Jubilee Post News & Views
A new movement linking environment and development is coming together today, with civil society groups around the world calling for action on the intertwined crises of climate change and debt distress for developing countries. Almost 200 civil society organisations have signed a statement calling for world leaders, national governments, public and private financial institutions to recognise the deep connection between the heavy debt burdens of many global south countries and the challenge of climate change. The statement highlights the urgent need for non-debt creating finance from the global north to the global south; and calls for the cancellation of unsustainable debt which creates a vicious circle of growing debt burdens and increasing vulnerability to climate change impacts.
Many leaders of developing country alliances have been drawing a clear link between debt relief and climate action in the past year. The Climate Vulnerable Forum countries’ COP26(The UN climate Conference in Glassgow this November) manifesto calls for the creation of an Emergency Coalition for Climate Resilient Debt Restructuring. The chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, Gaston Browne, has highlighted that such countries pay up to four times as much to borrow for clean energy than developed countries, and that this in turn pushes up their debt burdens.
Approx 200 organisations have released a joint statement calling on world leaders to tackle the interrelated climate and debt crises that are blighting the lives of people in the poorest countries. Including- Action Aid International, 350.org, Center for Economic and Social Rights, Oil Change International, Oxfam International, Third World Network, Equal Asia Foundation (Stichting EqualA Foundation) etc.
