Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

We witnessed an example of what happens when, instead of strengthening the struggles of the peoples who defend their territories with their own lives, the defenders of “progressive neoliberalism” place themselves at the service of capital and predatory extractivism. The political threats suffered by the Indigenous comrade Auricelia Arapiun during her intervention on our panel analyzing the current situation expose a sector that acts within communities to sow fear and fragmentation. However, as Auricelia expressed in her response to the threat, we will neither be silenced nor seek conciliation.

As we know, the offensive of the extreme right in our territories also manifests as attempts to violate our sovereignty, reproducing the same logics of domination and submission that existed in the past and persist in the present. Faced with this imperialist offensive, we, the ecosocialists, call for a united front to resist and defend ourselves.

Ecosocialism, as a tool for building another world, is both necessary and urgent. The accelerating destruction of ecosystems’ reproductive capacities, as well as the neocolonial and imperialist nature of the so-called alternatives presented by the very system that created the current climate emergency, threaten our continuity as a species and lead us to a point of no return.

Given this challenge, the only possible solution is the coordinated organization of our struggles with the goal of overcoming the capitalist system. The organized struggle of the peoples, their resistance against systems of domination, and the progress made in building other worlds based on solidarity, complementarity, and reciprocity—respecting the knowledge and worldviews of different peoples and their legitimate right to self-defense and self-determination—form the fundamental foundation of our strategy.

During these days of debate, representatives of peoples in struggle from different regions of Abya Yala and from other continents raised our voices to denounce that capitalist and imperialist extractivism is driving environmental and human destruction across multiple territories. It is essential to strengthen the networks of resisting peoples to confront this devastation, while also reinforcing the life-sustaining practices that communities have developed over generations—practices now threatened by contamination and by the appropriation of water, land, and air by transnational corporations and governments.

The voices of Indigenous peoples played a central role in this Encounter, identifying a shared context of colonialism, invasion, dispossession, extractivism, and false solutions, accompanied by a policy of annihilation and genocide that not only kills but also renders these peoples invisible, criminalizing and persecuting them. Here, we recognize the relationship between body and territory as a fabric in which structural violence resides, but in which the struggle for life also resides. This struggle is evident and expressed through alternative resistances: the valuing and articulation of knowledges and cosmologies in which ancestry and nature are present, as well as self-defense, self-determination, community life, and the importance of hope and unity among different territories.

These struggles for life also manifest through ecofeminisms, which highlight the struggles of women and feminized bodies across Abya Yala, who confront the deep and historical relationship between capitalism and the violence inflicted on land, territories, and women.
Underlying the various forms of extractivism lies a violence expressed in the contamination and destruction of the land; in the plundering of our common goods Common goods In economics, common goods are characterized by being collectively owned, as opposed to either privately or publicly owned. In philosophy, the term denotes what is shared by the members of one community, whether a town or indeed all humanity, from a juridical, political or moral standpoint. ; in the fragmentation of cultural perspectives; and in the feminized, impoverished, and racialized bodies of thousands of women in the Global South.

This analysis, in addition to identifying capitalism as the structural origin of all territorial violence, also proposes solutions capable of overcoming these contradictions—such as community water management, food autonomy, self-governance, community justice, and a subversive understanding of care. This approach implies a structural critique of the neoliberalization of the discourse of care, which continues to uphold the logic of capital. Instead, we position ourselves from the perspective of collective and community care, in favor of a radical transformation.

Ecosyndical struggle is a fundamental element of the ecosocialist struggle. The fight for better working conditions, combined with the awareness that the exploitation of the working class and the dispossession of our common goods serve capital and reinforce one another, creates conditions for mobilizing and advancing against the structural causes of oppression we face under the capitalist system. In this sense, rejecting fracking in Colombia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the world is a task we assume responsibly, aimed at contributing to the construction of free territories. We know that this will only be possible if unions articulate with social, popular, Indigenous, and peasant movements in each country, maintaining their autonomy in the defence of territories, life, and its reproduction. Through internationalist solidarity, we commit to creating spaces to denounce violations of labor, human, and natural rights.

From what we are, we unanimously cry out: Free Palestine, from the river to the sea; ceasefire in Gaza; and condemnation of the genocidal State of Israel for the massacre of the Palestinian people. A community tha resists, that sows, who maintains the conviction to survive —and whom we embrace through internationalist solidarity, multiplying global actions of support such as BDS and the Flotilla, examples of resistance from below that are now seen as threats by Israel.
Furthermore, we demand that governments in the region break relations with Israel, as in the case of agreements with Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, which has become an instrument of colonial domination. Water is a common good, and in Palestine, it is used as a political and economic weapon: Israel controls the sources, prevents Palestinians from drilling wells, collecting rainwater, or maintaining cisterns, thus creating total dependency and a system of water apartheid. Palestine is a laboratory of domination whose techniques spread to other territories, and resistance and solidarity with the Palestinian people must be global. We, ecosocialists around the world, accompany and build active solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to exist.

A few days before the start of COP 30, we observe once again that this is not a space capable of responding to the needs of the territories; on the contrary, it operates as a mechanism for the financialization of nature. We therefore reaffirm our denunciation and rejection of the payment of odious and illegitimate debts, and call for the dismantling of the international mechanisms that drive and legitimize them. These mechanisms mortgage Mortgage A loan made against property collateral. There are two sorts of mortgages:
1) the most common form where the property that the loan is used to purchase is used as the collateral;
2) a broader use of property to guarantee any loan: it is sufficient that the borrower possesses and engages the property as collateral. our future in exchange for the delivery of the strategic goods that capital needs for its unlimited reproduction. It is essential to dismantle the debt system, which subordinates and limits the possibilities of a planned exit from the current system.

We expect nothing from these spaces that promote projects such as carbon credits, which—like the TFFF—embrace the narrative that the problem lies in the incomplete commodification of common goods, and that therefore a “market failure” must be corrected. We also denounce governments complicit in ecocidal projects, such as the Brazilian government which, just days before COP 30 in Belém—an Amazonian territory—approved oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River and, during COP 30, approved the registration of 30 new pesticides.
We reaffirm agroecology as one of the pathways that shape our ecosocialist strategy. The production of agroecological food, based on Indigenous and peasant practices, not only represents an alternative to the dominant agro-industrial food system, focused on commodities Commodities The goods exchanged on the commodities market, traditionally raw materials such as metals and fuels, and cereals. , but is also a way to restore and rebuild ecosystems and overcome the alienation between countryside and city. It is therefore fundamental to address the climate change. It is essential to understand that there is no possible agroecology under green capitalism, since agroecology implies, as a political practice, a structural transformation of the prevailing relations of production and life.

Recognizing that ecosocialism has been elaborating manifestos and programs outlining this strategy for years, we debated the next steps and concluded that there is no ecosocialism without free territories. We are certain that ecoterritorial struggles and the construction of a liveable world are the path we must follow, strengthening our initiatives through solidarity, and creating spaces that allow us to advance in building an ecosocialism of the peoples and for the peoples.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to accumulate victories that show us the way. Carrying out mobilizations and campaigns among the different collectives involved in this ecosocialist project is fundamental for consolidating a comprehensive and internationalist process of coordinated resistance and shared strategy.

The continuity of this articulation of struggle, the development of the ecosocialist program we need, and the internationalization of the ecosocialist movement are tasks we began ten years ago in these encounters, and which were consolidated with the creation of the Internationalist Network of Ecosocialist Encounters, established in 2024 after the meeting in Buenos Aires.

As new initiatives, we will hold the VII International Ecosocialist Encounter in Belgium in May 2026; the International Ecosocialist Seminar in Brazil during the First International Antifascist Conference; and the III Latin American and Caribbean Ecosocialist Encounter in 2027 in Colombia. We are convinced that these encounters must transcend borders and generate common actions of struggle that allow us to simultaneously confront the concentrated powers of capitalist extractivism in each territory where we live.

However, the Ecosocialist Encounters alone are not sufficient to foster the development of a program truly rooted in concrete struggles. Therefore, we propose creating joint actions and campaigns on Palestine, fossil fuels, mining, debt, and free trade agreements; the defence of water; the struggle against agribusiness; and the restoration of forests. We also propose identifying companies involved in ecocidal projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, in order to issue joint denunciations and statements. Additionally, we propose holding ecosocialist encounters within territories ahead of the gathering in Colombia, so that the debates reflect ecoterritorialized proposals and formulations.

Finally, we want our space of construction to be vibrant and diverse, capable of generating deep debates among all participating collectives, allowing us to reflect on and problematize our conception of ecosocialism, reaffirming that ecosocialism is not socialism disguised as environmentalism, but a proposal for profound change in our relationships—among ourselves and with nature. It is another way of doing politics, capable of building a new, dignified, and beautiful world to live in, for human beings and for all other living beings.