Panaji: Archbishop of Goa and Daman and president of the Federation of Asian Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrao, who is attending the United Nations Climate Conference COP30 in Belem, Brazil, said churches of the Global South presented a document to address the climate crisis.The document called to maintain a 1.5 degree celsius global warming limit and for grounding climate action in the Church's teaching on integral ecology.Asia is "on the frontline of ecological and economic injustice", Ferrao said at a symposium of Global South Church leaders. He said wealthier nations, which contributed most to the climate crisis, carry a clear moral responsibility."They (wealthier nations) must pay their ecological debt. That means leading the fossil fuel phaseout, achieving carbon neutrality, and adhering to their climate finance commitments," he said. Finance should take the form of grants and public funding for loss and damage rather than loans and should support adaptation, capacity building, and technology transfer to poorer nations, the cardinal added.There is a rapidly escalating frequency of extreme weather events in Asia, Ferrao told Vatican News on the sidelines of the conference."Asia is warming at twice the global average," he said. "Heatwaves, typhoons, droughts, floods, cyclones, sea-level rise, and melting glaciers are becoming more intense and frequent," Ferrao said, and added that such events deepen existing socio-economic vulnerabilities, especially among marginalised communities. He said there must be "clear timelines and targets to phase out fossil fuels"."We must halt distractions such as bridging fuels, carbon-capture technologies, and carbon trading," he said, raising concerns about what he called "activist economies and green capitalism".Certain proposed solutions allow major polluters to avoid real change he said. The transition to renewable energy must be just, protecting workers and communities who depend on the fossil fuel sector through retraining and social protection, he said.The Global South document calls for the protection of indigenous lands and the recognition of indigenous knowledge in climate-resilience strategies.