The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) have just launched a major three year programme to work with religions on climate change. Details:
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and ARC will manage the programme which involves major traditions in eleven of the world’s faiths drawing up seven-year plans of action to be launched in early 2009 at Windsor Castle, and to run through to 2016.
Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, Sikh and Zoroastrian leaders will each be invited to commit their faith and their followers to projects and programmes that will address climate change and the protection of the natural environment in practical ways – from forestry conservation to organic farming schemes to introducing, promoting and financing alternative energy sources.
“This is an extremely exciting development which will have a real and long lasting impact on the health of the environment and on people’s lives,” said ARC’s secretary general Martin Palmer, who is working as a co-chair on this programme with the UNDP’s deputy director Olav Kjorven.
Interesting factoid: religious faiths own more than 7% of habitable land on the planet (so ARC say, at least).
