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.

Endorse the Appeal

 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 [...]. COP29 must push for pacts based on Equity, Inclusion and Sustainability, from an Ecological Justice approach!"

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:

So far, over 200 religious, faith and values-based individuals and organisations from around the world have endorsed it.