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TWENTY-ONE nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the
Asia-Pacific region urged multilateral institutions and
foreign banks to stop funding or reject loans for all
environmentally hazardous programs.
In the Bali Declaration on International
Financial Institutions, Debt and Climate Change, 21 NGOs
in the region, including the Freedom from Debt Coalition
(FDC), Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)
Philippines, and Philippine Rural Reconstruction
Movement (PRRM), expressed their position and demands to
help resolve the ill effects of climate change.
“We call on international financial
institutions, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
and other regional development banks, northern
governments and their export credit agencies, to stop
all funding and all programs that harm people and the
environment,” the declaration said.
The NGOs also said the climate crisis
was the “most blatantly repulsive” result of a “flawed
development paradigm” imposed by global institutions,
northern governments and multinational corporations.
The declaration also included the
demands of the NGOs that signed the document to help
mitigate the climate crisis.
“We assert that debt has been used not
only as an instrument to dominate government and peoples
of the South but also to finance projects and promote
policies that have greatly contributed to the
exacerbation and escalation of climate change,” the
declaration said.
“We reject all IFI loans and ‘aid’
supposedly for adaptation measures and renewable
energies as hypocritical measures—when these same
institutions continue to promote a development framework
and pour several times more of their funds toward
projects and policies that aggravate climate change,”
the declaration added.
IFI loans or leveraged loans are loans
that are extended to companies or individuals that
already have considerable amounts of debt.
Further, the NGOs called for the
redirection of existing energy financing schemes to
adaptation and mitigation measures and energy efficiency
projects; financing renewable energies; the sovereign
and democratic management and control of funds for
mitigation, adaptation and the development of clean,
safe and renewable energy; the WB, ADB and other similar
institutions with a horrible track record to be kept
from any form of control and involvement over the
disposal and use of these funds.
In addition, the NGOs called for nonuse
of agrofuels and carbon trading; the rejection of all
loans, aid and subsidies for fossil- fuel extraction,
dirty technologies and exploitation of natural
resources; and an end to the imposition of all
conditionalities on privatization, liberalization and
deregulation by international financial institutions and
northern governments through loans, aid and debt
cancellation.
“We demand the total and unconditional
cancellation of debts that have contributed to climate
change, and all other illegitimate debts and
‘obligations’ claimed from us by the north and lending
institutions,” the declaration added.
Other signatories of the declaration are
the Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement for Debt and
Development; GARPU, Indonesia; KRUHA, Indonesia; Rural
Reconstruction, Nepal; Equity and Justice Working Group,
Bangladesh; Indian Social Action Forum; Action Aid,
Bangladesh; and Action Aid, Nepal.
Also included are the Community
Development Library, Bangladesh; Women’s Agenda for
Change, Cambodia; Nadi Ghati Morcha, India; Independent
Fishworkers Forum Kerala; BUP, Bangladesh; Sfchetan,
Bangladesh; LDC Watch; South Asia Alliance for Poverty
Eradication; Save Our Seahorses (SOS) Action Committee,
Malaysia; and the Democratic Action Party Malaysia
The declaration was made by the 21 NGOs
for the UN Climate Change Conference 2007 that is
currently ongoing in Bali, Indonesia. The conference
brings together representatives of over 180 countries
together with observers from intergovernmental and
nongovernmental organizations, and the media. |
