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Climate change activist Yeb Saño and other pilgrims will cross the Swiss border on 3 November as part of a 1500km pilgrimage from Rome to Paris demanding a new global climate agreement.

World leaders will meet at the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris from 30 November to 11 December. Faith groups around the world are building awareness of the importance of reaching a binding and ambitious agreement at the talks. In October, WCC members have taken part in climate activities in Germany.

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.

“It would be a scandal if the Climate Conference in Paris would not deliver what is needed,” said Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, during a public event in Lengerich, Germany on 13 October.

“Our hope as Christians rests in our belief that that our world is not destined to disappear but to be transformed, and that human beings capable of self-destruction are also able to unite and to choose that which is good”, reads a statement of the Council of Christian Churches of France focusing on the upcoming meeting of the United Nations on climate change in Paris later this year.

Lutheran communication directors and communication officers from the Nordic countries met in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the role of the church in the civil society in a local, national and global context. It’s exactly 90 years since August 1925 when Nathan Söderblom, Swedish ecumenist and Nobel laureate, organized the First International Conference on Life and Work, an ecumenical gathering in Sweden with participants from all over the word.

Norway’s largest church festival took on a green tint this year. A presentation about the situation of a country deeply affected by climate change, a popular workshop on church engagement in climate justice, and a speech by the WCC general secretary were among featured events.

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.

To promote strong measures against climate change, the WCC and the Geneva Interfaith Forum on Climate Change, Environment and Human Rights organized a side event to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The World Council of Churches welcomed Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si'”, released on June 18, which highlights what churches and ecumenical organizations have been doing for decades on caring for the earth and climate justice issues.

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.

As organizations worldwide intensify their work on issues of climate justice, and the clock is ticking for new climate commitments to take shape, members of the WCC Working Group on Climate Change have gathered for a four-day meeting to strategize for effective climate justice action and for strong participation of faith-based initiatives at COP21.

Introducing 2015 as “a sacred year in the life of our people and our land,” Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians, welcomed the 20-member WCC Executive Committee to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin at the start of their semi-annual meeting that is taking place from 8 to 12 June.

Humanity cannot ignore its responsibility for creation, the WCC general secretary, the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, has stated in Stuttgart during the German Protestant Kirchentag.

Tens of thousands of people from Germany and beyond have converged on the city of Stuttgart for a five-day festival of faith, debates, music, worship and culture. Open-air services in different parts of the city marked the start of the German Protestant Kirchentag, or church convention, which began on 3 June and continues until 7 June.

As part of churches’ on-going struggles for climate justice, the campaign Act Now for Climate Justice was launched at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland on Earth Day.

Anglican and Reformed member churches of the WCC have taken significant new actions toward climate justice.

Churches and religious leaders are at the forefront of efforts to mobilize action for a legally binding agreement on world’s climate at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris at the end of 2015. The motivation of the WCC for its role in this arena is summarized in the title of its environmental programme: Care for Creation and Climate Justice.

After a concerted examination of the evidence presented at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and two earlier conferences, 44 of the states present called for a ban on nuclear weapons. The host government Austria added momentum with a specific, cooperative pledge to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition of nuclear weapons” and eliminate them.