Angelica Navarro was Bolivia’s chief climate negotiator at the COP15 talks in Bolivia (see: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/9/we_are_not_begging_for_aid ).
Angelica Navarro on Climate Debt (2009): “I just want to remind that actually historical responsibility is already in the convention. And we were, if I’m not mistaken, five countries that presented in Bonn, in a technical briefing, a historical responsibility quantification of what developed countries have done and what they should do as a result. That was India, Brazil, China and Bolivia.
The Bolivian proposal, in specific, is climate debt. What do I mean and what does Bolivia mean by that? It’s basically that developed countries have over-consumed atmospheric — common atmospheric space. Twenty percent of the population have actually emitted more than two-thirds of the emissions, and as a result, they have caused more than 90 percent of the increase in temperatures. As a result, developing countries, we are suffering. Bolivia’s glaciers are melting between 40 to 55 percent. We have extended droughts. We have in the lowlands more flooding. And we are losing between four to 17 percent of our GDP in the worst years. That is climate debt.
And what we are asking is repayment. We are not asking for aid. We are not asking — we are not begging for aid. We want developed countries to comply with their obligation and pay their debt.
How are they going to pay it? The first part is to pay it through reduction emission domestically. They have really to fulfill their obligations. This is not money. This is not the part of monetary. They just have to comply with their obligations, ambitiously, for the first and second commitment period. And the second part of the climate debt is adaptation debt. Everything that we’re already suffering, as Bolivia, as indigenous people, in Africa and in other parts, that we can accept that is finance and transfer of technology, but not the peanuts that we are seeing on the table right now that is not even a fraction of what they have used to save their bank. But apparently, finance and banks are more important than people and life. And that is very sad, but it’s like that, because we think that they are negotiating not an environmental agreement. They seem to be negotiating an economic agreement.” [1].
[1]. Angelica Navarro interviewed by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now, 9 December 2009: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/9/we_are_not_begging_for_aid .Angelica