Leading Catholics call for COP30 to prioritise debt cancellation for climate-vulnerable countries

Cafod urged COP30, which will be held in Belém, Brazil from 10-21 November, to ensure justice for the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries by cancelling “unjust” debt.

Christine Allen, director of Cafod, said, “It is a matter of fairness that high-income countries such as the UK, who became rich from polluting coal-, oil-, and gas-fuelled economic development, support poor countries financially both to decarbonise and to adapt to a vastly more volatile climate. Over 93 per cent of climate-vulnerable countries are trapped in a debt crisis, undermining their ability to respond to climate related disasters and protect their communities. The UK must lead bold global reforms to cancel unjust debt and unlock funds to fight a crisis these countries did least to cause.”

The Conference of Parties (COP) is the UN’s annual climate change summit, hosting all the countries who are party to the UN’s 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. At COP30, the focus will be on countries submitting their targets and proposed actions, known as national determined contributions (NDCs), for meeting Paris Agreement’s limit of 1.5°C global heating, which many experts believe to have already been passed. Measures to reduce deforestation and raise climate finance, regarded as a crucial issue for climate justice, will also be on the negotiating table.

According to the International Institute for Environment and Development, the international financial system automatically disadvantages the countries worst affected by poverty and climate change. Only 10 per cent of climate finance reaches the local level, and climate-vulnerable countries are pushed further into debt by a credit rating system that downgrades countries most at risk and undermines their ability to invest in disaster preparation and climate adaptation.

Cafod said that although the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan last year ended with a “weak” deal to provide low-income countries, which have contributed least to global greenhouse gas emissions, with compensation for climate damage, “The agreement will not provide enough money for affected countries to prepare for climate disasters and rebuild after emergencies.” Cafod noted that the decision to hold COP30 in Belém, in the Amazon River delta, “is a symbolically important choice, and an important reminder to attendees what is at stake for nature and the environment if progress isn’t made”, with dire consequences “for communities, particularly Indigenous peoples, on the frontlines of the climate crisis”.

At the launch of a new report on Catholic approaches to mining hosted by the Laudato Si Research Institute, Oxford, on 21 October, Jing Ray Henderson, from Caritas Philippines, reiterated the importance of debt cancellation for climate-vulnerable countries. She said, “Unjust debts push resource-rich yet impoverished nations to exploit their lands simply to repair repay foreign creditors. These debts are not only financial; they are moral and ecological. Turning debt into hope means freeing nations like ours in the Philippines to invest in reforestation, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and climate resilience: in life, not in destruction.”

Henderson continued, “The climate crisis and extractivism are not isolated issues, but moral and structural injustices that rob the poor of life and of their future. This calls on our churches to speak with one prophetic voice, to defend the dignity of communities exploited by unjust systems of trade, debt, and extraction.” She spoke alongside Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, who stressed the importance of a just energy transition that puts “the long-term effects on the local population and on our common home” at the forefront.

On the anniversary of Laudato si’ in early October, Pope Leo appealed to COP30 and other upcoming international summits to “listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, families, Indigenous peoples, involuntary migrants and believers throughout the world”.

Just transition must take into account effects of mining on communities and ecosystems, say Catholic groups ahead of COP30

Pope Leo calls for unity in climate action on 10-year anniversary of Laudato si’

Stay updated — add us as a preferred news source on Google: