(OSV News) – Bishops' conferences from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean called on world leaders to address the climate crisis and denounced "false solutions" that place profit over the common good.
"The climate crisis is an urgent reality," the statement warned. "It is not just a technical problem: it is an existential issue of justice, dignity and care for our common home."
Titled "A Call for Climate Justice and the Common Home: Ecological Conversion, Transformation and Resistance to False Solutions," the document was published and presented at a July 1 press conference at the Vatican press office.
The 34-page statement was released ahead of the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as COP30, which is set to take place Nov. 10-21 in Belém, Brazil.
In it, the bishops said that "the science is clear" regarding the need to limit global warming and that it is "the Global South and future generations that are already suffering the consequences."
"We reject false solutions, such as 'green' capitalism, technocracy, the commodification of nature and extractivism, which perpetuate exploitation and injustice," the bishops said.
Among those "false solutions" the bishops rejected was the "financialization and commodification of nature." Such carbon offset schemes, the document denounced, "unfairly shift the burden of reducing emissions from those who cause them to those who suffer them, and put profit before life."
Such schemes "perpetuate the exploitation of the earth, its living beings, and its peoples, instead of addressing the causes of the crisis," the document said.
The document also expressed the Catholic Church's commitment to go "beyond words," and to "defend the most vulnerable in every decision about climate and nature."
"We will educate in integral ecology and promote economies based on solidarity," the bishops said, adding that they will continue to strengthen alliances with countries in the Global South, and monitor the results of the COP30 conference through an established "Climate Justice Observatory."
"We invite a historic coalition between actors from the Global North and South to face the crises in solidarity," the bishops wrote.
The document also featured a call to action, calling on world leaders to fulfill the Paris Agreement and "put the common good above profit."
Decision-makers, it said, must also promote "climate and nature policies anchored in human rights" and "achieve zero deforestation by 2030 and restore vital aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems."
Among those presenting the document at the Vatican press office were Brazilian Cardinal Jaime Spengler of Porto Alegre, president of the Latin American bishops' council, known as CELAM, and Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM.
Cardinal Spengler told journalists that the document wasn't "an isolated gesture," but "the fruit of a synodal process, of spiritual and communal discernment among sister churches of the Global South."
"We're presenting this document today to Pope Leo XIV, and we want it considered in the preparatory stage of COP30," the Brazilian cardinal said. "Its message is clear: There's no climate justice without ecological conversion, and no ecological conversion without resistance to false solutions."
Cardinal Ambongo said Africa was not a "poor continent" but rather a "looted continent" subject to an economy "based on the sacrifice of African peoples to enrich others."
"We say enough is enough – enough of false solutions, enough of decisions made without listening to those on the front lines of climate collapse," he said.
