Sunday, May 9, 2010

Climate debt: why we’re not all in this together

from Green Left. 
It’s fitting that the notion of climate debt reverses the normal debt relationship between the First and Third worlds. For decades, rich world governments and banks have insisted poor countries repay high-interest loans on time, regardless of the dreadful social outcomes.

When any country has defaulted on its repayments, powerful creditors such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank step in with privatisation programs and other neoliberal measures. Such programs have benefited Western corporations, while worsening poverty for people in the global South.