Debt and Climate Change

New figures released by Jubilee Debt Campaign reveal that rich countries owe 27 times more in ‘carbon debt’ than poor countries pay in debt repayments to wealthy nations.

The world’s poorest countries are forced to repay over $100 million daily in often illegitimate debts to rich countries, while those same rich countries produce a daily ‘carbon debt’ worth an estimated $2.7 billion per day – which remains unacknowledged, unpaid and hits the poorest countries hardest and first.

Download the detailed briefing on debt and climate change, and the accompanying PowerPoint presentation, using the links on the right.

The briefing, produced jointly with Practical Action, World Development Movement and WWF highlights that unlike the richest countries, poor countries are currently in ‘carbon credit’. But the unjust and unpayable financial debt is increasingly forcing poor countries into environmentally destructive practices that drive climate change and deprive them of the resources they need to adapt to the rapidly changing climate.

The real cost of the ‘carbon debt’ in terms of lives and livelihoods lost is impossible to quantify in financial terms, but for the first time these figures show clearly the debt owed by the rich to the poor.

The research revealed that:

• Rich countries owe poor countries an enormous ‘carbon debt’ – on the basis of per capita carbon emissions beyond a global ‘fair share’. The rich world owes an estimated annual carbon debt of more than $1 trillion – nearly $870 billion of it coming from G8 countries.
• Poor country debt burdens are contributing to climate change and wider environmental destruction by driving the depletion of natural resources – including through deforestation, oil and gas extraction, mining, and intensification of agriculture.
• Countries like Kenya and Bangladesh are being denied debt cancellation on the basis that their debt is considered ‘sustainable’. Meanwhile, they are already experiencing the frontline effects of climate change, such as desertification and flooding.
• Developing countries need an estimated $50 billion every year to adapt to climate change; meanwhile the poorest countries alone are making debt repayments of $43 billion a year.

Debt and Climate Change Presentation - use the download on the right. Can be used in conjunction with the briefing or independently; slides may be omitted if a shorter presentation is required. Includes speaker notes.

>> TAKE ACTION: Lift the Lid on Unjust Debts