YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – As armed groups continue to wreak havoc across Africa, a leading African Catholic has blamed the scourge on the race to exploit Africa’s mineral resources.

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, the Bishop of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was speaking at a press conference at the Holy See Press Office on July 1.

He was part of a group of bishops from the global south who were at the Vatican to present a joint document on “climate justice.”

“I am speaking to you on behalf of the Churches on the African continent, a land rich in biodiversity, minerals and cultures, but impoverished by centuries of extractivism, slavery and exploitation,” the Congolese cardinal said.

“Africa is not a poor continent, it is a plundered continent,” he noted.

Ambongo’s home country is a prime example of this nexus between mineral extraction and war. For three decades now, eastern DRC has been embroiled in conflict as around 120 armed groups – some, like the M23, supported by foreign nations – struggle for the control of the region’s vast mineral resources.

“How can we accept that, in the name of the ‘energy transition,’ entire communities are being wiped out in the search for lithium, cobalt or nickel? How can we tolerate carbon markets turning our forests into financial assets, while our communities remain deprived of drinking water?” Ambongo said.

“We’re saying enough is enough, enough of false solutions, enough of decisions taken without listening to those on the front line of climate collapse,” he said.

Nigerian Catholic climate activist, Linda Uwaka told Crux there was hypocrisy involved in carbon finance.

“Your strategy of polluting in developed countries and then planting trees in Africa to compensate ignores the fundamental need to stop pollution directly. We consider this a false solution and reject it,” she said.

She maintained that communities should lead real solutions, pointing to sustainable, accessible energy and methods like agro-ecology and community forest management. She dismissed REDD as a false solution being promoted, arguing it puts price tags on forests and denies their traditional custodians access to resources.

The joint document presented by bishops of the global south titled, “A call for climate justice and the common home: ecological conversion, transformation and resistance to false solutions,” makes the case for “the Church’s commitment to climate justice and calls nations and governments to action,” as the world prepares for the COP30 in Brazil later this year.

Ambongo described the document as “a cry for dignity,” and noted that pastors of the South were demanding climate justice as a matter of human and spiritual rights.

The cardinal said this has become imperative, especially when the impacts of climate change on the global south are taken into consideration.

Global warming reportedly exceeded pre-industrial levels by 1.55° celsius, and, in the words of the President of the Bishops’ Conference of Africa and Madagascar, “we are seeing the effects of desertification, which is already affecting 500 million people in the South.”

According to the World Meteorological Organization, climate change is also decimating African economies, with African countries losing between 2 percent and 5 percent their GDP to climate change. The UN body reports further that many African countries are diverting up to 9 percent of their budgets in response to climate extremes.

The report estimates that the cost of adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa ranges from $30 billion to $50 billion annually over the next decade.

“Urgent action is needed to avoid irreversible impact on the climate and natural systems,” Ambongo said.

“We therefore demand an economy that is not based on the sacrifice of the African people to enrich others,” Ambongo emphasized.

According to the cardinal, the Bishops of the South propose a transformation focused on life, the sovereignty of Indigenous and rural communities, and the rights of women, climate migrants, and future generations.

The document, shared with Pope Leo XVI, challenges the world’s powerful with ten “commitments and responsibilities” and presents ten specific demands coupled with calls to action, including the Church’s own efforts.

He stressed that the Church in Africa is dedicating itself to nurturing a “spirituality of care,” fostering ecological ethics in the young, and creating an intercontinental Southern alliance. This alliance aims to speak with one voice: “the time for indifference is over.”

“Africa wants to live. Africa wants to breathe. Africa wants to contribute to a future of justice and peace for all humanity. And she will do so with her faith, her hope, and her invincible dignity,” the Congolese cardinal said.

Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Abuja told Crux that the Church must remain attached to “the fundamental dynamic of the mission, “and part of the mission is to rethink how best to carry out that mission in the face of climate change.”