“Trading debt for climate action would help dozens of countries focus on protecting the planet”

2023-06-21 15:00:23

Climate change is a real and urgent threat that jeopardizes the survival of our species and life as we know it. Despite the evidence, our civilization has not achieved the goals it set itself to limit the rise in temperatures. High-income countries and large companies have a lot to do with it.

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Commitments made by States in the framework of international agreements are systematically violated. According to the World Meteorological Organization, there is now a 66% chance that we will exceed the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris agreement in 2015 in at least one of the next five years. Nor is there much progress in the private sector. Every day I read in the press that big companies are setting aside their sustainability goals in order to maintain their capital gains.

We are currently discussing in Paris, thanks in particular to the initiative of the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, of mechanisms that could slow down climate change and reverse the trend. I welcome this initiative and wish to express my point of view on how we can progress towards a just energy transition.

As I have repeatedly stated to world leaders, high-carbon countries, which are also those with the greatest economic resources and home to global financial institutions, have a responsibility to “get their hands on in the pocket” to finance the energy transition.

Priority to the emergency rather than the necessary

The question is how to achieve this funding. While there are many mechanisms, some can be applied quickly. One of them has been proposed within the framework of the Union of South American Nations: the exchange of foreign debt against actions in favor of the climate.

This is, in my view, an ideal mechanism to advance a just energy transition, its implementation being both feasible and equitable. Low-income countries with high environmental aspirations could thus allocate the resources they would use to pay their foreign debt to actions for the benefit of the planet.

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Global financial institutions are currently forcing developing countries (and those like Colombia that have great environmental wealth to protect) to make their vital energy transition needs conditional on the payment of their external debt. In Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and other parts of the world, this leads us, as we say in Colombia, to prioritize the urgent rather than the necessary.

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