By Dean Dettloff, Research and Advocacy Officer
Ten years ago, Pope Francis issued Laudato Si’, an encyclical that has galvanized the climate movement. In his landmark letter, Francis gave us the challenge to hear “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (§49) and called for an “ecological conversion” (§217). In this Jubilee year, Laudato Si’ takes on new significance, not only because of its 10th anniversary, but also because among the encyclical’s many themes is attention to both financial and ecological debt.
Laudato Si’ on the debt trap
“The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them,” Francis writes (§52), adding that “a true ‘ecological debt’ exists, particularly between the global north and south, connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time” (§51).
How might foreign debt control poor countries? In theory, debt should enable countries to temporarily fill a financial gap, allowing them to invest in development that improves their economic situation so that both the debtor and the creditor benefit in the end. For a variety of reasons, however, debt can do the opposite, holding back economic improvements.
If interest rates are too high, for example, and a country experiences an unexpected shock (like a pandemic, knock-on effects of conflict, or instabilities in trade relationships), debt can quickly escalate much faster than an economy can handle. If creditors do not cancel or restructure debt in these situations, countries are compelled to keep paying even when they know they will never be able to fully pay back the loan. Since countries, unlike individuals or corporations, cannot declare bankruptcy, they are stuck in a cycle of borrowing and repaying, even taking out new loans to repay old loans. In such a situation, countries often also lose economic sovereignty and have to agree to adverse conditions like privatizing public services or cutting welfare budgets to qualify for further loans.
Laudato Si’ on the links between economic and ecological debt
It might seem like the issues of international finance and sovereign debt are too technical and too removed from more pressing problems like climate change. Yet, Francis insists that “we are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental” (§139). By talking about the “ecological debt,” Francis encourages us to reverse our usual assumptions and ask ourselves, when it comes to our global system, who really owes whom?
Our global economy, shaped by centuries of colonialism and, now, neo-colonialism, extracts resources, profits and labour from people and land in the world’s peripheries and drains them into the economic centers. Canada, in particular, has enabled and profited from this economic arrangement by sponsoring and housing many of the world’s extractive companies. Our partners in the Global South, who know Canadians for their generosity and sense of justice, often remind us that many of the mining and energy companies that bring environmental destruction and human rights abuses to their communities are headquartered or financed in Canada.
Moreover, people in the Global South face the impacts of climate change, like droughts and floods, much more intensely than those in the Global North, although climate change is primarily driven by production and consumption patterns in the North. As Francis reminded us a decade ago, we find ourselves in a real ecological debt to the Global South, one that the Global North routinely ignores while demanding that financial debts must be repaid.
A decade of debt and destruction
Today, ten years since the publication of Laudato Si’, decision-makers have not listened to Francis’s bold words on these issues. Instead, the debt crisis and the climate crisis are both at a high point.
According to a 2024 report by our sister organization Misereor, the development agency of the Catholic bishops in Germany, and Erlassjahr, the German Jubilee movement, 60 countries are in a critical debt situation, with 24 more in a very critical one. Money from these countries goes to repaying creditors, rather than into necessary investments in basic goods like education and healthcare. Women are uniquely impacted when these countries seek to save money by cutting public services, as they tend to employ more women, who are often forced to take on further domestic labor.
Environmentally, the last 10 years have been the hottest 10 on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. In Laudate Deum, Francis reflected on the time that passed between when he wrote Laudato Si’ and the 2023 COP28 conference on climate change, writing:
“I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons. We will feel its effects in the areas of healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc.” (§2).
Each of these areas are also further impacted by economic debt. For Francis, an approach of “integral ecology” means understanding how everything is integrated and connected, meaning that as a problem emerges in one area, like international finance, we can expect it will make other problems, like addressing the climate crisis, that much more challenging.
Turn Debt into Hope
Fortunately, Francis did not leave us without the tools to build an alternative. In December 2024, he called on people to support the global Turn Debt into Hope campaign, which is supported here in Canada by many ecumenical and civil society organizations. And you can get involved.
To celebrate the anniversary of Laudato Si’ and honour Francis’s legacy, campaigners around the world are holding a Relay of Hope between May 24 and May 28, 2025. During this period, people will gather together and share a candle flame to symbolize hope.
Together, we can carry Francis’s prophetic words forward, making it clear to decision-makers that the world wants debt justice. As Francis reminded us, “we need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference” (LS, §52).