On Monday, October 13, as part of the Global Week of Action on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), the Peoples and Nature Tribunal against the IMF-WB held a virtual hearing on water, climate, and energy. The Tribunal is an initiative of the international campaign Stop the IMF-WB! Reparations NOW!, launched on the 80th anniversary of these institutions. Access the video recording of the hearing here.
The hearing brought together communities, social movements, organizations, and specialists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, and Peru, who testified to how the loans, conditions, and neoliberal adjustment programs promoted by these financial institutions have led to human rights violations, environmental degradation, and deepening social inequalities. Also participating were members of the Tribunal’s Popular Jury, David Abdulah (Trinidad and Tobago) and Camille Chalmers (Haiti), prosecutor Verónica Heredia (Argentina), and Beverly Keene (Argentina) from the Tribunal Secretariat.
The Tribunal invites you to learn about the demands for justice presented at this hearing, which also highlighted the ongoing struggles to stop the damage, cancel the debts generated, and provide comprehensive reparations to the affected communities:
– The role of debt, the IMF, and the World Bank in Ecuador. Alberto Acosta, former president of the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador (2007-2008) and prosecutor for the Ecuador Hearing of the Peoples’ and Nature Tribunal (October 2024). He presented a summary of the verdict of that hearing, linking it to the ongoing strike and indigenous uprising in response to the IMF’s demand to increase VAT and remove the diesel subsidy, and the simultaneous intensification of repression. Among other demands, he requested the intervention of the Tribunal in defense of the Montecristi Constitution (2008), threatened by the plans of the Noboa government and the complicity of these international financial institutions.
– Debt swap to support land and freshwater conservation in the Amazon. Aurora Donoso, co-founder of the Institute for Third World Ecological Studies and member of Acción Ecológica. She denounced this operation, which converts commercial debt into nature bonds, as “a false solution that does not curb the ecological and climate crisis and perpetuates illegitimate indebtedness,” turning nature into a tradable economic asset on international financial markets and violating the sovereignty, self-determination, territorial and cultural rights of peoples.
– Mega wind energy projects and the Quilombola do Cumbe, Ceará, Brazil. Andrea Camurça, political advocacy coordinator at the Terramar Institute and representative of the Northeast Peoples’ Summit and the Brazilian Environmental Justice Network. She presented the demand for comprehensive reparations for traditional communities, quilombolas, and artisanal fisherfolk affected by the unconsulted installation of large wind farms in their territories and denounced the World Bank’s project for the expansion of offshore wind energy plants. “The so-called energy transition works in reality according to a logic of green capitalism,” she summarized, “as an energy transaction guided by profit, market logic, and now also by digital power, rather than by climate justice and the fight we should be waging against climate emergencies.”
– Debt, Extractivism, and Repression in Macronorte Peru. Ruth Reyes Pérez, member of the World March of Women Macronorte Peru and prosecutor for the Cajamarca Hearing of the Peoples’ and Nature Tribunal against the IMF-WB (November 2024). She summarized the deliberations and verdict of that hearing, reflected in the current political turmoil, the demand for a Constituent Assembly, and the importance of strengthening the administration of communal justice by the Peasant Patrols (Rondas Campesinas), creating a solid alliance in the north of the country that could reject, under its authority, the concessions and extractive operations in their territories, supported by these international organizations that finance their debts.
– Planned chaos, independence ransom, and complicity with the silent genocide in Haiti. Camille Chalmers, executive director of the Haitian Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA) and also a member of the Tribunal’s Popular Jury. At this hearing, he presented the demands of the Haitian people against France, the US, the IMF, and the World Bank, as those responsible for and continuing the neocolonialist policies exemplified by the “double debt” that France imposed in 1825 to “compensate” the slave owners against whom the Haitian people had successfully rebelled, setting a bad example for what was sought, and continues to seek, their isolation and failure, and why solidarity is needed to achieve restitution, reparation, and the possibility of sovereign development.
– Privatization of Water and Sanitation in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Silvia Ferreyra and Sergio González, both representing the NO to the privatization of AySA campaign, and Mekorot Out! and the Assembly on the debt (Autoconvocatoria Deuda) and the Lanús Water Forum/Espacio Intercuencas respectively. They denounced the violation of the human right to water through rate hikes, reduced quality, service cuts, and the failure to expand service in low-income neighborhoods, impacts already being experiended in the run-up to the current privatization and which were the subject of fierce struggles during the previous privatization. Both times, the water privatizations were demands of the IMF and the World Bank to supposedly solve the debt problem and bring in fresh capital, which only came in the form of more debt.
– The role of the World Bank in the expansion of carbon markets and rights violations in Colombia. Johana Peña, from CENSAT-Agua Viva. She denounced the central role played by this financial institution, acting as the architect and financier of the regulatory, technical, and financial infrastructure that sustains both the voluntary and regulated carbon markets, supporting projects such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), which “far from reducing emissions or transforming the structural causes of the climate crisis, commodify nature and deepen socio-environmental inequalities in the territories.”
– The Tropical Forest Forever Center and Fund (TFFF/TFIF), Ivonne Yanez, member of Acción Ecológica (Ecuador) and the Latin American and Caribbean Platform for Climate Justice. Although it could not be presented live, her complaint about this Fund, which is expected to be launched at COP30 and will be administered by the World Bank, was incorporated into the Hearing. The TFFF/TFIF is presented as an initiative for the conservation of tropical forests but will be another colonial mechanism for transferring wealth from the South to the North, being designed in such a way as to distract attention from the underlying causes of deforestation, deepening the financialization of forests to the detriment of the indigenous and traditional communities that live in and care for them, and increasing both the financial debt of the South to the North and the ecological debt of the North to the South.
The results of this Hearing will be shared at the Peoples’ Summit towards COP30 and other activities in Belém do Pará, Brazil, in November, to strengthen the struggle for socio-ecological and climate justice, the cancellation of illegitimate debts, an end to these criminal policies of international financial institutions, and reparations for damages. They will be incorporated into the global process of the Peoples’ and Nature Tribunal against the IMF-WB, which will build its final verdict on the evidence gathered in all its sessions.
The Jubilee South/Americas network is an active participant, together with other networks and movements, in the STOP the IMF-WB Campaign and in the Tribunal, where it forms part of the Secretariat. Access the call for the Hearing here, available in different languages. //