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Climate change poses serious environmental challenges to meet current and future demands for food. The poorest communities, having the smallest carbon footprint on the planet, are facing the greatest impact of climate change. For many years, the right to food has been a key issue and priority for many parties, churches and ecumenical delegations involved in climate talks.

How and in which ways are money and finance shaping the world economy and society? What ought to be the roles of money and finance and what can we do together as faith communities to make the prevailing international financial architecture more just and compassionate?

International humanitarian and development faith based networks have urged governments preparing for next week's COP21 United Nations climate summit in Paris to do their outmost to reach a fair, binding, and ambitious agreement as vulnerable people continue their daily struggle to adapt to the increasing adverse effects of climate change.

During the 4th United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights, the WCC, in collaboration with the ACT Alliance and Lutheran World Federation, organized a side-event on “Faith-based organizations’ contribution to the protection of communities’ land rights: lessons learnt and good practices from Africa, Asia and Latin America” at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.

At the 42nd Committee on World Food Security in Rome on 12-15 October, the intergovernmental body continued its quest to coordinate a global approach to food security.

In a recent statement, religious leaders called for an ambitious climate agreement, reminding all governments to commit to emission cuts and climate risk reduction. They promised to continue working for climate justice, including divestment from fossil energy.

Tackling the tragedy of hunger in a world of abundance, the Churches’ Week of Action on Food (11-18 October) is an opportunity for Christians, communities and all people around the world to act together for food justice.

A special service organized by the WCC at the Ecumenical Centre chapel in Geneva, Switzerland, dedicated prayers to the United Nations post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, meant to eliminate extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and tackle climate change and water scarcity by 2030.

A declaration emphasizing the need for greater convergence in the struggles for justice and rights of communities, particularly for land, water, forests, natural resources, livelihood and identity, was the outcome of a meeting in Nepal, involving civil society organizations and social movements.

The possibility of a new economic framework is the chief focus of the newly published issue of The Ecumenical Review. Informed by years of ecumenical work on the relationship of poverty, wealth and ecology (including the proposal for a “greed line”), the 14 contributors offer an array of insights from specific contexts and religious standpoints – Dalits, South Africans, Latin Americans, Indigenous spirituality, feminist theology and non-Christian religions – into the values and structures that can create an “economy of life” for all.

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, an initiative of the WCC, is calling churches and individuals to join in a world-wide “zero hunger” challenge.

A new report titled “Defeating AIDS–Advancing global health” was appreciated as a significant resource in encouraging an effective global AIDS response by Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the WCC.

Meeting from 17 to 24 June, the newly reconstituted Commission on Faith and Order of the WCC has begun to define its principal trajectories for ecumenical study and common activity from 2015 until the next WCC Assembly in 2020.

As head of policy at Christian Aid, a key member of the ACT Alliance, Alison Kelly has an eye on sustainable development in what is seen as the prophetic voice of the church, which has a busy year in 2015.

Students who visit the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva are often from theological or similarly Bible-related sections of educational institutions, but not always. This year a group of secular students from a state university in the United States arrived at the WCC to tap into work related to its health and healing programme.

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, and Dr Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group, discussed possible collaborative actions to end extreme poverty during a meeting in Washington, D.C., on 4 May.

The WCC has joined over 30 leaders from major world religions and heads of global faith-based organizations today in launching a call to action to end extreme poverty by 2030, a goal shared with the World Bank Group.

The WCC and the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance have agreed to re-establish the EAA as the WCC’s ecumenical initiative, preserving the future of this diverse Christian network for international action on selected, focused issues.

The adverse impact of business activities on the lives of members of the local population in Colombia and El Salvador was highlighted by the WCC-sponsored participants at the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights.

The opening of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago was one of the most dramatic symbols of the global changes sweeping across the world in 1989.