04.07.2025.- On 10 November, the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will begin in Belém do Pará (Brazil). Expectations for this event are high. Not only among the community of climate change specialists, but also among civil society organisations, social movements, religious organisations and ecclesial institutions.
Four months before COP30, the bishops of the episcopal conferences and councils of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia have joined their voices to issue a Call for Climate Justice and the Common Home. The document is addressed to government leaders and their representatives, whom they urge to work for an ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement for the benefit of people and the planet. The call is also addressed to the Church and the general public to live the ‘ecological conversion’ (Pope Francis) and address ‘the wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, fear of difference and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest’. (Pope Leo XIV).
Real transformations, not ‘false solutions’
The powerful appeal by the Churches of the Global South, published earlier this week, resonates as a prophetic voice in the climate debate. More than a mere statement, it is a crucial warning and an explicit denunciation of the ‘false solutions’ that, far from addressing the root causes of the climate crisis, threaten to perpetuate and deepen existing injustices. Genuine transformation, the bishops argue, cannot be built on the same foundations of inequality and exploitation.
The statement denounces the contradiction between ‘using profits from oil extraction to finance what is presented as an energy transition, without any effective commitment to overcoming it’ (p. 21). In this regard, they call for the decoupling of the ideas of ‘progress’ and “development” from the intensive use of fossil fuels and criticise the narrative of the ‘green economy’ which, since the 2000s, has been replacing the narrative of sustainable development.
Behind this ‘green economy’, they denounce, ‘there is a technical-instrumental logic at the service of the ecological restructuring of capitalism’ (p.27). The protection of ecosystems and care for the environment are addressed as exclusively economic problems. Hence the initiatives to put a price on the ‘environmental services’ produced by natural goods and to create ‘carbon credits’ so that polluters can pay to offset their emissions. These attempts to ‘financialise nature’, argues the appeal, leave intact the model of consumer society and purposeless growth that ultimately fuels the climate crisis.
The ‘false solutions’ identified in the document also point to mining extractivism and energy monoculture. Various reports have predicted an exponential increase in demand for minerals critical to the energy transition, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and so-called rare earths. These minerals are necessary for the manufacture of low-emission technologies, such as batteries and electric cars, but the race to obtain them risks ‘devastating territories and sacrificing communities, especially in the Global South’ (p.23). Furthermore, renewable energy megaprojects are often imposed without consultation with local populations, favouring the concentration of power and the destruction of ecosystems.
For these reasons, the appeal calls for a structural transformation of the economic model. It supports the deployment and implementation of ethical, decentralised and appropriate technologies to promote sustainable development with the participation of local communities; it stresses the need to respect human rights, especially those of women, and to promote lifestyles based on the ‘happy sobriety’ referred to by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ (LS, 223). In short, a series of measures are identified to abandon an ‘economy that kills’ and work to build an ‘economy for the common good’.
You can read the full document and the proposals for action it contains here:
UPCOMING EVENT: Extractives, Critical Minerals and Land Grabbing from the Lens of the Indigenous Peoples
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