By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake –

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

We live in a state of permanent emergency. “Poly crisis’ is a fashionable term these days in United Nations (UN), and Bretton Woods circles that engage in crafting Covid-19 panicdemics, climate catastrophe, odious debt, inflation, poverty and inequality narratives and related globalist policy making. 

Meanwhile, local, national and regional realities and development priorities in countries in the Global South are increasingly marginalized and rendered invisible due to the much hyped ‘poly crisis’ and proffered global ‘solutions’, which often result in big policy mistakes at the local and national level.

What also tends to be overlooked in international conference circuits is the fact that at the root of many of the ‘Polycrisis’ is the Euro-American military business industrial complex. This includes dual use biowarfare and weather modification technologies like Direct Energy Weapons, NATO wars, and the booming global arms industry headed by the United States which has750 military bases around the world, and the concomitant need to have a to limit the production of destructive weapons.

The Anthropocene Global Boiling Narrative

The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez recently claimed that global warming had morphed into ‘global boiling’. However, empirical reality in much of tropical South and East Asia this year belied the UNSG’s Anthropocene climate catastrophe media hype ahead of yet another UN CoP Climate Summit. 

In Sri Lanka the monsoons arrived, much as they had since I can remember, and arguably for eons across the Indian Ocean. Contrary to the El Nino, climate boiling narrative, they again brought cooling winds and plentiful rain to fill the reservoirs for good harvests and hydropower electricity to light homes and city streets. Birds migrated as usual in 2023. 

Indeed, geostrategic Sri Lanka, whose carbon footprint is tiny to nonexistent seems to be in a climate ‘cool spot’ or sweet spot—as some climate change models have suggested, receiving slightly more rain than usual. Or, perhaps Mother Nature providing an extended rainy season in Sri Lanka is fighting back against the totalizing climate catastrophe/ global boiling story!

However, national and South Asia empirical realities that contradict and contravene the official ‘climate catastrophe’ narrative, do not feature in the global media climate catastrophe echo chamber and UN conference circuit that thrives on fear-inducing disaster stories that often promote inappropriate and costly policy mistakes at the local level.

Recently, at the first International Climate Change Forum in Colombo with many foreign participants, President, Ranil Wickremesinghe outlined ambitious plans for Sri Lanka’s green transition. In a speech laced with the mandatory UN environmental sustainability and economic growth jargon, the President expressed his determination for Sri Lanka to become the first country in the region to achieve a ‘green economy’.  

Wickremesinghe stated that he planned to present the strategic Indian Ocean island’s climate prosperity plan at the United Nations COP 28 climate summit to be held in the United Arab Emirates at the end of this month. 

USD 100 Billion for a Green Transition Vanity Project?

Blissfully ignorant that many of the major climate polluting countries in the world are ramping up hydrocarbon production and carbon emissions at this time, the Sri Lankan President noted that the price tag for the Eurobond debt-trapped Indian Ocean island nation reaching net zero emissions by 2040 would be a cool $100 billion USD– over 20 years. 

This is figure is considerably larger than the country’s total external debt, which caused the first ever sovereign default last year, resulting in rapid local currency deprecation that instantly impoverished citizens.  

Sri Lanka’s external debt stands currently at $ 35 billion –in contrast to the massive $ 100 billion tab for the President’s Green transition vanity project, which the country does not need and cannot afford at this time.

Heedless, the President stated; “To meet the financial challenges of the green transition, Sri Lanka is committed to raising a significant portion of the required funds through commercial means.” By this is meant borrowing from many of the same Eurobond creditors like BlackRock and Adani that had debt trapped the island through corrupt deals with local politicians and their business cronies. 

At this time, Adani, BlackRock’s South Asian partner has already been awarded prime coastal lands in Mannar for so-called Green Energy projects and at the Colombo port ex-ante any agreement with the Paris Club creditors!

What was not mentioned is the fact that almost 40 percent of Sri Lanka’s official debt is held by private creditors, hedge funds that charge predatory interest rates many of whom like BlackRock and Adani are greenwashing themselves to market Green and Blue bonds and scams. 

The remaining 19 percent of Sri Lanka’s debt was owed to China, 7 percent to Japan, and 5 percent to India. However, it was the private creditors whose names are secret, which were responsible for the accumulation of Odious debt as a result of corrupt transactions between predatory lenders and local politicians leading to Default staged after the Hamilton Reserve Bank case in New York was filed against the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL). 

These bond traders now stand to again benefit from the IMF’s debt restructuring that requires the GoSL to further borrow from private capital markets that charge predatory interest rates, albeit this time Greenwashed and called Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) bonds.

Greenwashing Bond scams and financial Crimes

But should an expensive green transition posited on more debt accumulation in the form of Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS), or ESGs based on opaque and gamed carbon credit calculations to benefit private creditors be a national policy priority? 

Speaking of a tough task ahead at the International Climate Change Forum in Colombo earlier this month, the President made the grandiose and absurd claim that tiny Sri Lanka’s green transition was necessary for the planet’s well-being! 

Yet, few in the audience thought to ask why Eurobond debt-trapped Sri Lanka whose carbon foot print is minute should rush into a green transition that entails more Eurobond borrowing, which its impoverished citizens cannot afford and do not need at this time? This, especially given that Eurobond trading was the primary cause of the accumulation of Odious Debt that caused the country’s first ever sovereign default?  

At this time, questions also arise about the Ranil Rajapaksa regime’s IMF debt restructuring program and the rational of making policies based on over-generalized climate catastrophe global narratives– a practice that compounds problems and turns science on its head as was evident during the Covid-19 panicdemic and global lockdowns that debt trapped many global south countries. 

After all, it is a truism that local and national context-specific and evidence based policies are necessary, rather than those hyped by Global media narratives about climate boiling.

At this time, it is clear that the geostrategic island nation has lost economic sovereignty and policy autonomy to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and its Paris Club creditors debt restructuring, although attempts are on going to blame Asian neighbours, China and India, which for the geostrategic island’s Default. 

BlackRock and Adani to benefit from Sri Lanka’s the Green transition

On the back of the much hyped climate catastrophe/ global boiling grand narrative, attempts are ongoing through the IMF’s opaque debt data calculations for the Eurobond bailout business, to deepen the strategic Indian Ocean island’s debt trap and further impoverish its citizens, albeit this time with Green and Blue bonds and scams, also referred to as Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS), or Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), bonds. But such a green transition that would clearly cause more harm than good. 

After all, it is not a secret that the strategic island’s first ever Sovereign Default last year was fundamentally a consequence of the geopolitical stand-off between the G7, China and India, as much as, corruption of local politicians and their crony business elite. 

Hardly surprising then that the IMF’s Sri Lanka debt restructuring program with a mere USD 3.9 billion loan over four years is designed to sustain and deepen its control of the strategic island’s policy space and economic sovereignty by requiring more borrowing on predatory private Eurobond markets. 

According to the IMF Extended Fund agreement, Sri Lanka must borrow almost USD 2 billion this year alone from the same private markets/ bond traders that had caused the Odious debt trap in the first place by charging predatory interest rates – especially, during economic shocks like Covid-19 lockdowns and the 2019 ISIS claimed Easter Sunday attacks on economy and society.

In the context it is relevant to quote a statement issued by a group of more than 80 International economists and development experts, including Professors Jayati Ghosh, Thomas Piketty, Dani Rodick, Yanis Varoufakis, which called for outright Eurobond debt cancellation given the practice of charging predatory interests rates as well as the lack of transparency. The statement available at the Debt Justice UK website clearly stated:

Private creditors own almost 40% of Sri Lanka’s external debt stock, mostly in the form of International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs), but higher interest rates mean that they receive over 50% of external debt payments. Such lenders charged a premium to lend to Sri Lanka to cover their risks, which accrued them massive profits and contributed to Sri Lanka’s first ever default in April 2022. Lenders who benefited from higher returns because of the “risk premium” must be willing to take the consequences of that risk. Indeed, ISBs are now trading at significantly lower prices in the secondary market. In this context, giving private bondholders an upper hand relative to sovereign debtors in the Paris Club and the IMF’s required debt negotiations violates the basic principles of natural justice.

Contrary to this statement the IMF “debt restructuring” agenda is designed to deepen the country’s Eurobond debt trap! Only, now the bonds would be green and blue and pink washed, or Environment, Social (gender)  and Governance sensitive bonds, based on obscure carbon calculations to mask the lack of transparency in opaque climate science fiction narratives. 

Moreover, the bond holders’ names would still a secret. In short, the IMF is systematically deepening the debt trap and its control of the island’s economic policy with its bailout conditionalities, and the country is being further impoverished by IMF, Colonial Club de Paris plans for ESG Debt bondage

Simultaneously, BlackRock the world’s biggest wealth fund worth trillions and Adani are now being green, blue and pink washed to trade in Green and Blue Bond and scams, also called Environmental, Social and Governance Bonds, ESG or Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS).

All this begs the question: who drafted Sri Lanka’s ambitious national Green transition plan worth USD 100 billion, when by the President’s own admission, the country lacks the necessary technical expertise on the subject?!

To be continued…