Bolivia, speaking for itself, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela presented an outline of principles and a methodology to quantify the historical climate debt   arising from the historical responsibility of developed countries for irrational emissions.

Developed countries have less than 20% of the world's population but are responsible for at least three-fourths of the historical emissions of GHGs, limiting the air space required by developing countries for their development. Developed countries in the past and present continue to over-use and continuously surpass the capacity of the Earth's climate system to absorb the emissions of GHGs, which limits the availability of the carbon space in the atmosphere. This is historical debt.    

Additionally, the consequences of suffering in developing countries in terms of costs, damage and loss and delayed development due to the impacts of climate change, is what is called the adaptation debt.

Consequently, the climate debt of developed countries is the sum of the historical emissions debt and the adaptation debt, which is part of an even greater ecological debt which includes factors such as loss of biodiversity and other ecosystems, the ecological footprint, excessive consumption of resources, etc. The climate debt has to be paid, and must be an agreed outcome in Copenhagen.  

This debt repayment must take the form of developed countries implementing their commitments to reduce their emissions and by other means that generate atmospheric space required by developing countries.

Any final solution must ensure an equitable distribution of the limited capacity of the planet by capturing and sequestering greenhouse gases and the costs of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Particularly, it must be ensured that developing countries secure their share of the remaining air space for their sustainable development. Developing countries are not begging for more money for a problem that they did not cause but are asking for the full payment of the climate debt.