01.09.2009 If the "ecological debts" of industrialised nations are factored into the world's financial accounting, the poorer nations of the global South are creditors, not debtors, a panel of economists and theologians has told a World Council of Churches hearing in Geneva.

"Ecological debt keeps growing," Joan Martinez Alier, a university professor in Barcelona, told the 31 August hearing, held during a meeting of the WCC's main governing body, its central committee. "The demand for economic growth means more use of energy and resources, which produces more waste."

Panel members - Christians from Peru, Spain, Cuba and Korea - called for an international court to assess ecological damage and levy penalties on those countries and corporations found culpable in environmental and resulting human degradation.

The hearing was told that a study by economists at the University of California-Berkeley has calculated the ecological debt owed by the industrial North to the global South at US$2.3 trillion.

Martinez Alier said that ecological debt falls into five basic categories:

:: climate change resulting from high emissions, which are 15 times higher in the U.S. than in India, for instance;
:: unequal trade, in which industrial countries extract raw materials cheaply from poorer countries and then ship back more expensive finished goods;
:: "bio-piracy", in which local knowledge is exploited by corporations to increase profits in agriculture and other enterprises;
:: export of toxic waste; and
:: degradation of land, water and air by industrial processes such as mining and timber-harvesting.

"Rich economies look for new resources in 'commodity frontiers', which threatens even more land and people," said Alier. "Local citizens complain, but not too many of them have much leverage." Maria Sumire Conde, a member of the Quechua nation in Peru, said that indigenous people wanted to see that those responsible, "should take on
the ecological debt and commit themselves to rectify the harm done over the years. And we believe payment of ecological debt has to be legally enforced."

The pastoral work of the churches must be "radically ecological", said the Rev. Ofelia Ortega, a seminary president in Matanzas, Cuba. "It is difficult to find any aspect of what we call 'evil' or 'sin' that is so all-embracing and has such devastating power as the ecological evil," she said. "We must be aware, not only of its consequences, but also of the deep causes of the destruction of life in general and of the struggle for restoring God's communion and 'shalom' [peace] for humankind."

Kim Yong-Bock of the Advanced Institute for Integral Study of Life in Jrisan, South Korea, said, "It is God's promisethat God will not allow any powers that be to destroy the life of all beings and the order of life."

By Jerry L. Van Marter, Ecumenical News International