Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action.” Berta Caceres [1]

In this article, after introducing the concept of ecological debt, I’ll try to demonstrate, using the example of Morocco, how the current “transition” is nothing more than a process of legitimizing green capitalism. Green or eco-capitalism is both a new type of disaster capitalism, which sees the apocalyptic climate crisis as an opportunity to make more profit Profit The positive gain yielded from a company’s activity. Net profit is profit after tax. Distributable profit is the part of the net profit which can be distributed to the shareholders. , and a new form of colonialism: green colonialism, which takes advantage of the green discourse to continue the process of accumulation by dispossession that began with direct colonization during the previous two centuries. In the final section, I’ll try to outline another form of ecological transition, one that is fair and operated for and by people.

  Ecological debt: who owes whom?

In preparing to write this article, I learned that France’s rightist ex-prime minister Michel Barnier, in his general policy speech late last year, “mentioned ‘ecological debt’ as a central issue, as important as budgetary debt.” [2] He used the concept to stress the fact that humanity is now supposedly living on credit in terms of the amount of greenhouse-effect gases (GHG) the is capable of absorbing!

This was the ex-prime minister’s way of obscuring the real issue and once again asking the people to foot the bill for this new crisis, for the benefit of the capitalists who are in fact the main culprits.

Unfortunately, this kind of co-opting of slogans and concepts developed in the course of popular struggles is nothing new. Throughout history, the dominant classes have co-opted concepts created by oppressed peoples to express their hopes of eliminating the injustices of which they are the victims.

“Freedom,” “equality,” “human rights,” “food sovereignty” [3] and even “revolution” are terms that are appropriated and recycled, then emptied of their real meaning and neutralized to such a point that they lose their power to mobilize and their symbolism for exploited peoples.

The dominant classes generally start by opposing and fighting against these concepts. But, in the face of the insistence of the people on the “lower rungs of the ladder” and the intensification of their struggles to be recognized, they change tactics and adopt them, after spinning them to suit their purposes.
The appropriation of these concepts by the ruling classes enables them not only to win the ideological battle, but also to gain a certain symbolic legitimacy conferred by their adherence to humanitarian ideals such as equality, justice, democracy and human rights, since they appear to be championing the interests and aspirations of all segments of society.

Concepts and terms related to environmental issues have also been targeted by this process. We have recently witnessed a major attack on terms that emerged from the environmental movements of the second half of the 20^th century, such as “sustainable development” and “climate justice.” Now the concept of ecological debt is in the crosshairs.

From a historical point of view, the concept of ecological debt must be seen as a response to the financial debt weighing down many developing countries. The unofficial history of ecological debt dates back to the early 1990s and the publications of the Chilean NGO Instituto de Ecológica Politica (IEP), in particular Deuda Ecológica (Robleto and Marcelo, 1992). In the words of the statement issued in Johannesburg by the Ecuadoran environmentalist movement Acción Ecológica in 1999, “No More Plunder: They Owe Us an Ecological Debt.” That same year, at the annual meeting of Friends of the Earth International in Quito, that organization decided to launch an ecological debt campaign. The joint efforts of Friends of the Earth and Acción Ecológica led in 2000 to the creation of the Southern Peoples Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance (SPEDCA). SPEDCA’s objectives are threefold. Firstly, SPEDCA calls for “international recognition of the historical and current ecological debt.” Secondly, they call for “recognition of the illegitimacy of foreign debt, as demonstrated by ecological debt.” Thirdly, they formulate a series of demands aimed at repairing the historical ecological debt and preventing its future aggravation.

The concepts of ecological footprint and environmental space were developed by scientists at the same time, in the 1990s.

Acción Ecológica states explicitly that the campaign does not seek:
• to put a price on nature
• nor to deal in “environmental services”
• nor to put a price on the right to pollute
• nor to promote “debt for nature” swaps, because external debt is illegitimate and has already been repaid.
The operative concept is that the external debt supposedly owed by the South to the North has already been repaid in the form of the ecological debt owed by the North to the South, and that this ecological debt must not increase any further. By way of comparison, Latin America’s current accumulated debt amounted to 700 billion US dollars in 1999 (the equivalent of just 12 years of “carbon debt” at 60 billion US dollars per year).

Accordingly, ecological debt does not attempt to “put a price on nature,” which could lead to the commodification of living things, but rather evokes or defines socio-environmental responsibilities and the obligations that flow from them, in a spirit of justice in terms of equitably shared access to resources. It evokes or invokes other related notions such as ecological inequality, ecological solidarity and repayment of the ecological debt, in a spirit of “environmental justice.”

Ecological debt today takes several forms:

• Climate (or carbon) debt: GHG emissions over hundreds of years and squandering of the global carbon budget by the countries of the North and their ruling classes, particularly the fossil fuel industries.
• Biopiracy: appropriation of traditional food and medicinal knowledge by agri-food and pharmaceutical multinationals.
• Waste debt: exporting toxic residues to poor countries. For example, the huge amount of material abandoned by France in southern Algeria, around 100,000 tonnes, which was used for French nuclear experiments in the Reggane and In Ekker regions [4].
• Historical colonial debt: destruction of ecosystems and life forms, including human beings, through military intervention and Western supremacy in the “art” of killing, as well as the destruction linked to the exploitation and export of resources to the metropole.
• Neo-colonial debt: destruction of ecosystems and life forms, including human beings, through the promotion and imposition of extractivist policies via neo-colonial free-trade agreements, conditionalities imposed by the debt system, and the need to acquire hard currency in order to trade on a world market dominated by the currencies of imperialist countries, notably the USA and European countries.

 Advantages of the notion of ecological debt

– The sustainability debate tends to be exclusively forward-looking. The concept of ecological debt throws light on how the present situation stems from an often violent and unjust past. This historical dimension cannot be ignored in the quest for a more sustainable world order.
– What’s more, the link between foreign debt and ecological debt opens up a new political perspective on international relations, turning the creditor-debtor relationship on its head. The concept of ecological debt shows that countries can maintain a creditor-debtor relationship based on physical-ecological relations. Through the concept of ecological debt, industrialized and developing countries have a different relationship: the North is debtor, the South is creditor. By way of comparison, the North-South trade imbalance “totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP GDP
Gross Domestic Product Gross Domestic Product is an aggregate measure of total production within a given territory equal to the sum of the gross values added. The measure is notoriously incomplete; for example it does not take into account any activity that does not enter into a commercial exchange. The GDP takes into account both the production of goods and the production of services. Economic growth is defined as the variation of the GDP from one period to another. . For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30.” [5].
– Ecological debt is another way of revealing the impossibility and undesirability of copying the development trajectories of industrialized countries.
– Sharing the comparable experiences of the peoples of the South.

 What is the situation today?

Implicit recognition of this debt has existed since the Earth Summit in Rio (1992), through the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR). This principle can be traced back to as early as Stockholm in 1972, but today remains largely ignored in the concrete practices of international institutions.

I believe that the Paris Agreement has put this differentiated responsibility on the back burner with its NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution) model, because in concrete terms and since the adoption of this mechanism, we find that it is the least polluting countries that have the most ambitious NDCs.

Worse still, this ecological debt has never stopped growing:

• 65% of climate financing is in the form of loans [6] (and not grants, as the mainstream media would have us believe), which means that people in the South have to pay for the consequences of emissions in the North, plus interest Interest An amount paid in remuneration of an investment or received by a lender. Interest is calculated on the amount of the capital invested or borrowed, the duration of the operation and the rate that has been set. ! In 2022, for $62 billion in loans for climate adaptation, the countries of the South had to pay $88 billion in debt repayments + interest!!! [7]
• According to Debt Justice, low-income countries spend five times more to repay their external debt than to protect their populations from the effects of climate change.
• The IMF IMF
  International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.
  
  When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.
  
  As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).
  
  The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
  The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.
  
  http://imf.org estimates that the cumulative climate debt (a fraction of the so-called ecological debt) of the countries of the North between 1959 and 2035 will exceeds 139 trillion dollars, while current annual commitments do not even reach the promised 100 billion [8].

The climate debt related in particular to the extreme phenomena (floods, drought, forest fires, etc.) that the countries of the global South and their populations have to face today, despite their non-responsibility for the climate crisis, must logically and legitimately be paid by the countries of the North and their multinationals.

For the past four or five years, the COPs (which governments and multinationals have so far scorned) have been talking about a loss and damage fund with a budget of 100 billion dollars. Needless to say, this budget, which the countries of the North have never respected, is far from sufficient, given the magnitude of the disaster. For example, the floods in Pakistan displaced more than 30 million people, and the Pakistani government has estimated the material damage at 30 billion dollars.

 The energy transition: another face of colonialism

Today, we have to admit that the dominant classes—especially those in the North, but with the complicity of the elites in the South—are unfortunately succeeding (so far) not only in making the poorest people, those at the bottom, pay the price of the ecological transition, but also in taking advantage of the narrative created around this so-called green “transition” to accumulate wealth and reap profits in what is more akin to disaster capital, a concept which Naomi Klein explains in her remarkable book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. [9]

Hidden behind what governments call the “green transition” is in fact a techno-solutionist disaster capitalism, where capitalists seek new opportunities for profit accumulation under the pretext of protecting the environment or combating climate change!

But it is also a process of re-colonization, accompanied by:

• Massive land grabbing in Africa, particularly for solar and wind power projects [10],
• Public-private partnerships (PPPs) imposed by financial institutions (World Bank World Bank
  WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.
  
  It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :
  
  1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;
  
  2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;
  
  3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.
  
  As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.
  
  , AFD, etc.),
• Increased dependence of Southern countries on Northern technologies, patents and capital.

To illustrate this, I’m going to use example of Morocco, which is once again presented as a pioneer in the so-called energy transition, with one of the most ambitious plans in the region, aiming for a 52% share Share A unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset, representing one part of the total capital stock. Its owner (a shareholder) is entitled to receive an equal distribution of any profits distributed (a dividend) and to attend shareholder meetings. of renewable energies in terms of installed capacity [11], whereas the electrical energy actually consumed is still unfortunately dominated by fossil fuels, notably coal [12]:

Electricity in Morocco – source : Lowcarbonpower.com

  The case of Morocco: an energy transition, or the perpetuation of the process of accumulation by dispossession with a coat of green paint?

According to the World Bank, Morocco needs $53 billion for the energy transition by 2050. $7 billion has already been spent, mainly in public money or in the form of loans contracted or guaranteed by the State.

Who pays?

It should be emphasized that the bulk of this energy transition bill is paid for by the people: rate increases, taxes, debt and the Hassan II fund drawn from privatization revenues.

And who really benefits?

The main beneficiaries are, first of all, the banks, who interfere in all phases of these projects, impose their agenda, and pocket profits by liquidating their financial products (loans, guarantees Guarantees Acts that provide a creditor with security in complement to the debtor’s commitment. A distinction is made between real guarantees (lien, pledge, mortgage, prior charge) and personal guarantees (surety, aval, letter of intent, independent guarantee). , green bonds, etc.) and skimming off the interest.

The second main beneficiaries are multinational firms such as Engie, Siemens and TotalEnergies, and the Moroccan ruling classes, headed by the royal holding company with its “green” branch Nareva, which controls more than 90% of the wind power market, or the head of government Akhannouch with his Akwa holding company and its “Green of Africa” branch, which together with the Spanish group Acciona has been awarded the project to build Africa’s largest desalination plant in Casablanca.

All these projects involve land and territory grabbing, with the total marginalization and expulsion of the local population, as well as the depletion of already scarce water resources, as in the case of the Noor project. Two examples: the grabbing of 3,000 hectares in the region of Ouarzazate, representing 10% of the city’s surface area, and of 4,200 hectares in the Midelt region, representing 31% of the city’s surface area.

As for the TotalEnergies Chbika green hydrogen project in the Guelmim region, the allocation of 170,000 hectares (1,700 sq. km., equivalent to the surface area of the city of Guelmim or of London) is under discussion, as is 150,000 hectares for the pharaonic Xlink project, which plans to supply Britain with clean energy produced in Morocco. It would account for 8% of the UK’s electricity and supply 7 million British residents.

It should be noted that the authorities used two decrees issued by the French colonial authorities to confiscate these collective lands: the decree of April 27, 1919 and that of February 18, 1924, which authorized expropriation in the public interest and placed the management of the process under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior.

The other example is that of the so-called green car industry—electric cars, which many people, including environmental activists, see as the magic solution to the climate catastrophe.
Since 2020, BMW has been a customer of Managem, the mining arm of the same Royal Al Mada holding company. Renault has also signed an agreement with Managem to supply 5,000 tons of cobalt sulfate per year, starting in 2025, to fuel the production of 300,000 batteries for electric vehicles at its gigafactory in northern France. [13]

Cobalt, which is used to produce alloys and cathodes for the batteries used in European electric cars, notably those made by BMW and Renault, is partly extracted at Bou-Azzer, one of the few mines to mine from the primary deposit (pure cobalt in rock). Thanks to this mine, Managem is one of the world’s top five cobalt producers.

Contrary to the official announcements of the two multinationals BMW and Renault, which have the chutzpah to talk of “responsible cobalt,” mining at Bouazzer takes place under catastrophic conditions for humans (workers and local residents), but also for non-human nature. Miners denounce dangerous working conditions, dilapidated equipment and systematic exposure to toxic dust.

Once again, the productivist policies decided by the elites, mainly in the North, under the new pretext of the energy transition, are conducted to the detriment of the populations and the ecosystems of the South “sacrificed zones and sacrificed people,” in the words of Naomi Klein in her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. [14]

 Towards a popular, anti-colonial and sovereign transition

Ecological debt is a debt owed to peoples (mainly those of the Global South) and to non-human nature: Ecological debt is not a metaphor.
It is a call to historical, climatic, and environmental justice. It expresses:

• challenging of the extractivist capitalist model,
• reaffirmation of the sovereignty of peoples, in particular in the South,
• rejection of any commodification of nature (carbon markets, debt-for-nature swaps, etc.)

As Acción Ecológica so well expresses it:

“We do not put a price on nature. We refuse to allow ecological debt to be traded as an asset Asset Something belonging to an individual or a business that has value or the power to earn money (FT). The opposite of assets are liabilities, that is the part of the balance sheet reflecting a company’s resources (the capital contributed by the partners, provisions for contingencies and charges, as well as the outstanding debts). .”
A truly just ecological transition requires a radical transformation of capitalist modes of production, transport, and consumption. It must necessarily include:

• Popular sovereignty for local communities over their territories, but also over any alternative projects and at all stages: design/planning, construction, implementation, operation, and maintenance.
• Compensation for local populations who have agreed to cede their territories and bear the certain negative impacts of such projects, for example by benefiting from preferential rates or even completely free electricity services, but also from total priority in employment and training. These populations would occupy highly valued jobs and not just security, cleaning, and manual construction work!
• An end to giant, centralized projects in favor of local, decentralized solutions adapted to local needs and avoiding long-distance energy transport with all the losses associated with the need to develop appropriate infrastructure.
• The integration of workers and technicians involved in energy facilities and infrastructure, including polluting ones, into alternatives, once again, from the design stage onwards. These workers are part of the solution, not the problem, and it is imperative to gain their trust.
• Recognition of the peoples of the South as creditors of ecological debts. It is indecent to continue talking about “100 billion in aid” from the North to the South. We must now speak in terms of debts of several trillion (thousand billion) dollars.
• Socialization of the energy sector as a common good: co-managed, not commodified.
• Regional integration in the South and North based on the principles of solidarity and complementarity, not competition and speculation!

Ecological debt is the memory of capitalism’s past, present and future environmental crimes. It demands justice, not charity. It refuses to think of the future without the past. And it reminds us that the paradise of the rich has always been built on the hell of the poor, particularly in the global South, as well as on the extermination of other forms of life and the endangerment of the fundamental equilibrium of the Earth’s ecosystems.

Alternatives must be discussed and built with the local communities who have always fought to defend their territories. The alternative will come first and foremost from popular struggles, from the peoples of the South, from their memory, their courage and their creativity. We must heed Thomas Sankara’s call not to let the oppressors have a monopoly on creativity, and to start thinking from below, with the people below, about the possibility of another world and another humanity, which are not only possible but necessary, today more than ever!