As the global climate crisis accelerates, the countries that have done least to cause it are facing deadly impacts and mounting costs. Rich countries are failing to step up on climate finance, and aid is now being cut. But worst of all, this is all on top of harmful debt burdens, which climate disasters only increase - a clear sign of how the wider economic system is rigged against the Global South.

We'll hear from frontline Global South campaigners about the colonial origins of today’s debt crisis and how their countries are forced to extract more fossil fuels just to pay off illegitimate debts. Billions are being diverted from locally driven climate solutions, healthcare and education and other basic services on debt payments.

This Jubilee year marks the biggest global campaign for debt cancellation since the turn of the millennium. Our webinar will explain the opportunities we have in the coming months to push for real climate justice in solidarity with the Global South.

Speakers

Mae Buenaventura works with the Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt & Development, a regional alliance based in the Philippines that focuses on people-centered development, economic and environmental rights and justice as its contribution to social transformation. In particular, she manages the Debt Justice and Green Economic Rebuilding of APMDD, which sustains a long-standing struggle for debt cancellation especially of illegitimate debts.

Tess Woolfenden is a Policy Adviser at Debt Justice, working on the intersection between the debt and climate crises, and on the colonial roots of Global South debt.

Esther Agaja is an organizer with Debt for Climate on their Global Coordination Team, where she works to mobilize grassroots movements and frontline communities, particularly across the Global South to demand the cancellation of unjust debts that hinder real climate action. Resides in Nigeria and deeply committed to climate justice, Esther amplifies the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis, advocating for total debt cancellation.

Lorraine Inglis is a Global Coordinator at Debt for Climate, a Global South-led campaign demanding the cancellation of colonial debt as a key step toward climate justice. Based in the UK, she works at the intersection of ecological justice and global debt, and has been a climate justice activist for 12 years. She is also the co-founder of the Weald Action Group, which won the landmark climate Supreme Court case in 2024.