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 ============== Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List As vilified, slandered and attacked by One Nation mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html