Climate debt

In 2010, Bolivia and other developing countries hosted the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth and reached the People's Agreement, which states:[5] We, the people attending the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, demand to the countries that have over-consumed the atmospheric space to acknowledge their historic and current responsibilities for the causes and adverse effects of climate change, and to honor their climate debts to developing countries, to vulnerable communities in their own countries, to our children’s children and to all living beings in our shared home – Mother Earth.The People's Agreement states that climate debt is owed by not only financial compensation but also restorative justice.

Apart from official agreements between nations, climate debt has been appearing in public media with both supporters and opponents.

[6] This is based on the idea that poorer nations face the most damaging consequences of climate change, for which they had little contribution.

[6] Scientists and researchers cite that as a result of the rising sea levels that are spurred by the emissions from the developed world, people of poorer countries suffer an increasing amount of natural disasters and economic damages.

[7] Poorer countries also lack the necessary infrastructure, development, and capital to be able to bounce back from a disaster, forcing them to borrow money at higher interests to aid their recovery from the destruction.

[9] Adaptation debt aims to have rich countries adopt the responsibility of helping developing nations that have suffered the negative environmental effects of their industrialization and carbon emissions.

[11] As a result, there is not enough carbon space left for poorer countries to release emissions during their industrialization process, placing a burden on their development and survival.

[1][6] Other primary supporters outside of the global south include various environmental NGOs and climate justice movements in the developed world.

[17] In a formal presentation of the idea of climate debt at the Copenhagen conference, Bolivia provided evidence that their nation has been negatively affected by climate change in the form of threatened water supplies from glacial retreat, drought, floods, and negative economic impacts.

[1][6] The earliest group of nations to propose the ideas that would become the foundation of the climate debt argument was the Alliance of Small Island States.

[16] Criticisms of the idea of climate debt are purported by developed countries and some independent political analysts.

Statements that align with these arguments were made by the United States' chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, at the 2009 Copenhagen conference.

These preemptive judgments invalidate the idea because they over-simplify complex ethical, historical, and political realities.