Joy Reyes, who experienced firsthand the devastation of cyclone Ulysses in 2020, shared her experience at the UN Conference on Climate Change. “I used to love the sound of rain. Now every drop brings fear,” she said. The perverse connection with international debt, which weighs heavily on the victims of other people's pollution, is a powerful one. Cardinal David calls for a tax on mining to compensate local communities.

Belem (AsiaNews/Agencies) – “I used to love the sound of rain. Now every drop brings fear,” said Joy Reyes, a climate justice activist and survivor of Super Typhoon Ulysses in the Philippines.

Her voice resonated yesterday in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, where the UN climate conference is underway, bringing together countries from around the world to discuss how to meet their commitments to combat climate change.

Her words set the tone for a panel discussion titled “The Moral Imperative of Climate Finance: Addressing Ecological Debt in a Jubilee Year," promoted by Caritas Internationalis, CAFOD, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the Debt and Climate Working Group, and Living Laudato Si' Philippines.

The rich debate heard voices from Asia and Latin America conveying an unequivocal message: governments must stop treating climate finance as charity and start treating it as a matter of justice.

“We are in the land of the Amazon, the lungs of the Earth. The benefits of development have been enjoyed by some; the bill has fallen on others. Justice demands that those who polluted most must pay most,” said Alistair Dutton, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis and moderator of the panel, to explain the meaning of the initiative.

From the Philippines, Joy Reyes grounded the same words into her own life experience. She mentioned the night in 2020 when the winds that accompanied Typhoon Ulysses devastated her city, forcing her family to flee the floodwaters.

She did not talk about numbers and climate promises, but about how she carried her grandparents to the upper floor as the floodwaters surged through their home.

“Resilience is not justice. We don’t want to be resilient. We are not begging for mercy. We are demanding accountability,” Reyes said.

For his part, the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, spoke of the devastating effects of the cyclones and typhoons that repeatedly hit his country.

“For those who still deny the effects of climate change, I gently invite you to live with us for one year in the most disaster-prone country in the world,” he said.

The prelate calls for a shift from loans to restitution, noting the grim imbalance in 2022, when developing countries repaid US$ 59 billion in debt while receiving only US$ 28 billion in private climate finance, most of it in the form of loans.

For Carola Micaela Mejía, a Bolivian economist and climate justice coordinator at LATINDADD, “Debt is a neocolonial instrument,” she laments. “It keeps nations dependent, even as they face the frontlines of climate destruction.”

Mejía cited data showing that Latin America spends three times more on debt servicing than on healthcare and education, and countries like Colombia allocate over 20 per cent of their public budgets to debt payments and less than 1 per cent to climate action.

She called for the creation of a United Nations framework agreement for sovereign debt restructuring.

The event participants agreed on the principle: those who have polluted the most must repair the most.

In this regard, Bishop David cited a pastoral proposal made in Mindanao: the introduction of an "earth tariff", which would require fossil fuel extractors to make mandatory contributions at the point of extraction.

“It is not an offset or a loophole,” he said, “but a restorative obligation.”

Reyes also highlighted the inadequacy of current efforts.

“Loss and damage funding stands at only US$ 700 million – peanuts for what is needed,” she said. “For fourteen years, no country has been held accountable for failing to deliver the 100 billion US$ promise. Why should victims have to borrow to rebuild what others destroyed?” 

• philippines
• brazil
• amazon
• belem
• cop30
• earth tariff
• restorative justice
• obligation