In August 2024, Taproot Earth convened a movement governance assembly of more than 200 frontline community leaders from 22 countries representing Black and Indigenous leaders who bear the impacts of the climate, economic, and political disasters. Together, these leaders crafted a working statement on Global Climate Reparations rooted in Black Liberation and Indigenous land sovereignty:

     [Global] Climate reparations is the restoration of healthy and balanced relationships      with all that comprise a shared global ecosystem. Reparative action begins with those      who benefit most from the historic and current systems of oppression. It requires the      abolition of debt, restitution for injustice and the establishment of accountable      systems rooted in Black and Indigenous liberation for all oppressed people and future      generations. - Global Climate Reparations Working Statement, August 2024

This working statement is a testament to the vision and bold leadership the world needs, yet is often lacking, in governmental discourse. The movement governance assembly on Global Climate Reparations clearly showed that frontline communities have vision, leadership, and solutions that can renew our commitment to each other, and the planet, as we face deeper threats of climate disaster. 

This frontline leadership should be at the center of conversations by our governmental representatives and civil society actors as they enter the 29th UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) in Baku. COP is one of the only spaces for governments and communities to come together to address the urgent matters that face the earth’s people and ecosystems. Yet, the COP remains disappointing, often foiled by US obstruction, oil and gas interests, and the global acceleration of authoritarianism which threatens the viability of democratic processes. While this is the primary public venue for charting our collective future, the frontlines continue to be ignored. But we have a choice. The representatives and negotiations at COP could eschew the fossil fuel interest and Global North obstructionism and choose to embrace the opportunity and possibility to build a world where all peoples can live, rest and thrive — what Taproot Earth calls the Liberation Horizon. 

The first step toward this choice at COP 29 is to address the issue of “climate finance.” In Baku, leaders will be engaging in conversations and debates on climate finance. But the frontlines are clear: Climate reparations should be at the center of the climate finance conversation.  

First, What is Climate Finance? 

The conversation is not only about “who owes” and “how much”, but it is also about who decides, and how we will implement accountable systems. The climate finance conversation at COP creates an opportunity to redesign the economy as we mitigate and adapt in the face of climate threats. Last year at Climate Week NYC 2023, we tackled this topic in a conversation among our Board members and partners that you can find here.

Yet to redesign our economy we must know what we are talking about and how terms are being defined for communities, and for the frontlines, without our consent or input.  While there is no real consistent definition of climate finance, the one glaring feature across almost all instances the term is used is that: frontline communities are nowhere to be seen in these definitions.  

First, consider the public arena. Initially, in Article 4 of the UNFCCC, the conversations on climate finance stated that “developed countries” must provide financial support to “developing countries” dealing with the crisis. The UNFCCC, in part due to a long history of social movement organizing, opened the conversation on climate finance on who owes (the Global North) and what commitments could look like. Now the UN’s UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance's (SCF) official definition erases that history, defining climate finance as:

Reducing emissions and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gasses and aims at reducing vulnerability of, and maintaining and increasing the resilience of, human and ecological systems to negative climate change impacts.

Second, consider the private sector. Wall Street and corporate actors advance the conversation on climate finance. Using tools like Environmental Social Governance (ESGs) screens that aim to return profits to investors, corporations often support extractive systems in the name of zero-carbon/net-carbon/climate solutions. Such investments include projects like Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Ventures  or continued investment in lithium mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo to power EV batteries. The bottom line, the focus on climate finance in this sector is in long-term mitigation strategies that raise returns for investors through continued extraction, and more effectively to manage and protect assets in the face of increasing climate risks.

Third, even in the philanthropic sector (foundation and wealthy donors), effective altruism has taken hold of the framing of climate finance. The Effective Altruists' recommendations for "climate investments" which focus on investing in 1) Neglected Technologies (nuclear, "zero-carbon fuels", carbon-capture and sequestration; 2) reducing emissions in the Global South and 3) Advocating for policies that often support the green capitalism efforts through tax breaks for private sector for research and development.  

In actuality, in all three of these sectors, it makes sense that frontline communities are erased or ignored in any definition of climate finance. The reality is because any “finance” model currently being debated at the UN =or in the rooms of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or in private philanthropy relies heavily on the dominant global financial system. This very financial system at play has its roots in the history of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. Charter companies and early corporations sold debt in order to purchase ships, seeds, weapons for the violent taking of land, resources, and (most criminally) the forcible kidnapping and sale of people from the African continent. Capitalism, neoliberalism, and colonialism are the building blocks of our current climate finance system.

Today using public-private institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and even the Green Climate Fund, climate finance continues to uphold the status quo - even when these institutions deliver lifesaving resources to the ground— as evidenced in this latest report. Here are two critical reasons why they fail with the best of intentions:

1. Many current climate finance models bake in support for fossil fuel extraction. For years movements have sounded the alarm as corporate lobbies have co-opted the Green Climate Fund to redirect funding meant to benefit Global South communities to pad their bottom lines and undermine human rights safeguards. For example, earlier this year Trinidad and Tobago secured its first funding from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project. It is unconscionable that the world’s premier global climate funding mechanism is supporting CCS projects while movements are fighting with their lives to stop CCS projects in their communities.

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2. More than 70% of existing climate finance comes in the form of interest-bearing and extractive loans, setting up a crushing and imprisoning cycle of extraction. The world is currently in the midst of a global debt crisis. Debt payments by countries most at-risk of climate impacts have soared since 2020 and are at their highest level in nearly three decades. Debt shackles Global South nations to historical colonial powers, forcing these nations to pay back the debt rather than invest in the climate futures of their people. 

So to conclude, what is climate finance? “Climate finance” as it currently exists: 

1. Primarily “moves funds” from the Global North to the Global South with paternalistic aims
2. Returns more financial resources to the Global North via interest-bearing loans
3. Pushes false solutions, including carbon capture sequestration and storage, and entrenches the power of corporate polluters

‍In other words, without a justice analysis and centering climate reparations, climate finance could prove to merely be a shiny new tool of the same old global financial market that is a slow death sentence for billions of people on the planet. 

Redefining Climate Finance — In Reparative Terms

At Taproot Earth, we want to offer a different pathway and choice. We do not have to accept these terms as the only option. As shared above, the frontlines have already named the terms: global climate reparations. Climate finance, then, should be redefined as reparative climate justice investments. What is this? 

Reparative climate justice investment is focused on the frontlines determining how resources move into their communities. Within this approach:

1. Reparative climate justice investments acknowledges that the Global North owes the Global South and must repay in an equitable manner.
2. Reparative climate justice investments center ecological health and collective wellbeing.  
3. Reparative climate justice investment prioritizes resource stewardship and community governance.

A more detailed comparison between the current climate finance systems and reparative climate justice investment can be found in this chart, which synthesizes strategy conversations with Capital J Collective, Good Ancestor Movement, and Taproot Earth.

The Debate(s): Who Owes, How Much, Who Governs, and What is the Pathway?

Now that we are clear on the choices in front of us, we can address the current debate at hand.

Who Owes? (Acknowledging & Atoning for Harms)

Simply, the Global North owes the Global South. Climate reparations are due because communities in the Global South - just like many Black and Indigenous communities in the United States - are not the ones causing the crisis. The Global North and extractive industries have consumed and exploited its way to global warming. They have benefited from the harms, therefore they need to repair the relationships which includes making restitution, as the frontlines call for it. 

The first step that we need the Global leaders at COP 29 to do is to acknowledge the harms of this system and acknowledge the fact that the Global North has benefited from this system at the very violent expense of Black and Indigenous peoples from the Gulf South to the Global South. 

The Global North would do well to heed Pope Francis' warnings and critiques of the financial and economic system in both Laudato Si and Laduato Deum, challenging the prioritization of the Global North's wealth at the expense of the Global South. Ten years ago, in Laudato Si, he wrote: 

The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned. In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future. The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse.

This structurally perverse arrangement that the Pope named has allowed those most responsible for the climate crisis to knowingly profit from the crisis. Institutions, the Global North governments, and Corporations need to atone for upholding and benefiting from a system that has led to the loss of land, life, and culture.

Reflecting on Pope Francis’ call for ending unfair and unjust structures, the Church can lean into the call of Global Climate Reparations as part of the Jubilee Year of 2025, the Catholic Church, itself, can guide what atonement rooted in healing and repair:  

1. Embrace and advocate for frontline calls for debt abolition; 
2. Implement practices of resource distribution through community governance, rooted in the teaching of subsidiarity; 
3. Transform its own financing practices at all levels into a more faith-filled vision for climate justice investment.

As we move into COP 29, here are five critical steps that Global North governments must take rooted in the global climate reparations working statement to atone, repair and make restitution:

1. Abolish all the public debt held over the Global South.
2. Act on commitments towards climate reparations. One example is the actions of Scotland in Malawi. While not perfect, it is a step towards the right direction when paired with more self-determination in local decision-making.
3. Commit to a strong and binding NCQG (we will discuss below) and implement on paying what is owed to the Global South.
4. Cede majority shareholder positions in the World Bank and IMF and end all structural adjustment programs that put shackles on the Global South.
5. Stop using tax subsidies for investing in carbon markets, carbon capture sequestration, or propping up solutions like the Inflation Reduction Act as the only model for investing necessary public dollars into climate justice solutions.  

Lastly, in the coming year, Taproot Earth will lay out ways that corporations can make atonement, repair, and restitution. But there are a few things that must acknowledge in order to build out solutions:

1. Private Creditors, like Blackrock, hold 62% of all sovereign debt  over Global South nations.
2. Fiduciary duty and responsibility (what guides investor decisions) is focused on shareholder profit maximization, rather than the common good. This means investors will continue to invest in extraction, until we change this guidance.
3. Wall Street and Global banks continue to invest in carbon markets, which continue to privatize land and build wealth in the global North at the expense of the Global South.
4. Fossil fuel companies continue to expand, extract, and harm communities. With the rise of authoritarianism in the US and abroad, the checks to this power are in doubt. 

How Much? (Acknowledging the Facts and Figures) 

One of the big debates at COP 29 is about the “quantum” in climate finance negotiations. In other words, how much the Global North commits on an annual basis to “support” Global South countries to address climate change. The framing itself rings hollow, given the fact that the Global North has benefited from the current and historic extraction of people, resources, and wealth from the Global South.

There are multiple proposals on the table. The Global North (led by the US) continues to haggle on the dollar amount, looking to minimize any additional spending commitments. They talk about an inner core public finance provision that would come from countries and an outer “investment goal” that would supposedly be mobilized by international financial institutions and the private sector. This is a sure-fire path to further extraction from recipient countries. Global South countries have pushed for a minimum of $1 trillion/year and global civil society members are calling on the quantum to be closer to $5 trillion/year and even $7 trillion/year as named by some African nations, overwhelmingly grants-based and from public sources. 

The fact of the matter is, however, the debate over $1 trillion, $5 trillion or $7 trillion - should not be a debate at all. The debate on how much centers the conversation in scarcity, rather than abundance. And it takes a lot of energy and time from the real work that the frontlines are doing. 

To our view at Taproot Earth,  $7 trillion annual should be the new quantum goal. Yes, that is 70 times (not 7 times) the current goal set at Paris of $100 billion per year (which is still not met). That was inadequate then and eight years later woefully short now. 

We must see $7 trillion as the floor and not the ceiling. Here are a two reasons why:

1. Multiple studies estimate that the costs of accelerating climate disaster will cost our communities in the tens of trillions per year. These costs and devastating impacts are felt most acutely by communities in the Global South and Black and Indigenous communities everywhere. These measured and projected economic costs can never adequately account for the loss of life, culture, and community — sacred and incalculable losses. Take, for example, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which cost nearly $125 billion ($200 billion in today’s dollars) for one storm that left generational trauma in an entire region. Not only do we see multiple Katrina-level disasters around the world, we are also seeing worsening droughts, land loss, increased climate migration, and ecosystems loss at levels beyond comprehension. Simply, the cost is higher than what we are debating.

2. The financial resources are there! The Global North countries have the resources to do this. First, a recent study showed that countries can raise at least 5 trillion annually in public funds — we just need the political will. Second, with Wall Street now hedging its bets against green and sustainable solutions (not even frontline!) profits are being generated from the continued extraction and expectation that renewable tech might not succeed (!).  Third, the world is in the midst of the Great Wealth Transfer - which is set to transfer $84 trillion in wealth (assets, land, money, investments, trusts, etc) across generations - with nearly $72 trillion of that staying in the hands of the wealthy elite. Lastly, according to the IMF (!) fossil fuels received nearly $7 trillion in explicit and implicit subsidies in 2022, which includes direct subsidies as well as other public-investments in infrastructure, land transfer, and price controls that enable the fossil industry to extract without cost to their bottom line. But the reality is, if we can find ways to subsidize the fossil industry at this rate, we certainly have the creativity to do that for our global survival.

Who Governs? (Restoring Frontline Decision-Making Power)

The global climate reparations working statement is not just poignant, but needed. The working statement offers a vision for a different choice for our future — one that is rooted in abundance, justice, and the liberation horizon. Liberation is possible, if we muster the will to move in that direction. 

Within this powerful statement Taproot Earth highlights the last sentence as we enter COP 29:

It requires the abolition of debt, restitution for injustice and the establishment of accountable systems rooted in Black and Indigenous liberation for all oppressed people and future generations.

The fact of the matter is that the frontlines need to be the decision-makers, not just passive recipients of an archaic and colonial system. To get here, the conversations must engage in questions around how we build an accountable system of repayment rooted in Black and Indigenous Liberation. We must ask:

1. Will resources be mobilized to support frontline communities as they decide? 
2. Will resources move through processes rooted in building accountable systems of governance rooted in Black and Indigenous Liberation? 
3. Will corporations and Global North institutions finally pay up and acknowledge the harms that they have both caused and benefited from?

The Frontines know how to mobilize and move resources. Time and again, frontline communities have demonstrated how to move resources to the ground in a reparative and just way that prioritizes the most impacted not only as the beneficiary, but as the decision-maker on how funds should be moved. 

Intermediaries like Grassroots International and CS Fund have demonstrated these approaches, with Funds like Kataly or the Southern Power Fund. More recently, The Gulf South 4 Green New Deal Community-Controlled Fund moved $15 million to the ground over three years — no strings attached — with deep accountability to each other and to the community.

The frontines are rethinking financial investment by reframing land stewardship as climate solutions. Work such as the MST (landless workers movement) or the Andes-Amazon Initiatives in Brazil which use land stewardship, agrarian reform, and forest protection standards to help ensure that the ecosystem is balanced and healthy. Not only do these solutions store carbon and support clean air, they also ensure that the rights of people and rights of nature are at the forefront of any climate solution. Or take the Young Emerging Farmers Initiative in Zambia, which prioritizes the ecological well being of the land and the people together as they grow food to feed the people.

What Is the Pathway? (Building Accountable Systems)

Lastly, we are called to build accountable systems.

This means we rethink finance as an investment in our communities. Not an investment that is a monetary payback, but an investment in a future where all people can all live, rest, and thrive. What we need is a more justice-oriented set of climate investments. And the frontlines have the models and solutions on how to invest in community solutions, build practices of stewardship of land, water, and energy that not only protect communities, but ecosystems, and have very clear sets of demands on what could be done as we transition from an extractive economy towards a more climate just economy. 

Under the current climate finance model, the best of intentions often fall into zero-interest loans and grant-based income to support community solutions. These models are significantly better than the typical climate finance approach, but even in this category we must take heed on where the real power of decisions lie. Zero-interest loans and grant-based income can fall into this category, where the “payer” is given the power of determination for how the resources can be used or moved. Even at zero percent, loans still have an inherent extractive nature if the communities that are impacted need to pay the investment back to the Global North or investor (who has already made profits on the extraction). 

This will only continue to exacerbate a global debt crisis where many governments are already spending more money servicing debt than on basic societal needs like healthcare. Even the most well-intentioned grants (without clearly articulated mandates that there are “no strings attached”) can lead to the undermining of self-determination, such as the movement towards effective altruism. Here the donor still has the full power and decision-making authority to determine which project is “worthy” “more impactful” or “deserving of the mission” rather than trusting the frontlines to do what they need to do to not only survive, but build a better world for all.

In the the most simple standard, an accountable system must echo calls that frontline movements have been saying for decades, now: 

1. Require that frontline communities make the decisions in any resource distribution  
2. Require that the entities who have benefited from the harm (Global North and corporations in particular) pay for the investments without preconditions or strings attached.
3. Ensure that no funds are debt-creating: prioritize any investments as grants and direct payments instead of loans or debt-financing mechanisms.
4. After commitments –public or private – ensure that resources move quickly and intentionally to the frontlines
5. Ensure that funds provided are public, grant-based, predictable, additional and directly accessible to Indigenous Peoples and local communities

Reparative climate justice investment requires us all to commit and act on building accountable processes rooted in Black and Indigenous Liberation. This shift also provides a clear pathway for how we can build a world where we all live, rest, and thrive in the places we love.

Special thanks to Michelle Mascarenhas and Sriram Madhusoodanan for research on climate finance that informed this piece. Kate Barron-Alicante for analysis to help inform the critiques of the current financial system. Stephanie Brobbey and the Good Ancestor Movement and Leo Freeman of Capital J Collective for a framework to understand climate finance vs climate justice investments.