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The local ecosystem is likewise suffering ; water and soil are laden
with toxins that are hundreds of times more prevalent than can be
safely absorbed by humans and local wildlife. The Bhopal Gas Disaster
highlights the environmental and human costs of laissez-faire industry,
while serving as yet another example of the debt that the North is
quickly racking up in the South— ecological debt.

Today’s environmental destruction of the South is an extension of a
legacy of ecological plunder dating back to colonization. Spices,
plants, animals and germplasm, land, gold and other minerals, oil and
other fossil fuels ; the wealth of the West is built on the bedrock of
their plunder.

The 500 hundred-year rise of Europe culminated with domination over
the globe— its resources as much as its peoples. The words of Cecil
Rhodes, an influential force in the British expansion in 19th century
Africa, crystallises this relationship succinctly :

“We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw
materials and at the same time exploit cheap slave labour that is
available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also
provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our
factories.”

In the world market that was created by Europe, a large surplus of
natural resources and cheap or forced labour was extracted from the
subordinate colonial economies. Although some development did take
place in the colonies, their economies were almost entirely geared to
the needs of the home economies.

In his prologue to ‘Ecological Imperialiasm’ the Biological
Expansion of Europe, 900 –1900, Alfred W. Crosby asks “Perhaps European
humans have triumphed because of their superiority in arms,
organisation and fanaticism, but what in heaven’s name is the reason
that the Sun never sets on the empire of the dandelion ?” He also
provides an answer, “Perhaps the success of European imperialism has a
biological, an ecological component".

Rethinking Debt

The ecological debt of the North to the South is not just
historical, but continues to be accumulated even today. A persuasive
definition of ecological debt is that of the Accion Ecologica of
Ecuador, according to which :

The Debt accumulated by the Northern industrial countries towards
the Third World countries on account of resource plundering,
environmental damages, and the free occupation of environmental space
to deposit wastes, such as greenhouse gases. Those who abuse the
biosphere, transgress ecological limits and enforce unsustainable
patterns of resource extraction of a range of natural resources must
begin to discharge this ecological debt. The ecological debt
accumulated through such processes as the extraction of a range of
natural resources, ecologically unequal terms of trade externalising
ecological costs, the appropriation of traditional knowledge, for
example, of seeds and plants, on which the modern agri-business and
biotechnology are based, contamination of the atmosphere through the
emission of various greenhouse gases, producing and testing chemical
and nuclear weapons in countries of the South, and the dumping of
chemicals and toxic waste in the Third World. The current system of
neo-liberal globalised market economy maintains and augments the
ecological debt through such mechanisms as the SAPs imposed by the
international financial institutions, foreign investments, unequal
terms of trade, forcing countries to produce export products in order
to redress financial debts ; and through the trade-related Intellectual
Property Rights within the WTO which protect the patenting of genetic
material for agriculture and pharmacology by TNCs without compensation
for the original guardians of the biodiversity of the South’.

In recent years, with the threat of climate change looming large
over the entire planet, the concept of ecological debt is increasingly
appreciated. As industrialized countries continue to squat on the
development space of less-developed countries, academic research is
beginning to show its true cost. A calculation sponsored by the British
Government, for example, revealed that at a bargain price of US$20 per
ton of carbon dioxide emitted, the developed countries owe the poor
countries US$13 trillion each year. Contrast this with the total
external financial debt of all the indebted poor and developing
countries, which is just under US$3 trillion. And that is just the
climate debt, which is only a component of the ecological debt.

Indeed a landmark 2008 University of California Berkeley study
entitled “The debt of nations and the distribution of ecological
impacts from human activities” conservatively estimated the
environmental costs of human activities in low-, middle- and
high-income countries from 1961- 2000 in six major categories : climate
change, stratospheric ozone depletion, agricultural intensification and
expansion, deforestation, overfishing, and mangrove conversion ; it
notes that, “through disproportionate emissions of greenhouse gases
alone, the rich group may have imposed climate damages on the poor
group greater than the latter’s current foreign debt.”

That the rest of the world is finally coming to terms with
ecological debt and its terrible human consequences must be but scant
consolation to the victims of the Bhopal Gas Disaster. However, as is
the case with such tragedies, one must clutch at whatever silver lining
can be found by hoping that the lessons will not be lost as easily as
the lives and will be remembered for just as long.