International Interfaith Climate Action and Peacemaking at a Time of Deterioration in Multilateral Cooperation

My practice is to read the scriptures for next Sunday, early in the week.

Jesus’ “Love your enemies … pray for those who persecute you … forgive … do to others as you would have them do to you” in Luke 6 for Sunday has been vividly juxtaposed with global and local events during this week.

In this reflection, may I focus on matters of climate action and peacemaking?

The evidence of climate change is now evident everywhere.

Its reality is just as science has long predicted.

More extreme events are happening more frequently.

The necessity is for sustained international cooperation, as per the Paris Agreement .

Tragically,at the same time as we face the need for urgent ‘Climate Action’ the spirit of and the mechanisms for multilateral cooperation appear to be deteriorating.

I have been a member of the Interfaith Liaison Committee of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] for some years.

At our global ‘zoom’ meeting this week we discussed how to reinvigorate a commitment to global cooperation so as to prevent the further catastrophic climate events which will be a consequence of carbon emissions.

By now, under the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement, nations are meant to have shared their next Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’s) to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

These goals include the containment of global warming to the oft quoted 1.5 degrees above pre industrial temperatures.

There is evidence that we are now beyond 1.5 degrees. Hence we need even more ambitious NDC’s.

However, as was reported to our meeting, only 13 of the 195 expected NDC’s have been submitted on time.

More Nationally Determined Contributions will probably come but ,as of now, this is a cameo of failing cooperation when the highest quality of cooperation is needed.

The concern is that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will lose its relevance if nations don’t abide by their own agreements with each other. If more nations take their lead from President Trump and withdraw entirely, multilateral cooperation will be further diminished.

Obviously, even though it is such folly, it is very demanding now to sustain cooperation around agreements such as that which was shaped by member states in Paris, 2015.

For the sake of the most vulnerable and for the sake of future generations, we just have to persist ourselves.

Nations, like Australia, have an opportunity to rekindle enthusiasm.

An upcoming Federal Election might be an opportunity for major parties to speak in terms of ambitious climate action policies.

The transition from a fossil-fuel energy system to one that is renewable and without further carbon emissions is very complex. Especially when we know it must be done capably and as soon as possible.

Ideally, Australia would have an agreed national plan which our major parties all endorsed.

Sadly, at a time when we could provide this inspirational national and international leadership, we can see that this is unlikely.

Election leaflets with pictures of smiling candidates are appearing in our mail boxes. Those I have seen focus narrowly on ‘Cost of Living Relief’, if you vote this way or that.

The actualities of a climate crisis and the rise in hate, violence and terrible wars are not matters which are addressed.

“Tax cuts for all taxpayers … Energy bill relief … Cheaper medicines”, says one leaflet.

Whilst one understands about hip pocket elections, aside from the lost opportunity to offer global leadership at a time of dire need, this kind of election rhetoric is so disingenuous.

These are dangerous times. Leadership now is about facing reality together and offering solutions in a spirit of cooperation for the common good.

As regards the climate crisis, the expenditure side of Government budgets is stretched now by the financial cost alone of this summer’s floods and fires.

When these events become even more extreme and more frequent there will be no ‘cheap medicines’ for budgetary pain.

And the human cost in lost lives and lost hope will be off the charts. We can anticipate that thousands of climate refugees might try to come to Australia anyway they can. We can expect even more of our unique species to become extinct.

What we need is the highest quality of national and international cooperation. We have to keep saying this…

From the perspective of the Interfaith Liaison Committee, what we can do is keep nurturing the very evident international community that works on solutions through cooperation.

Hence, we have a series of seminars planned ahead of the UNFCCC’s Intersessional, SB 62, in Bonn from June 16-26. [The SB’s are the meeting between UNCOP’s and offer the opportunity to enhance implementation of the Paris Agreement]. You may register for these events here

Meanwhile too, there is profound international and interfaith cooperation which is needed amidst the sufferings and dangers of more hateful wars.

Here is just one fresh international initiative: 3MSP interfaith statement (Interfaith Statement to the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons)

Locally, Interfaith friends are in contact and also planning fresh initiatives so that those who now feel unsafe can feel supported … loved.

As was conveyed with anguish last week at the launch of ‘Open Mosque Day’ at the Islamic Council of Victoria, ‘there is no hierarchy of hate.’

This week it is the anguish of women with little children having their headscarf ripped off in a shopping centre … descendants of holocaust survivors who, with such sad eyes,speak of no longer feeling safe here.

The level of trauma in our community is unparalleled in my experience. Instead of international leadership that is calming and healing we see such things as the anguish added to the suffering of the invaded people of Ukraine and their leader.

Back here,for the sake of being ‘one and free’ we need to see our leaders ‘loving their political enemies’ and uniting on matters of peace and security.

Contemporary political leadership is so demanding. We see leaders age before our eyes. They need to be kinder, more compassionate with each other.

Jesus’ words in this Sunday’s Gospel are of such profound contemporary relevance. We have seen where a failure to follow them always leads…

So we persist, including with fresh initiatives of prayers and meditations together.

For we know, as George Macleod of the Iona Community once wrote:

‘Where people are praying for peace the cause of peace is strengthened by their very act of prayer…for they themselves become immersed in the Spirit of peace.’

Our spiritual practice is so important for the offering of hope and peace.

Theologian William Barclay once spoke of loving our enemies as having an ‘active feeling of benevolence’ towards others, even when their words and actions seem so cruel.

It is difficult. But, as ever, it is better to seek to heal rather than just add to the patterns of repeated harm.

The diagram of John Hendry puts the ‘Golden Rule’ of Sunday’s Gospel ever so succinctly.

So, with interfaith friends here and internationally,we persist in climate action and peacemaking, praying for better days!