Document
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. (Matthew 3:8)
The Lord God took the human being and put them in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
The signs of the times are writ larger than ever. We are now living in a 1.5°C warmer world with dramatic climate impacts in 2024, a year on track to earning the title of warmest on record. In the past month alone, historic flooding caused massive devastation in Spain and six consecutive typhoons ravaged the Philippines. An unprecedented wave of wildfires in Latin America during 2024 has affected many countries, especially Brazil, which has experienced an 85% increase in fire outbreaks compared to the previous year. Persistent droughts in southern Africa and unremitting rainfall in eastern parts of the continent continue to drive conflict and migration as well as compounding ongoing humanitarian crises. Rising sea levels in the Pacific region and elsewhere are threatening the future of entire populations of low-lying island states. At the same time, proliferating conflicts across the globe have exerted tremendous ecological costs. Further, rising global temperatures are accelerating biodiversity loss and land desertification, intensifying hunger and loss of livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people. The most vulnerable and marginalized people and communities – including Indigenous Peoples, women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities – are disproportionately threatened by the intensifying environmental crisis and its humanitarian impacts.
As recognized by the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, in this moment of environmental and moral crisis we are called to repentance and ecological metanoia. Together with member churches, ecumenical, interfaith, civil society and UN partners, we seek a new way of living sustainably in God’s precious and unique creation – seeking a just and sustainable global community for this and all future generations of life on Earth.
The last quarter of 2024 sees a coincidence of conferences under the three United Nations (UN) conventions that emerged from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, namely: the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (CCC), and UN Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD).
While there is growing recognition of the global environmental and climate crisis and the urgent necessity of effective action to address it, the two recently-concluded global conferences on climate change (COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan on 11-22 November 2024) and biodiversity (COP16, held in Cali, Colombia, on 21 October-2 November 2024) produced inadequately ambitious national plans, and vastly too little funding for the urgently-needed action. The Climate COP29 – billed as the ‘Finance COP’ – generated commitments of $300 billion per year by 2035 from the countries most responsible for climate change, compared to the $2.4 trillion per year needed for climate adaptation and loss and damage in the most affected and vulnerable income-poor countries. COP29 also failed to follow-up on the COP28 pledge to transition away from fossil fuels.
However, these conferences have seen a growing recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ significant contributions to biodiversity and climate protection, and of high debt levels as a major barrier to action by heavily-indebted countries. The Biodiversity COP16 also gave concrete expression to the principle that private sector entities that profit from the use of genetic data should contribute a proportion of those profits for the protection of biodiversity, by the establishment of a voluntary fund for this purpose. Nevertheless, the collusion of national, fossil fuel, and other business interests has elevated the role of market-oriented solutions in addressing environmental challenges. This risks increasing debt burdens and deflecting attention away from the critical need for deep-seated economic transformation and the moral responsibility of historical polluters. Climate and other environmental rules must hold accountable those who are most responsible for the ecological calamity. Equity is the path to sustainability.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has closely followed the Climate COP29 and Biodiversity COP16 and will also be present at the Combating Desertification COP16. Against this background, and in this decisive moment for future generations of life on Earth, the WCC Executive Committee, meeting in Cyprus on 20-26 November 2024, calls on governments to:
- Take a holistic approach to tackling the interconnected climate, biodiversity, and land desertification crises;
- Ramp up National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) commensurate to the gravity of the triple planetary crises;
- Deliver need-focused, at-scale, grant-based, and timely resourcing for climate, biodiversity and land protection and restoration; and
- Redirect public spending away from wars and the military industrial complex, eliminate subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, work for the cancellation of the sovereign debts of poorer climate-vulnerable countries, and implement progressive wealth and pollution taxes to free up resources to invest in decarbonisation, safeguarding of biodiversity, and land rehabilitation, and to mitigate inequality that impedes environmental action.
The Executive Committee further calls on member churches and ecumenical partners to:
- Challenge and dismantle theologies distorted by political, economic and ideological interests that seek to commodify life, land and God’s Creation
- Promote life-affirming theologies – inspired by the spiritualities of Pacific and Indigenous Peoples – that recognise the inherent dignity of living beings, land, and all Creation, and embrace systemic metanoia(repentance leading to a fundamental change of heart and life) - transforming our prevailing ways of producing, consuming, distributing and investing;
- Concertedly prepare for the 2025 Climate COP30 in Belém, Brazil, which offers an opportunity to reshape global climate negotiations for the common good, in partnership with Indigenous and other people’s movements and with reference to reflections and resources from the Ecumenical Indigenous Peoples Network; and
- Work towards visible unity in tackling the global environmental crisis, mobilising and amplifying actions at different levels, and participating in shaping, launching and giving life to an Ecumenical Decade for Climate Justice Action in 2025 as called for by the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe in 2022.
