This article was first published in December 2020, issue 42 ‘Faith Initiative: Embracing Diversity’ Interfaith Magazine www.faithinitiative.co.uk
Working for the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of tropical forests is a moral imperative and a spiritual duty of all humanity. Spiritual resources, moral voice, and social influence of the world’s religious leaders in their faith communities are especially critical to this work. The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) is a new instrument or mechanism to spearhead interfaith and joint indigenous efforts on saving the planet’s remaining rainforests. It is at the heart and centre of the struggle for a sustainable climate. The IRI presents itself as an international, multi-faith alliance that brings moral urgency and spiritual resources to scientific, political, and diplomatic efforts to end tropical deforestation. On this platform, the rights of faith communities are intimately intertwined with the rights of indigenous peoples and other rain forest dwellers who have through all ages been the indispensable guardians of the rainforests as their existential habitat.
The vital linkage between tropical deforestation and climate change is a scientific indisputable fact. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had, as a basis for the Paris agreement, given the world up to 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius if we are to save the earth from floods, extreme heat and drought, leading to acute poverty for millions of people. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) joins this depressive forecast by reporting an alarming decline in nature and ecosystem services. More than half of plant and animal species on the planet are contained in tropical forests. On the affirmative side for a rain forest strategy is the science based agreement that forests are the only safe, proven, natural solution for carbon capture and storage. Tropical deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gas emission: the burning of forests, as we have seen recently in the Amazonas and California, and the vast peat areas in Indonesia, has released the carbon stored in them into the atmosphere where it is transformed into toxic carbon dioxide gas. Data shows a loss of tree coverage equivalent to the combined size of France, Germany and UK in the last decade.
Forest protection is also a human rights issue. Those who inhabit these forests find themselves on the frontline in the deforestation crisis, threatened by illegal logging and mining, agribusiness, and government policies. Hundreds of indigenous environmental defenders have been killed over the last few years protecting their lands and livelihood.
Global deforestation is a crisis of existential proportions, we either deal with it or leave future generations a planet in ecological collapse.
My engagement in the climate issue, and in particular the rainforest topic, has been inspired by my understanding of God as Creator, and a spirituality honouring our habitat as Mother Earth. The concept of the Tree of Life, found in various expressions in many religions, is a metaphor for the essential relationship between Humanity and Nature. The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative is built on this ancient wisdom, in a deep understanding of the sacred duty to protect the life of the tree.
The most urgent humanity issues of our generation include the climate crisis, the suicidal nuclear threat and the insane arms race, the entrenched global poverty chasm and continued discrimination related to race, cast, gender and age. Among these, the threat against the climate of our sphere has more than anything galvanized a united front across religious and cultural divides.
The potential of the climate issue to bring together religious and spiritual forces often preoccupied with their differences was witnessed in Paris in December 2015, when leaders and activists of many religions and faiths presented their testimony at the world climate summit.
Through theological statements, accompanied by liturgies of prayers and acts of promise, their participation contributed to the historic outcome of this world event. The voices of faith leaders like Pope Frances through his encyclical Laudato Si, and of other scholarly presentations from Muslim, Jewish, Buddhists, Hindu and other religions blended into a scientific, moral, and spiritual testimony.
Thus, in Paris, the mythical paradigm of the “Tower of Babel”, representing human conceit, confusion, and chaos, could be seen as eclipsed by the “Tower of Eiffel”, in this context a sign of humility, unanimity, and love. The virtues of reason, faith, and conscience witnessed to the sacredness of protecting Mother Earth and all her creatures.
The Government of Norway’s Initiative for Forests (NICFI) dates back to a climate conference on Bali in 2007. The Prime Minister of Norway, now NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, launched here an ambitious vision for saving the forests. This led to the initiation of a long-term project in tropical forest countries to the tune of billions of Norwegian Krone. These countries, which cover 70 per cent of the rainforests of the world are: Peru, Colombia and Mexico of the Amazonas region, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia.
This audacious project triggered the engagement of faith-based participation. Gradually, the Norwegian Government had come to realize that the ambitions of saving the rainforests could not succeed without the active participation of leaders and communities of faith in the respective countries, combined with day-to-day collaboration of indigenous leaders and communities.
In January 2017, I was invited, as Honorary President of Religions for Peace, to advise the Norwegian Ministry on Climate and Environment on the feasibility of collaboration between state, civil society, and religion in promoting and protecting rainforests. Besides reaching out to Religions for Peace, the idea of a religious component to the programme, was discussed with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Here, full support was given to approaching religious leaders to boost the protection of the rainforests issue.
Within only a few months, organizational matters were addressed and agreed upon. The office was lodged, first within UNDP in New York, then in UN Environment Programme (UNEP). An international steering committee was established with representatives of government, civil society, inter-faith, academic and indigenous groups.
Major faith-based organizations came together in the initiative: Religions for Peace, GreenFaith, the Parliament of World’s Religions and the World Council of Churches. Important academic support was given by Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and Rainforest Foundation Norway had already established close collaboration with the Ministry. The Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment as the sole funding agency, and UN Environment Programme as the multilateral global partner, are represented in the steering committee as financial and organizational guarantors of the programme. Importantly the Rainforest Foundation Norway is a lead humanitarian agency in joint work with indigenous people for the protection of rainforests. The Vatican supported the initiative in a consultative process around implementation of Laudato Si’ but did not join formally.
Thus Interfaith Rainforest Initiative was launched at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway on June 19, 2017. The Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai from Kenya in 2004, and jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate activist Al Gore, in 2007, on display among Nobel laureates in the adjacent hall, helped casting the rainforest issue as a matter of peace and human rights. The presence of His Majesty King Harald of Norway, who is known also for his engagement for a sustainable climate and for the human rights of indigenous peoples, sent a message not only to the people of Norway but also to heads of states worldwide. The opening session was fittingly opened by a yoik, the traditional song of the indigenous Sami people of Norway, and rounded off with a photographic exhibition, titled Genesis, by the Brazilian photographer and champion of nature, Sebastiao Salgado.
The launch was well covered in the international media and was followed by a two-day brainstorming and planning meeting at Lysebu, on the hillside above Oslo. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Taoist religious leaders participated, together with indigenous representatives from Brazil, Colombia Meso America and Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. It was challenging, as tensions were felt among the representatives of different faiths, and between religious leaders and indigenous representatives about their spirituality. Nevertheless, at the end there was an embracing of this diversity in a consensus to work together as equal partners for the sake of the rainforests.
Having agreed on fundamental principles of cooperation and on the working title of ‘initiative’, the basic structures were established. Two-level working modus was also adopted; one international and the other national and local in the programme countries. The global would focus on high-level mobilization of religious and spiritual leaders, communication and advocacy in policy making forums, media campaigns, manuals and production of educational material, and even speaking points for services in churches, mosques, temples etc. The national level component was designed to meet the challenges on the ground in the selected rainforest countries, and to build day-to-day working alliances between faith and indigenous leaders. On the community level, plans of action would advance policies and concrete programmes of action that protect rainforests and the livelihood of indigenous people.
Specifically, the IRI aims at bringing the leaders of religions and indigenous peoples to act together with governments, civil society, and business to stop exploitation and vandalism of the rainforests. It is the shared conviction that inspires and sustains this alliance that without the rainforests the world is lost. Rainforests are the lungs of Mother Earth. There is no remedy of an artificial breathing for her. Destruction of rainforests by fire, unsustainable deforestation, human greed, accelerates the climate crisis, spells loss of life for the tropical forests and their dwellers, and ultimately for the entire biosphere.
The fruitful encounter in Norway, and the creation of a fresh initiative was to be followed up by a programmatic statement entitled the ‘Faith for Forest Declaration’. A brief text, the declaration was developed during a lengthy process engaging the secretariat and the international steering group. It was unanimously adopted by the World Assembly of Religions for Peace in Lindau, Germany, in August 2019. In the proceedings of the Assembly, the topic of rainforest gained traction in the section: Advancing Shared Well-Being by Promoting Integral Human Development and Protecting the Earth.
This is the opening line in the ‘Faith for Forests Declaration’ presenting the ‘Interfaith Rainforest Initiative’ (IRI) to the world.
Together with the Brazilian indigenous leader Sonia Gujarara, it was my privilege to present the IRI Faith for Forest Declaration to a plenary of more than 1000 men, women, and youth from 125 countries. A month later, on 23rd September 2019, the Declaration, and its action point on IRI, was presented to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, at his climate Summit in New York. Guterres warmly welcomed the Declaration and saw the commitment of people of faith worldwide to save the rain forests as strengthening the efforts to halt climate change, and promote human rights and world peace: aims that are so central to the agenda of the United Nations.
At this critical crossroads, the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative signals faith, hope and love, in the words of the closing paragraph of the Faith for Forest Declaration: