Religion Emerges as an Influential Force for Climate Action: It's a Moral Issue

When we envision the solution to climate change, we expect it to come from a negotiating table — not a place of worship. But religion is emerging as an influential force in the climate movement.

It makes sense. The reverence for nature and for creation are basic tenets of almost every major religion, and estimates say over 85% of the world’s population subscribes to some faith.

Activists at the secular Alliance of Religions and Conservation and the United Nations Development Program believe this massive demographic — people of faith with an environmental conscience — has the potential to make a considerable impact in the global effort to curb climate change.

That’s why they’re helping world religions take the reins by designing five- to nine-year plans of action to address climate change.

“The world’s faiths joined together in this cause — if viewed in terms of sheer numbers of people — could become the planet’s largest civil society movement for change,” UNDP Assistant Secretary-General Olav Kjorven said when ARC’s initiative launched.

Using guidelines provided by ARC, most of the world’s major religions — including the Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, and Sikh — have drafted strategies for sustainability during the past year. Called “Plans for Generational Change,” the climate-action roadmaps will be officially launched in November at a celebration hosted by ARC and UNDP at Windsor Castle.

“The fact that the majority of the world’s faiths ascribe the creation of the world to an all-powerful deity implies that the leaders and followers of each faith have a moral responsibility for the continued well-being of our planet, and particularly for its natural environment,” said ARC founder Prince Phillip in a preface to the ARC’s seven-year plan guide.

Not all the plans strictly follow ARC’s suggested 7-year model; several religions have tailored their environmental programs to align with sacred time periods within their faiths. The Daoists, for instance, last year became the first faith group to establish a seven-year sustainability plan, though they adapted it into an eight-year plan to incorporate what Daoists believe is a more auspicious number. Similarly, Jewish climate activists designed their Climate Change Campaign to coincide with the Jewish calendar’s seven-year shmita cycle from 2008-2015. Sikhs dedicated the 300-year Cycle of Creation beginning in 1999 to nature. (In the shorter term, there’s the five-year EcoSikh plan outlining a course of action for the Sikh community in response to climate change.)

But though their time frames vary, most of the action plans contain similar structural categories, based on ARC’s seven recommended components. The categories — such as “faith-consistent use of assets,” “education and young people,” and “media and advocacy” — have been adapted by world religions into frameworks consistent with faith-specific teachings and practices. The plans lay out concrete objectives within these frameworks, and also represent broad commitments to combat climate change in key areas that can be translated into actions by individual faith groups.

Faith-based environmental organizations and religious NGOs around the world have led the effort to develop and disseminate climate action plans for each religion.