FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday 10 November 1998
THE DEADLY COCKTAIL DEBT, DEFORESTATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The world has been horrified by the scale of the Central American
hurricane disaster. But the disaster has been made far worse than
it
need have been, by human factors including:
large scale clearance of forests,
international debt, and possibly
human induced climate change.
Friends of the Earth International - organised in 58 countries
around
the world, including Central America - is demanding urgent
international
action including the cancellation of third world debts and major
cuts in
the release of climate changing gases.
Central America once had about 500,00 km2 of forest cover, but by
the
late 1980s this had fallen to an estimated 90,000km2 [1]. Thirty
per
cent of Honduras' forest has been lost since 1960, with more than
800km2
being lost every year to ranch land, banana plantations, small
farms and
fuelwood collection. The expansion of fruit plantations is partly
a
result of the need to earn foreign exchange to repay debt.
In Nicaragua some 2,000km2 of forest is being lost every year,
with
half the country's energy supplied by wood [2]. Nicaragua cannot
afford
to import alternative fuels because all available foreign exchange
is
used to repay debt.
The combined debt of Nicaragua and Honduras is 10.1 billion
dollars.
This means that 39% and 20% respectively of their export earnings
is
spent on debt repayment every year [3].
Lack of forest cover means more rapid runoff of rainfall and
increased
rates of erosion, which in turn can lead to flooding and mudslides
after
heavy rains. The severity of the recent rain is almost
unprecedented and
fits predictions of the consequences of human induced climate
change.
The release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide is rapidly
warming the earth's atmosphere and is expected to cause severe
economic
and social disruption as extreme weather events become more
frequent and
severe.
Such extreme weather particularly hits poor countries, where there
is a
fragile transport infrastructure, weak disaster relief capacity
and
large rural populations depend on agriculture.
As the Central American disaster shows the threat of climate
change,
Governments at the fourth climate change conference in Argentina
have
made almost no progress on how to implement existing international
agreements to fight climate change. It is no comfort to the people
of
Central America that delegates have observe one minute's silence
to mark
the hurricane catastrophe. One reason for the lack of agreement at
the
climate talks is opposition by multinational car and oil companies
to
binding pollution reduction targets
Ricardo Navarro of Friends of the Earth El Salvador commented:
"In El Salvador 19% of the country's schools were destroyed, the
destruction of the maize and bean harvest is widespread, many
water
sources have been damaged, and disease is on the rise.
Our neighbours were dealt an even worse blow. In Nicaragua 70% of
the
highways are no longer passable, 80% of the coffee harvest has
been
lost, and 80% of the telephone system destroyed. Lakes and rivers
have
become as one, and an avalanche in the Casitas volcano covered an
area
of 60 square km, burying numerous villages and hamlets. In
Honduras
only 20% of the population has been left with drinking water, and
amongst the victims is the mayor of Tegucigalpa, the capital city.
But the saddest thing of all is that many of dead and displaced
are
people of limited economic resources, people who shouldn't have to
pay
for damage that the industrialized world and the rich of the Third
World
are causing to the atmosphere with their greenhouse gas emissions.
The
multinational oil corporations still claim that there is
insufficient
scientific evidence to establish the cause of climate change, but
the
question that we ask in Central America is: How many deaths do
Exxon,
Ford, General Motors and others need to be convinced of the
necessity to
stabilize the climate?"
Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth International said:
"Climate change is happening now. The tragedy in Central America
shows
what it means in human and economic terms. Loss of forest has made
matters worse and the ability of the countries to cope with the
disaster
is hampered by international debt.
The industrialised nations must act now to cancel third world debt
and
make major cuts in the release of climate changing gases."
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS:
[1] Deforestation rates in Tropical Forests and their Climatic
Implications: (FOE 1989)
[2] Conservation Atlas of tropical forests - the Americas (IUCN)
1996
[3] Nicaragua: Oxfam 1998/Honduras: Honduran Ministry of Finance
1998
end
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