Tempting offer: trading debt for climate • Table.Briefings

Ecuador wants to better protect the Galapagos Islands with a debt swap. Debt swaps are also intended to contribute to climate financing.

Debt-for-nature swaps will also be a topic at French President Macron’s climate finance summit. The idea sounds promising: They are supposed to release money for climate and nature protection in countries of the Global South, and at the same time help in the fight against the debt crisis. But their benefits are likely to be limited.

It was the largest debt-for-nature swap ever agreed: The „debt-for-nature swap“ announced by Ecuador in early May is expected to bring the country several million Dollars a year in the future. The money is to be used for the protection of the Galapagos Islands, the natural paradise that once inspired Charles Darwin’s theory on the origin of species.

Tempting offer: trading debt for climate protection

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