Mobilizing Global Believers to End Deforestation

For World Environment Day, global religious leaders from all faith traditions: indigenous spiritualities, Zoroastrian, Jain, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Bahai, are committing to educate their believers to protect the planet from the growing and urgent threat of tropical deforestation. The global, multi-religious movement of Religions for Peace (RfP), together with the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI), is launching the Resource Guide on Rainforest Protection for Religious Communities, a plan of action where educational materials produced by each religious tradition raise awareness and act to halt tropical deforestation and protect the rights of the indigenous people.

Prof. Azza Karam, Secretary General of RfP notes that “Multi-religious cooperation, action and leadership is essential overcoming this global crisis. Faith actors understand that we exist as healthy and thriving humans, only when our planet is healthy and vibrant planet.”

The world’s rainforests are a sacred trust, an irreplaceable gift and essential to life on Earth.  They contain more than two thirds of plant and animal species on the planet and are a natural solution to climate change that are being destroyed out of economic and political greed. The irresponsible encroachment into wildlife habitat and the destruction of tropical rainforests for agriculture, pasture, mining, infrastructure, and wildlife trade, are directly resulting in the emergence of zoonotic diseases, such as COVID-19, making this a public health issue of the highest order. Indigenous peoples and forest communities are particularly vulnerable to these external diseases.

Together as partner of the IRI, RfP is mobilizing faith leaders and communities in five countries with the largest remaining tropical forests.

Blanca Lucia Echeverry Bedoya, is a lawyer, defender of human rights, and the Program Coordinator of IRI in Colombia stated, “I have been motivated by my faith to protect the rights of the natural world. I know that it as an ethical and spiritual mandate.”

The IRI in Colombia has received support from the National Congress and she hopes that the successful model of inter-religious cooperation and action will be replicated on other pressing concerns across the world.

Sônia Guajajara, world renowned Brazilian environmental and indigenous activist and President of Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, is a partner to the IRI and stated, “We indigenous peoples do not have this distinction between what the forest is and being indigenous is, because we are the forest and the forest is us.”