to manage adaptation, mitigation, and capacity costs.
While 6% may seem like a lot, the true economic and social damage that the North has sewn
across the Global South amounts to much more.
Climate debt is an essential tool in our climate action arsenal because it reveals the current
exploitative relationship between the imperial core and periphery and shows us that in order
to have any hope of reversing the extensive chaos of climate change, the core needs to
reconcile with its violent, dirty, oil-fueled past and join the rest of the world to build
a more just and regenerative future.
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