On 13 October, a workshop called "From Debt to Climate Justice: Financing Just Transitions" took up that question. The World Council of Churches (WCC) organized it with the All Africa Conference of Churches, Centre for Financial Accountability, and World Communion of Reformed Churches. A just transition is a move away from fossil fuels that is fair to workers and communities. In a talk-show format, the workshop looked at how multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, finance climate action. Rev. Philip Vinod Peacock, general secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, described who profits when disaster strikes. "Capitalism has learned to commodify even disaster," he said. "When floods and cyclones strike, communities in the Global South are offered more loans, insurance products, and investment opportunities, and their suffering becomes a new market. A crisis caused overwhelmingly by the wealthy is turned into debt for the poor and profit for others." For Rev. Jackline Makena Mutuma of the Methodist Church in Kenya, loans are the wrong tool for climate and just-transition needs. "A loan makes sense when the investment earns the money to repay it. Adaptation doesn't earn money. Neither does loss and damage," she said. "That isn't climate finance. It's handing the bill to the victims." Between 2020 and 2023, Kenya lived through what she called the worst drought in four decades. Floods killed 291 people between March and May 2024, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. And the government, she said, spends nearly half of its revenue on servicing debt. "This is the climate-debt trap: the more the climate hurts you, the more you pay for money," she said. Mutuma called for grants, not loans, for adaptation, meaning coping with climate impacts already under way, and for loss and damage, the harm communities can no longer avoid or adapt to. She also called for debt cancellation, wiping debts out, for automatic pauses in debt payments when disasters hit, and for recognition of the ecological debt owed for climate and environmental harm. "Africa is not the debtor in this story," she said. "We are the creditors of an ecological debt that has never been paid." For both church leaders, these are questions of faith. "Every day, Christians around the world pray in the Lord's Prayer, 'forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,'" said Peacock. "We cannot say those words in church on Sunday and accept a financial system on Monday that keeps whole nations in debt bondage." "Scripture is not neutral on debt," said Mutuma. She pointed to the Jubilee of Leviticus 25, which calls for debts to be cancelled and land restored every 50 years, and where God says, "the land is mine." She also named Zacchaeus, the tax collector in Luke 19 who promised to repay those he had cheated. Churches, she said, "can call creditors who profit from disasters to repentance, the way Zacchaeus repented." "Jubilee is not a favour that creditors grant," she said. "It is a correction that God commands." The talk show also put questions to two more speakers. Joe Athialy, executive director of the Centre for Financial Accountability, was asked what counts as "bankable," since the banks' models favour large, commercially attractive projects. Uhuru Dempers, head of the social development desk at the National Council of Churches in Namibia, was asked whether the banks can tackle structural inequalities, and what should replace the dominant model. The workshop was one of five WCC engagements around the Annual Meetings. On 12 October, the WCC joined the International People's Assembly. On 14 October, it took part in two events on wealth concentration and international tax cooperation. Both were co-organized by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, which the WCC co-founded, with Oxfam and other partners. That evening, the WCC hosted the webinar "Follow the Money: Multilateral Development Banks, Fossil Fuels and Climate Justice." Faith groups are carrying the call for grants, not loans, toward COP31, the UN climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9 to 20 November 2026, as part of the Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action (2025–2034). "Follow the money" shows how banks feed the climate emergency, and what churches can do GEM School shows 21 leaders that another economy is possible Faith groups carry a grants-not-loans demand toward COP31 Kenya: Heavy Rains and Flooding Update, Flash Update #6 (UN OCHA) | 
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