Pax Christi International joined with religious, faith and values-based individuals and organisations to endorse Protecting Our Common Climate System: Earth Governance for a Sustainable Future, an interfaith appeal which was presented to the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference – COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan on Monday, 18th November 2024.
“To address the climate crisis increased by a group of industrialized countries with impacts on the most impoverished sectors of the Global South, affected in their livelihoods and culture, we advocate for the full implementation of intergovernmental instruments, accompanied by National Action Plans; but these Plans are often more rhetorical than the result of transformative political will, and must be contrasted with increasingly serious realities for ecosystems and the communities that inhabit them. It will not help us to describe the symptoms, if we do not recognize the human root of the ecological crisis, and if we do not press for an urgent reform of the economic system, which maintains a structural dependence on fossil fuels and poses a transition with perverse effects on communities and their territories. COP 29 must push for pacts based on Equity, Inclusion and Sustainability, from an Ecological Justice approach!”
Martha Inés Romero, Pax Christi International Secretary General
Read the full press release here.
The appeal highlights principles and values shared across the world’s major religions, faiths and philosophies that are relevant to governing the environment to ensure a sustainable future. These include the principles of protection of Creation, reciprocity/equity, justice/fairness, social responsibility and Guardianship/Earth Trusteeship.
The appeal then draws from those principles to support:
- A UN Declaration of Planetary Emergency and the establishment of a Planetary Emergency Platform, connected with the development and implementation of a cooperative Planetary Emergency Action Plan;
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The establishment of a UN Special Envoy for Future Generations and similar institutional representatives for future generations at local, national and regional levels;
- The current International Court of Justice case on climate change, addition of the crime of ecocide to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, including specific environmental crimes in the draft Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity, further use of existing courts and tribunals to resolve environmental issues and protect the environment, and establishment of a dedicated International Court for the Environment;
- Negotiations for a Fossil Fuel Treaty that would end subsidies for fossil fuels, phase out fossil fuel extraction, and increase investment in green economies, in particular in developing countries;
- The principle of Earth Trusteeship and expansion of examples of this at local, national, regional and international levels. This could include a UN cooperative trusteeship mechanism for better governance of the global commons, inspired by the UN Secretary-General’s proposal for the UN Trusteeship Council.
So far, over 200 religious, faith and values-based individuals and organisations from around the world have endorsed it.