Climate debt puts millions of children’s futures at risk
With the United Nations annual climate talks set to begin this week, advocates are calling for urgent changes to how climate financing is administered so those most affected are not improverished further by a crisis they did not cause.
The 31st edition of the UN Framework Convention on Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31) will be held in Antayla, Turkey, from the 9 to the 20 November. The global summit will bring together heads of state, ministers, scientists, business leaders, and civil society representatives from around the world.
World Vision is one of the global advocacy groups calling for change.
The organisation’s United Kingdom-arm has just released a new report calling for climate financing to prioritise children most affected by this crisis.
The Inheritance Trap report looks at the cycle of how disaster recovery efforts divert funds away from essential services to cover climate debt and how it affects children in smaller nations, like those in the Pacific, where these disasters occur.
World Vision NZ’s advocacy lead Rebekah Armstrong said the onus was not just on governments to build the infrastructure the Pacific needs.
“The Pacific should be leading all of this, and they are. It’s great to see… [but] people should be listening, governments should be listening, businesses should be listening, and we need to increase climate finance and keep it as grants when there is a cost recovery,” Armstrong said.
Brianna Piazza
According to the report, during disaster recovery efforts, governments steer funds away from essential services to cover climate debt.
But Armstrong said when countries do this, schooling and access to food are often affected.
“There’s this kind of chunk of time where a child is losing out on some of the most important skills and abilities that they need,” said Armstrong.
In the Pacific, the report looked at Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
World Vision
Similar concerns regarding climate finance had also been aired by Pacific leaders at the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) in Antigua and Barbuda.
UN data from 2022 shows Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) contribute less than 0.03 per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, yet are amongst the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
At CHOGM’s opening ceremony, Samoa’s Deputy Prime Minister Mulipola Anarosa Ale Molioo urged Commonwealth leaders to provide fairer, more accessible forms of climate finance, given the world was already moving beyond the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold.
“Many nations and communities are facing permanent losses. But overshoot must not become an excuse for delayed ambition or inaction,” she said, as reported by Pac News.
She also called on Commonwealth leaders to heed the calls from the recent Pacific Pre-COP31 discussions in Fiji and Tuvalu.
“No nation should have to borrow its way out of a crisis it did so little to create,” she said.
