The climate debt crisis: Why paying our dues is essential for tackling climate change

The Climate Debt Crisis marks a major step in efforts to draw the links between the overuse of the world’s resources, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, and the unjust and economically harmful financial debt foisted upon the world’s poorest countries.

The report explains the concept of ‘climate debt’, and explores how redressing the balance between international ‘debtors’ and ‘creditors’ is an essential prerequisite for effective global action to combat both climate change and poverty. It demonstrates why current attempts to deal with global inequalities in emissions through carbon trading and offsetting are fatally flawed, and sets out concrete proposals to finance climate debt repayments.