The former Maldives President, and current Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed said debt restructuring will help pay for climate crisis.
While speaking to NowThisEarth at the sidelines of COP27, coming under the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the ex-President said that small island nations like the Maldives should be relieved of their debts to allow them to sustain losses and damages caused by the climate crisis.
Twenty climate-vulnerable countries have USD2 trillion of payment to be made within the next two to three years, Nasheed said. He added that most of these nations do not possess the economic stability or wealth to pay the debt.
According to Nasheed, these countries will be unable to pay the hefty debt in part of the assets developed through funds acquired from foreign parties, have mostly been “washed away”. The former president claims that a country cannot pay for a debt without possessing the asset for which it acquired funds for in the first place.