Vatican City, 13 November, 2024 / 7:55 pm (ACI Africa).
Referencing the concept of “climate finance,” Pope Francis said in a message to the U.N. climate summit on Wednesday that ecological debt and foreign debt both impact a nation’s future.
Francis warned that both foreign debt and ecological debt are “mortgaging the future” of nations.
“Efforts should be made to find solutions that do not further undermine the development and adaptive capacity of many countries that are already burdened with crippling economic debt,” the pope’s message said.
A “New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance” is one of the goals of the COP29 — the 29th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 11–22.
Climate finance refers to local, national, or transnational financing that supports climate change mitigation actions.