Source:
Nueva Economía
Tue Aug 18 2009
ADHERENCES: To express your institucional or individual adherence, please write to: declaracionquito@gmail.com
The construction of a new regional financial architecture calls for a resolute and strong inclusion of an environmental outlook. If the latter is absent or relegated to a merely testimonial and technical role, the procedures and problems of classical financial institutions – whose environmental and socioenvironmental negative effects have been widely documented – shall be certainly reproduced.
The impulse and commitment to the Latin American regional integration and global economic crisis, poses new opportunities, rather than obstacles, to include an environmental dimension that would encourage a solidary and sustainable economy.
The inclusion of an environmental dimension requires several components, both at the level of the new regional economic institutionality and specifically at the heart of the Bank of the South. This bank, owing to its commitments to economic and social development as well as to regional integration, certainly calls for that new outlook.
A new trend of development turns out to be imperative for the region. This should not only be based on economic aspects but particularly on socioenvironmental aspects, both to sustainably take advantage of the huge ecological and cultural wealth of our countries and as a result of the growing evidence of their loss and deterioration.
From the initial design of its policies, the vision of the Bank of the South should include the social and environmental justice. In this sense, it should have a binding Code of Ethics on environmental and socioenvironmental issues, since it serves as inspiration and guide for the activities of the institution. A new development strategy and a new relationship with Nature represent vital issues to advance in the construction of good living standards.
The Bank of the South should have environmental safeguards and criteria throughout the whole cycle of its projects, i.e. from their inception, during their execution and once they have been concluded. It should also create incentives to consolidate another way of life that is harmonic with the cycles of Nature and encourage other forms of production and consumption with less environmental impact, a careful use of matter and energy, and a greater creation of decent jobs. Such criteria, acknowledging the ecological diversity of the region, should aim at the highest standards in terms of quality and requirements so as to ensure an adequate preservation of our natural and cultural heritage and improve the living standards of our people.
In short, priority should be given to those initiatives that can be adjusted to the cycles and balance of Nature and to the characteristic pace of reproduction of ecosystems, respect the forms of life, and protect the rights of local populations and indigenous peoples. That is, a perspective that allows to move towards new cultures that are respectful of Nature.
Those initiatives that link environmental goals with regional integration deserve special attention. Among them, we highlight those aimed at fostering an adequate use and management of shared natural riches and ecosystems in border areas. The Bank should go beyond the conventional positions that reduce integration to forms of interconnection, particularly as focal points of physical links. A similar problem is suffered by many undertakings regarding energy interconnection. Integration, from the point of view of the Bank of the South, should be considered as a more comprehensive process that is not just constrained to mere reflections and commercial calculations. It should be a concept of integration that cannot risk the life of Nature and local populations. This new integration should aim at common environmental and development policies in order to reduce the pressure on ecosystems, articulate domestic production to reduce asymmetries within the region, and solve the problems of our people in terms of nutrition, poverty and living standards, through the promotion of food sovereignty.
The traditional mechanisms for the evaluation and selection of projects have failed. Therefore, from the Bank of the South – and not only within the institution but all throughout the region – priority should be given to the design, dissemination and practice of evaluation systems adjusted both to each ecosystem and to potentially affected peoples, which should be actively incorporated into the selection, evaluation, consultation and consent process. These practices cannot be constrained to the conventional economic assessments, but should resort to multi-criteria assessments that include ecological, cultural, religious aspects, etc. The environmental assessments should be more rigorous in considering these aspects and proposals for action, so as not to end up being just an administrative justification, nor symbolic consultation processes. This calls for effective procedures regarding information access and public participation, which should be ensured at all times by the Bank of the South.
It is necessary to underline the importance of an active consultation and participation of people, determinedly including indigenous peoples, peasants and other local populations, women and other social sectors. Although such goal is often reiterated in many official declarations, in practice, certain limitations and opacities are maintained and in many cases have led to severe socioenvironmental conflicts throughout the region. Therefore, it is necessary to move towards mechanisms and instruments that ensure adequate information to communities and their effective participation in the evaluation process.
There are many antecedents of the use and application of environmental safeguards and criteria on these and other subjects by development banks, both by multilateral and regional banks. The future Bank of the South should take advantage of those experiences, and most particularly of their mistakes, weaknesses and limitations, in order to take a step towards a next generation institution where those environmental and social conditions effectively incorporate environmental aspects and the respect for human and nature’s rights to the daily practice of the bank. This new bank should always stick to the principle that the activities it finances “neither harm people nor the environment”.
In view of the complexity and diversity of Latin American and Caribbean ecosystems, and their multiculturality, it is evident that evaluations must be judicious and prudent. Therefore, the precautionary principle should be an indisputable reference in bank procedures. This commitment of the Bank of the South should also include the advances in terms of social and environmental justice, and among them, the substantial step taken by Ecuador through the acknowledgement of the Rights of Nature in its Constitution. This new outlook on the value given to the environment should be effectively included in the Code of Ethics of the future bank.
Consequently, the Bank of the South should not promote undertakings that affect critical habitats, high biodiversity or endemism sites, endangered species, indigenous territories or that threaten food sovereignty. In turn, it should support initiatives such as the preservation and restoration of Nature and the sustainable use of natural resources that allow to build sovereignty on these resources. From this point of view, it is essential for the Bank of the South to give priority to resources and credits in those projects that make food and energy sovereignty a reality, particularly from the logic of the regional sovereignty to be built.
The region faces urgent needs in the sectors that combine living standards, health care and environmental protection, such as sanitation, adequate urban solid waste management and gas emissions, as well as in the growing dependence on fossil energy sources, with their resulting social, environmental, local and global impacts. There still prevails an extractionist economic model, whose pathologies are widely known. To overcome this perverse reality is another task to be undertaken by the Bank of the South. In short, this bank should be an actor that ensures Living Well and Nature’s Rights.
Besides, the Bank of the South shall get prepared to be part of the new regional, subregional and national financial structures that prepare our countries to face the inevitable impacts of those climate changes that are taking place and will take place at global scale.
Likewise, at global level, it should contribute to a sustainable and efficient management of financial flows. At no circumstance should the bank take part in the classical financial speculation processes or in those financial schemes that although being labelled as “green financial instruments”, in fact reproduce the logic of traditional accumulation of international financial capital. It is necessary to encourage a greater empowerment of funds and other investment mechanisms that are truly inspired in social and environmental ethical principles. Likewise, the Bank of the South shall be a promoter to obtain compensation for the ecological and social debt.
Those who adhere to this declaration would like to congratulate the government of Ecuador, and particularly the Presidential Commission for the New Regional Financial Architecture and the Bank of the South, for their initiative to promote this plural debate at continental level. Consequently, we expect this leadership on this subject to be maintained. We call upon the governments of all the other countries of the region to support the real and effective inclusion of a socioecological dimension in the future Bank of the South. In that direction, we hope all governments end up effectively putting the Bank of the South into operation.
Those who adhere to this declaration do so in some cases in an institutional capacity and in other cases in a personal or individual capacity.
Declaration drawn up within the framework of the discussion on a new regional financial architecture and the inclusion of an environmental dimension into the Bank of the South. This declaration is not an official resolution of the seminar-workshop carried out on this subject, as convened by the Presidential Technical Commission of Ecuador (August 2009).
ADHERENCES: To express your institucional or individual adherence, please write to: declaracionquito@gmail.com
Please, circulate and disseminate this declaration and encourage new institutions and persons to join it.
Initial Signatures
Organizations
Acción Ecológica, Ecuador
Centro de Derechos Económicos y Sociales (CDES), Ecuador
Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social (CLAES), Uruguay
Ecociencia, Ecuador
Ecuador Decide, Ecuador
FASE - Solidariedade e Educação, Brasil
Fundación Solón, Bolivia
Fundación Pachamama, Ecuador
GRAIN
Grito de los Excluidos Mesoamerica
Instituto Equit, Brasil
Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo, Ecuador
Instituto del Tercer Mundo (ITEM), Uruguay
Red Latinoamericana de Deuda, Derechos y Desarrollo - Latindadd
Liga de Defensa del Medio Ambiente (LIDEMA), Bolivia
Nexos Culturales, Ecuador
Oilwatch Sudamérica
Rede Brasileira Pela Integração dos Povos (REBRIP), Brasil
Red Internacional de Género y Comercio (IGTN), Capítulo Latinoamericano
Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Transformando la Economía (REMTE), capítulo Ecuador
Individuals
Alberto Acosta, Ecuador
Paulo Bustillos, Bolivia
María Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador
Juan Vicente Troya, Ecuador
Tomás Hirsch, Chile
Alvaro Zerda, Colombia
Carlos Amat y León, Peru
Eugenia Correa, Mexico
Eduardo Gudynas, Uruguay
Joseph Vogel, Puerto Rico
Carlos Aguilar Sánchez, Costa Rica
Natalie Weemaels, Ecuador
Roberto Bissio, Uruguay
José Benjamín Inuca, Ecuador
Jaime Brailh, Ecuador
Mariuxi Rivera, Ecuador
Ignacio Dobles, Costa Rica
Diana Conde, Ecuador
Javier Félix, Ecuador
Wimberley Díaz, Ecuador
Renato Sánchez, Ecuador
Guido Tamayo, Ecuador
Francisco Vizcaíno, Ecuador
Catalina Noroña, Ecuador
Miguel A. Vázquez, Ecuador
María José Pozo, Ecuador
César Hermida Bustos, Ecuador
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