Metropolitan Emmanuel, right, of the Orthodox Church of France gives a speech during a meeting with religious leaders on ways to protect tropical rainforests from threats in Oslo on Monday. PICTURE: Reuters/Alister Doyle (via Religion News Service)
Christians from across denominations were among religious leaders who joined with Indigenous peoples in launching a new global initiative to save the world’s rainforests from deforestation in Norway on Monday.
The leaders, who came from 21 countries, say the new initiative, which has the backing of King Harald V of Norway, will bring “moral attention and spiritual commitment” to bear on global efforts to end deforestation and protect tropical rainforests.
Tropical rainforests in South America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are falling rapidly due to a range of forces, including palm oil plantations, cattle, soy and crop production, and mining and logging operations, the gathering in Oslo was told. These losses amount to an area the size of Austria each year.
Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, said rainforests are “pivotal for life on earth, provisioning people’s needs, promoting biodiversity and protecting the climate”.
“Today when the rainforests are threatened by deforestation driven by a shortsighted, profit-oriented economy, we must use the knowledge of what is good and our faith-driven action to protect and care for the rainforests and therefore the earth and all life.”
The Oslo event, which was attended by representatives of Protestant and Roman Catholic churches as well as by representatives of Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist religious traditions, was reportedly inspired by Pope Francis’ outspoken stance on global warming and overdevelopment in his 2015 Laudato Si’ encyclical.
Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, told the conference that “[w]ithout the forests we do not have life; we live thanks to the forests”. “If we continue to do deforestation, it is like suicide. We need to act together to defend our common house.”
Bishop Emeritus Gunnar Stålsett, honorary president of Religions for Peace, said the scope of the initiative is global. “But we are also putting special focus on religious and indigenous leaders, networks and institutions in countries with the most significant tropical rainforests.”
Indigenous leaders at the event came from a range of countries including Brazil, Peru, Indonesia, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, an indigenous leader for the Kankana-ey Igorot people in the Philippines and UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said the conference was the first step towards critical collaboration.
“Many of these dominant religions have been linked to the colonization of our communities,” she told Religion News Service. “It is important that they come together to support the indigenous people who are the main guardians of the forest.”
Ms Tauli-Corpuz, who led community opposition to logging expansion under the late Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, said deforestation and mining had taken their toll on her community of one million people in northern Luzon and others in the Philippines.
She said she hoped the Oslo talks would lead to more cooperation with Indigenous people and stop the violation of their rights. “These are concrete things that can happen,” she said.
The Oslo conference was organised by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, Rainforest Foundation Norway and the UN Development Program, in cooperation with the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University, GreenFaith, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Religions for Peace, REIL Network and the WCC.
Participants hope to follow up with an action plan and a global interfaith rainforest summit in 2018.
“Tropical rainforests occupy a sacred place in many faiths, religions and spiritual traditions,” said Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of Yale’s Forum on Religion and Ecology.
“Given what we are hearing from religious and indigenous leaders worldwide, we believe we can create a global movement around this shared vision.”
– with reporting from Josephine McKenna/RNS
