First impressions of COP

By Colm Fahy, Advocacy Officer at the Jesuit European Social Centre

Today was my first day at COP30 after a 40 hour journey from Brussels to Belem which started on Sunday.

This journey felt, in many ways, more like a pilgrimage, and the events of today made me feel like we’re still right at the start of it.

After registering, I participated in two profound side events in the Blue Zone, both highlighting two important Catholic Church initiatives. The first, hosted by Caritas Internationalis, concerned the Jubilee Year and a call for debt cancellation in the world’s poorest countries.

Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David from the Philippines spoke about whilst his country suffers from 18 to 20 typhoons annually, the country is still spending 17% of it’s budget on debt repayments. This brought to the fore the importance of debt cancellation to free up valuable resources for adaptation.

The same cardinal opened the next event, which was publicising the release of a “A Call for Climate Justice and the Common Home”, a joint report from bishops conferences from Latin America, South Asia and Africa.

Cardinal David called for a need that COP30 must avoid ‘false solutions’ to the climate crisis such as carbon markets, commenting that ‘the poor are not an afterthought’.

These two events set the stage for the next two weeks of negotiations. Many Catholic Church groups at COP are here to defend the rights of the poorest and that is indeed the purpose of our pilgrimage.