Daring to ask: 'What if our best days are still ahead of us?'
A new Multi-faith/Multi-sector Alliance for Climate Action was announced on Wednesday November 16 at COP27.
The Alliance will create a bridge between existing multi-faith actors and key secular actors (including governments, multilateral organisations, private sector etc) to advance collaboration on climate action.
Members include ACT Alliance, Brookings Institution, Climate Justice Institute, FaithInvest, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, GreenFaith, Mary Robinson Foundation, Partnership for Faith and Development, Religions for Peace, Rockefeller Foundation and UNEP's Faith for Earth.
Speaking during the launch in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, at COP27, Mary Robinson, co-founder of the woman-led climate change campaign Project Dandelion and former President of Ireland, asked: 'What if our best times are still ahead of us?’
She said she still believed that to be the case, ‘even in our darkest days’. However, she also said we need ‘radical and urgent cross-sector collaboration to go further faster to address the enormous challenge of climate change’, which was why the new Multi-Faith, Multi-Sector Alliance for Climate Action was so important.
Jean Duff, President of the Partnership for Faith and Development, said it was 'a collaboration of the willing, sharing common goals and diverse experiences and networks, working together to elevate and add value to existing initiatives'.
The Alliance will focus on action areas to amplify ongoing secular and faith-originated initiatives, such as:
Publicise the development of a Multi-faith Just Transition Fund to work alongside the Climate Investment Funds
Develop support towards a Global Energy Access Initiative by engaging faith networks as key partners with secular organisations to further investment and infrastructure building to enable global energy access, including through faith sensitive communications campaigns
Mobilise women and youth leaders, including women faith leaders and their networks, to achieve carbon emissions goals through Project Dandelion
Systematically engage faith-related media on climate issues – research, contact, develop and distribute content – while also enabling faiths to make their key stories and perspectives accessible to and sharable by the secular media
Clean energy campaign
Rev. Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith and co-founder of Shine, an international campaign that supports women and community-led renewable energy access initiatives in Africa and India, spoke passionately about the need to bring clean energy to the world's poorest countries. A campaign on this subject is one of the key areas of focus of the new Alliance.
The launch event was co-hosted by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Government of Kenya, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the ACT Alliance.
New Multi-Faith Just Transition Fund announced
During the launch, FaithInvest CEO Martin Palmer and Climate Investment Funds CEO Mafalda Duarte announced their plans to develop a new Multi-Faith Just Transition Fund to enable faith groups to invest in large-scale, climate-smart projects to support a just transition.
The fund will be the first-of-its-kind, globally accessible financing vehicle that brings faith-based institutional asset owners of all backgrounds and religious traditions together with sovereign countries and regional development banks to finance at-scale, climate-smart investments underpinned by social inclusion and just transition outcomes in primarily emerging and developing economies.
Watch their five-minute videos describing why the new fund is badly needed, and its potential impact, or click below for more information.