Quakers join interfaith warning on climate ‘backsliding’
Friends have endorsed a call to action on climate from the Interfaith Liaison Committee
Three Quaker organisations have endorsed a call to action on climate, from the Interfaith Liaison Committee (ILC) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The 2025 ILC Interfaith Call to Action has been prepared ahead of November’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil, and warns of ‘an existential emergency’ facing the planet. ‘We as people of faith are deeply concerned with the insufficient action and backsliding shown by the international community in addressing the dangerous consequences of climate change.’
The ILC was established to support the informal gathering of faith-based organisations actively engaged at the UNFCCC.
The call to action was launched at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, last month, where staff from the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) operated in support of the ILC. Britain Yearly Meeting and Quaker Council for European Affairs have also endorsed the call.
Speaking at the press conference for the launch of the document, Johan Cavert, QUNO’s programme assistant for the Human Impacts of Climate Change programme, reiterated the ‘incredible urgency’ of the situation. People of faith ‘play a major role as a moral and ethical voice’, he said, referencing a tenth successive year in which global military spending had increased. World leaders should be ‘protecting humanity and not destroying it’, he said, finishing with a quote from last year’s World Plenary Meeting calling for ‘transformative change’.
QUNO staff were also ‘intensely active’ elsewhere at the conference, said the organisation, offering quiet diplomacy dinners, meetings with climate scientists, and celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.
The call to action document was, in part, the outcome of the Interfaith Gathering in the Spirit of Talanoa Dialogue, which also took place in Bonn last month. The Talanoa dialogue framework is rooted in Fijian traditions of storytelling and inclusive dialogue, and is used to mediate conflict. It was introduced during Fiji’s presidency of COP23.
The document acknowledges that faith communities themselves have a ‘moral responsibility’ to ‘protect our planet’. They should: promote climate education and climate finance commitments; ‘leverage the power of spiritual ethics and storytelling to drive change’; ‘offer our spiritual practices of prayer and meditation’; and ‘address how climate justice affects all social challenges: injustice, equity, hunger, poverty, and stewardship’.
Speaking to the document, Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: ‘The climate crisis is a crisis of justice and inequality.
‘We are proud to stand with people of faith worldwide in calling for urgent and fair action from governments.’
