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Media Statement       
by Thing Siew Shuen 
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(Petaling Jaya, Monday): The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was recently awarded the Nobel peace prize, reported of “unequivocal” climate change already occurring and warned that man-made global warming could lead to abrupt or irreversible impacts. In this respect, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCC), which held in Bali from 3-14 December, has become an extremely vital event, because decisions taken in Bali can determine the fate of the planet, particularly the poor and the vulnerable.

In order to have better understanding on how international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank addresses climate change, and the impacts of different mitigation and adaptation measures to the planet and the people, we have participated in an International Conference on “Linking Global Finance, International Financial Institutions, and Debt to Energy and Climate Change” in Bali(5-7 Dec). We have also taken part in the Global Day of Action on Climate Change on 8 Dec to express our solidarity with people all around the world who have been affected by global warming and climate injustice.

The conference was organized by the Jubilee South - Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt & Development (JS-APMDD), in cooperation with : Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace International, Oil Change International, Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), WALHI – Indonesia, Koalisi Anti-Utang (KAU),International Forum for Indonesian Development (INFID), GARPU, KRUHA, GCAP SENCA.

We have signed the Bali Declaration on International Financial Institutions, Debt and Climate Change on December 8, 2007 in Sanur, Bali. The full contents of the declaration are as below:

“We, debt and development activists from different social movements and non-government organizations from Asia-Pacific join the growing calls of the international community to decisively address the paramount issue of climate change.

The climate crisis is the most blatantly repulsive result of a flawed development paradigm imposed on us by global institutions, northern governments and transnational corporations with the acquiescence and collaboration of our local elites and neo-liberal economic apologists.

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.

We call on international financial institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other regional development banks, northern governments and their export credit agencies - TO STOP ALL FUNDING AND ALL PROGRAMS THAT HARM PEOPLES and the ENVIRONMENT.

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 towards projects and policies that aggravate climate change.

We oppose carbon trading as a false solution that allows transnational corporations and rich countries to buy the right to pollute at the expense of impoverished peoples and countries. Worse, carbon trading has spawned new and despicable instruments to extract profits from pollution.

 

We demand the following:

• Redirection of existing dirty energy financing to adaptation and mitigation measures and energy efficiency projects as a form of reparation to the decades of ecological debt owed by the north to the south;

• Financing of renewable energies as one form of restitution for countless years of debt domination that hampered Southern countries capacity to develop alternative technologies and development strategies;

• The sovereign and democratic management and control of funds for mitigation, adaptation and the development of clean, safe and renewable energy; And for the World Bank, ADB and other similar institutions with a horrible track record to be kept from any form of control and inolvement over the disposal and use of these funds.

• Stop to all false solutions such as agro-fuels and carbon trading.

• Rejection of all loans, aid and subsidies for fossil fuel extraction, dirty technologies and exploitation of natural resources that violate our national patrimony and the rights of indigenous peoples.

• An end to imposition of all conditionalities (e.g. privatization, liberalization and deregulation) by international financial institutions and northern governments through loans, aid and debt.

• Total and unconditional cancellation and repudiation of debts that have contribute to climate change, and all other illegitimate debts and “obligations” claimed from us by the north and lending institutions.

(10/12/2007)