The climate crisis is accelerating and without drastic action it will only get worse.
Yet, despite being the least responsible for climate breakdown, it’s lower income countries that are experiencing its harshest and most destructive effects – from heat waves to hurricanes, floods, droughts and mudslides. It’s a complete injustice.
Lower income countries urgently need to address the impacts of the climate crisis AND switch to a green economy. But many are prevented from doing so by unsustainable debts – with vital funds instead being drained away in debt repayments to some of the world’s richest lenders.
And it gets worse – to make the foreign exchange needed for those repayments, lower income countries are frequently pushed into fossil fuel extraction, only worsening the climate crisis.
There can be no climate justice without debt cancellation. But it will only happen if enough of us act.