Ecological deficit

Ecological debt is the level of resource consumption and waste discharge by a population in excess of locally sustainable natural production and assimilative capacity.

The term has been used since 1992 by some environmental organizations from the Global south. The first one to use this term was the Instituto de Ecologia Politica from Chile. J.M. Borrero, from Colombia, a lawyer, wrote a book on the ecological debt in 1994. This referred to the environmental liabilities of Northern countries for the excessive per capita production of greenhouse gases, historically and at present. Campaigns on the Ecological Debt were launched since 1997 by Accion Ecologica of Ecuador and Friends of the Earth.

Ecofeminist scholar Ariel Salleh explains how the capitalist processes at work in the global North exploit nature and people simultaneously, ultimately sustaining a large ecological debt in her article,“ Ecological Debt: Embodied Debt”. At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, politicians and corporate leaders from the global North introduced the supposed solution for the foreign debt crisis in the global South. They proposed ‘debt for nature swaps’, which essentially means that those countries that possess abundant biodiversity and environmental resources would give them up to the global North in return for the World Bank reducing their debt.

Feminist environmentalists, indigenous activists, and peasants from the global South, primarily in Ecuador, exposed how the global North is much more indebted to the global South. Salleh justifies this by explaining how the 500-year-long colonialisation process involving the extraction of resources has caused immense damage and destruction to the ecosystem of the global South. In fact, scientists at the US National Academy for Sciences state that in the time period of 1961 – 2000, analyzing the cost of greenhouse gas emissions created by the rich (the global North) alone, it has become apparent that the rich have imposed climate changes on the poor that greatly outweigh the poor’s foreign debt. All of this environmental degradation amounts to ecological debt, seizing the people’s livelihood resources in the global South.

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