Feature story
When the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meets, faith communities come together to raise a voice for justice, and for solidarity with those most affected.
In times when multilateralism is questioned and nationalism is rising, faith communities play a special role. Faiths are not limited by borders. They are, by definition, communities beyond borders. There is another voice coming from faith communities. It comes with witnesses about life on the frontlines of climate change: Indigenous peoples, women, children, youth, and others.
These voices speak truth to powers about the emergency we are in and the need for just transitions.
At one of the side events in Bonn, the World Council of Churches (WCC) was represented by Jocabed Solano, representative of the Indigenous Kuna community in Panama, who spoke on the importance of including Indigenous knowledge and traditions to make progress in a just transition.
”Today, I will speak to you about the losses and damages that climate change is inflicting on my people and many other Indigenous peoples around the world,” said Solano. “But I will also speak to you about our resistance, our ancestral wisdom, and our struggle for a future where we can keep our culture alive.”
But the deepest losses are those that cannot be measured in dollars, Solano said. “We are losing sacred territories, places where our ancestors connected with the spiritual world,” he said. “We can no longer perform our rituals and ceremonies at the right times and places. Ancestral knowledge about medicinal plants and ecosystems is fading away with each species that disappears."
For decades, WCC has been at UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings to address the injustices that climate change makes visible and also to underline that climate change is a matter of ethics and a spiritual question.
Rev. Henrik Grape, WCC senior advisor for Care for Creation, Sustainability, and Climate Justice, was also present in Bonn. “We cannot solve this without addressing the roots of climate change and the following climate injustices,” he said. “The roots lie in how we understand humanity in relation to the global ecosystem.”
Grape asked if we the top species and free to use everything as resources—or are we one among many species dependent on functioning ecosystems? “Is everything for sale, or is there a limit for an extractive economy?” Grape asked. “Do you have more rights if you are rich than if you are poor?”
The Ecumenical Decade for Climate Justice Action (2025-2034) is starting now as an opportunity for member churches and friends of WCC to get involved in actions for climate justice, as well as start dialogues on how we can live together on this planet without destroying it. To find out what that faith communities can contribute to a just transformation and a future for coming generations. A decade to give space to new interpretations of the scriptures. A decade to give space for Indigenous peoples' wisdom, youth aspirations, and women's experiences—everything that can push the world to a more peaceful and sustainable place.
