Ahead of the Stockholm+50 international meeting on 2 and 3 June, faith-based organizations have released a statement urging governments and civil society to strengthen environmental governance and recognize the role of faith, ethics and spiritual and cultural values in policymaking.
The statement – signed by 188 representatives of 137 organizations and 13 religions from 40 countries – comes as the world grapples with the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) research shows that the world must halve annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to reach net-zero by 2050 and stave off a climate catastrophe.
“Faith and indigenous leaders and actors have the potential to play an essential role in shaping global environmental governance and policymaking,” the statement reads. “The traditions that we represent have unique capacities to convince, convene and contribute meaningful, moral, economic, spiritual and social substance to public deliberations.”
As leaders and representatives from government, business, international organizations, civil society and youth arrive in Sweden over the next week, faith-based organizations are urging them to “adopt a new development paradigm that integrates moral, spiritual and indigenous shared values.”
Among the group’s other calls to action are the phasing out of fossil fuels, amplification of the voices of women , young people , older persons, and indigenous people, and implementation of an ecocide law .
The UNEP Faith for Earth Initiative facilitated the statement, building upon its dialogue sessions at the fifth UN Environment Assembly earlier this year and report from October 2021 .
Stockholm+50 is being convened by the UN General Assembly and will commemorate 50 years since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment , which made the environment a pressing global issue for the first time.
Some 122 countries attended the 1972 conference, where participants adopted a series of principles on the environment, including the Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan for the Human Environment . UNEP was created as a result of the conference.
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For more information please contact Iyad Abumoghli, UNEP Faith for Earth director: <[email protected]>
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