Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Ecological debt
Summary
Ecological debt refers to the accumulated debt seen by some campaigners as owed by the Global North to Global South countries, due to the net sum of historical environmental injustice, especially through resource exploitation, habitat degradation, and pollution by waste discharge. The concept was coined by Global Southerner non-governmental organizations in the 1990s and its definition has varied over the years, in several attempts of greater specification.
Within the ecological debt broad definition, there are two main aspects: the ecological damage caused over time by a country in one or other countries or to ecosystems beyond national jurisdiction through its production and consumption patterns; and the exploitation or use of ecosystems over time by a country at the expense of the equitable rights to these ecosystems by other countries.
The term 'ecological debt' first appeared on paper in 1985, in a yellow booklet with the title “Women in movement" made by the German ecofeminist and edited by the Green Party in Germany in 1985. The work was intended to be used for a workshop she gave on 'women, peace and ecology' in Nairobi during the United Nation Women’s Conference (the first workshop of this kind).
In 1992, the term appeared again in two reports published in different places around the world: “Deuda ecológica” by Robleto and Marcelo in Chile and “Miljöskulden” by Jernelöv in Sweden. Robleto and Marcelo's report, published by the critical NGO Instituto de Ecologia Politica (IEP), was a political and activist response to the global environmental negotiations happening during the Rio Summit. It shed light on the debate occurring in Latin America since the 1980s about the crucial nature's heritage that had been consumed and not returned (i.e. ecological debt). On the other hand, Jernelöv's report goal was to calculate the Swedish debt for future generations and was intended to serve nationally for the Swedish Environmental Advisory.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.