At a time when financial responses to the climate crisis lean heavily on market-based models, faith-based organizations are raising a prophetic voice. During a side event at the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s Financing for Development Forum on April 29, they challenged the dominant “Wall Street climate consensus” and urged a shift toward public, justice-centered climate finance.
The event, A Holistic, Transformative Approach to Climate Finance: Connecting the Dots Between Climate Finance, Debt and Tax Reform, was co-organized by the World Council of Churches, World Communion of Reformed Churches, Lutheran World Federation, World Methodist Council, Christian Aid, ACT Alliance and Council for World Mission.
Public finance, not private profit
“There is currently a risky focus on private finance and multilateral development banks to deliver this finance—what we call the ‘Wall Street climate consensus,’” said Mariana Paoli of Christian Aid. “This is risky because private finance is profit-oriented, not people- and climate-oriented. Poor and developing countries need close to USD 5 trillion to respond to the climate emergency. While this is a massive figure, there is no lack of money. It is critical to reclaim the role of public finance.”
Debt, injustice, and a system in crisis
Speakers underscored that today’s climate finance structures are reinforcing existing global inequalities.
“The lack of climate finance is not a budget issue but a justice issue,” said Mae Buenaventura of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development. “Seventy percent of climate finance is in the form of loans, deepening indebtedness. Climate-vulnerable poor countries are shelling out more and more in debt servicing every year.”
Buenaventura added, “It is important to note that the climate and debt crises are rooted in one system. This calls for system change.”
Rules of the game: global tax and financial reform
Dr. Manuel “Butch” Montes, from the Society for International Development and the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, called for deep structural reform.
“The climate emergency demands investment spending and a long-term perspective,” he said. “What is at stake at FfD4—the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development—is who makes the rules governing the global tax system and the international financial architecture. There can be no climate finance without global tax reform and, indeed, without transforming the international financial architecture.”
A Jubilee vision for economic justice
Rev. Philip Vinod Peacock of the World Communion of Reformed Churches drew on biblical ethics to ground the conversation in faith and justice.
“There can be no silos between the ethical and moral, and the economic and political,” he said. “The biblical vision of Jubilee calls for the cancellation of debts, liberation from enslaving economic systems, and rest of the land.”
Peacock emphasized the role of civil society and faith-based organizations (FBOs) in forging transformative change. “What can FBOs and CSOs do to break down the silos between climate, debt and tax policy? We need to highlight the connections. We need to develop relationships. And we need to build solidarity across impacted communities and movements fighting for climate, debt and tax justice.”
The event closed with a spotlight on two campaigns addressing these challenges: the Turn Debt Into Hope campaign, advocating for debt cancellation and just financial relations, and the ZacTax Campaign, promoting progressive taxation and economic justice.
Together, these efforts aim to reshape not just the flow of funds—but the foundations of the global economy.
