quakersandclimate

YIDEC Plants 2,000 Trees in Bugesera, Rwanda in Partnership with QEW

National Political Engagement, Photos from Faith Communities Worldwide, Spiritual, Lifestyle and Community

A youth-led initiative founded by Quaker United Nations Summer School alumni, Youth Impacts Development and Environmental Change (YIDEC), has been working in Rwanda to address the challenges of climate change through education, environmental action, and youth empowerment.

In partnership with Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW), YIDEC recently planted 2,000 trees in Bugesera District, an area in Eastern Rwanda that frequently experiences drought. The tree-planting effort aims to restore degraded land, enhance biodiversity, and promote long-term climate resilience. YIDEC engages young people through environmental workshops, awareness campaigns, and practical initiatives. The organization is also preparing to launch a small-scale agriculture-for-business program, designed to support youth—especially those affected by climate change and school absenteeism—by equipping them with sustainable livelihood skills.

By combining environmental stewardship with vocational empowerment, YIDEC is working to cultivate a generation of young leaders committed to creating lasting change in their communities and beyond.

Interfaith Call to Action for COP30

General Resources, International Political Engagement, National Political Engagement, Spiritual, Lifestyle and Community

The Interfaith Liaison Committee to UNFCCC (ILC) is a network of faith-based organisations active on climate justice. For more than a decade, ILC has brought together faith-based actors at UNFCCC COPs to act together for climate action.

Over the years, calls and statements have been crafted in an inclusive way to call upon the global community to act and take moral responsibility to avoid the most dangerous consequences related to climate change and to protect the most vulnerable from climate-induced catastrophes.

This year, ILC created a call to COP 30 well ahead of the meeting in Brazil. In an inclusive process, ILC invited faith-based actors to contribute to the content of the call in webinars.

This call is now open for endorsements and a tool for advocacy work.

If your organisation wants to endorse it, please do so by signing on here. Everyone is encouraged to use it as a tool to inform decision makers and influential institutions of the global situation we are facing today and the moral obligation to act.

Please read the full Call to Action in English here.

Interfaith Gathering in the Spirit of Talanoa Dialogue at SB62

International Political Engagement, Spiritual, Lifestyle and Community

The Interfaith Liaison Committee to the UNFCCC is holding an interfaith gathering in the spirit of Talanoa Dialogue at the SB62 climate negotiations this June. The event will provide a safe, respectful, trusting and supportive space to reflect as people of faith, communities, and institutions on questions concerning the climate crisis in the context of challenges to multilateralism and peace.

Please join us online or in person on Monday, June 16 at Katholisches Pfarramt St. Winfried Bonn-Südstadt (Catholic Parish Office of St Winfried) Sträßchensweg 3, 53113 in Bonn, Germany.

Schedule

5:00 Arrival & Sign-in
5:30 Introduction and Panel (themes: Global Ethical Stocktake, Nationally Determined Contributions—NDCs; Human Rights & Climate Justice, Finance)
6:15 Dialogues (in small groups, by theme of interest
7:15 Sharing out from dialogues and food
7:45 Spiritual moment – in prayer and meditation
8:15 Closing and farewell

Click here to register for in-person or virtual attendance.

Sharing the stories of Quaker environmental human rights defenders

General Resources, International Political Engagement, National Political Engagement, Photos from Faith Communities Worldwide

Photo Credit: Phil Laurie

QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change Programme recently compiled an official submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders profiling stories of Quaker Environmental Human Rights Defenders. Gathering testimony from Quaker individuals and organizations in Europe and Africa, the submission upholds actions of conscience that Quakers have engaged in as guided by their faith and commitment to the values of stewardship, sustainability, and integrity.

The submission provides a unique and specific focus on the efforts of Quakers because a significant number of high-profile climate change protest action originated in the Quaker community. The report gathers inspiration from their successes while also sharing the risks and retaliation they have experienced as a result of expressing concern over insufficient government action to transform human activities driving planetary crises. The submission will inform that work of U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, as she prepares her October 2025 report to the U.N. General Assembly on human rights defenders working on climate change and a just transition. QUNO is grateful to those individuals and groups who shared their personal histories. Such courageous and conscientious acts will further climate justice and calls attention to the rights these defenders are working to protect. In addition to personal stories from Quakers around the world, the submission also offers recommendations for how states and U.N. bodies should advance in protecting environmental human rights defenders.

Please read or download the full text of the statement below:

QUNO UNSR HRD Download

QUNO Submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report on Fossil Fuels and Human Rights

General Resources, International Political Engagement

QUNO recently provided three distinct submissions responding to a call for input by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change and Professor of Global Environmental Law, Elisa Morgera, on the topic of the fossil fuel based economy and human rights. QUNO’s Sustainable and Just Economic Systems (SJES) and Human Impacts of Climate Change (HICC) programmes both provided submissions while additionally supporting 23 other organizations in a joint submission addressing loss and damage and human rights.

All three submissions are available to read and download on the QUNO website. They will inform the Special Rapporteur’s upcoming report on the fossil fuels-based economy and climate change, set to be released at the 59th Session of the Human Rights Council in June 2025.

QUNO Geneva statements at the 58th Session of the Human Rights Council

International Political Engagement

QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change Program (HICC) participated in the 58th Session of the Human Rights Council, delivering two statements addressing climate justice and human rights. Both statements were given on behalf of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) and in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International (SGI).

QUNO first participated in the Interactive Dialogue with the UN Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and responded to her report on “Understanding the landscape of climate finance, debt, tax and illicit financial flows and human rights“, highlighting the profound inequities posed by high rates of foreign debt amidst the ongoing need for climate finance.

Later in the week, QUNO gave a statement during an Interactive Dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Addressing her report on “The ocean and human rights“, QUNO expressed gratitude for her work showing how the right to a healthy environment inextricably relies on ocean health and conservation.

Both statements provided an opportunity for HICC to support the important work of these UN experts in linking human rights with pressing climate and environmental concerns closely connected to QUNO’s values of equality, peace, and sustainability. We are grateful to Soka Gakkai International for their support, collaboration and joint endorsement.

Please find more information on the Human Rights Council reports and FWCC/SGI full written statements here.

Quaker climate action featured in Friends Journal

International Political Engagement, National Political Engagement, Photos from Faith Communities Worldwide, Spiritual, Lifestyle and Community

Image courtesy of ‘Friends Journal’ and FWCC: “Food distribution in Gatumba, Burundi, supported by FWCC’s Climate Emergency Fund, following floods, 2024.“

‘Friends Journal’, a prominent Quaker media publication, recently profiled actions Quaker meetings and communities are taking around the world to address and respond to climate change.

Staff writer Sharlee DiMenichi highlights efforts taken at the local and international levels by Quakers including in Kenya, Bolivia, the Philippines, and at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The article demonstrates Friends’ widespread concern for climate as a peace and justice issue while documenting specific examples of the personalized impacts of a warming planet. It delves into the ongoing work of various Quaker organizations including climate related efforts by Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), Friends International Bilingual Center (FIBC), Quaker Earthcare Witness, Earth Quaker Action Team, and Quaker United Nations Office. Portraying the depth and breadth of these actions, it is clear that Friends are witnessing and responding to a wide range of public health, economic, and weather related effects of climate change. Their work is clearly critical in implementing sustainable practices to address climate change’s root causes.

Grounding Quaker action in foundational testimonies of peace, equality, and sustainability is a commitment shared across the world and Friends Journal has written about these efforts in an inspiring and galvanizing piece.

QUNO climate briefing paper adapted for academic journal

General Resources

Image courtesy of Environment Magazine: Wikimedia Commons / Lorie Shaull

QUNO shares news that a briefing paper developed and released last year with input from the Human Impacts of Climate Change (HICC) program was adapted and published in the academic journal, Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. The article is available and accessible online here, presenting QUNO research and findings in a condensed format for a large audience of scientific and policy experts.

The paper, “Carbon Dioxide Removal: What Is Sustainable and Just?” was written by Dr. Duncan McLaren and Dr. Olaf Corry and published under the same title in 2024 on the QUNO website. Originally envisioned, commissioned, and edited by QUNO, it evaluates the ethical, environmental, political, and justice dimensions of large-scale implementation of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies.

Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development publishes bimonthly editions for a wide readership on topics related to environmental science and policy. During the adaptation process, editorial review and expertise were shared by Steven Kolmes and Tim O’Riordan, editors at the journal. With a readership represented by over 100,000 annual downloads, Environment magazine is a prestigious home for environmental research and QUNO celebrates the authors and the ongoing impact of their work.

Webinar Series: Faith Groups developing Call to Action Toward COP30

International Political Engagement, Spiritual, Lifestyle and Community

The Interfaith Liaison Committee, is organizing a webinar series in spring 2025 and invites all interested individuals and interfaith organizations to attend and co-develop the Interfaith Talanoa Call to Action towards COP30.

Don’t hesitate to join this opportunity to make your voice heard, and to share this invitation with others.

Please find the invitation for the ILC series of webinars towards COP30 here.

Individual registration links for each webinar in the series are available as well below:

March 3: https://lutheranworld-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/B3_rByt_QHmZZC1Fsv_F6A

March 27, 9 am: https://lutheranworld-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/EyCiyn-lQ2a8taG3ih7Syg

March 27, 15:00pm: https://lutheranworld-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/wJLKzGK3SoyCW1zXZ4oW3g

May 7, 15:00pm: https://lutheranworld-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/HWkwqvHjSUuHRJBUXhVRng

Quakers United for Environmental Sustainability Program

Photos from Faith Communities Worldwide, Spiritual, Lifestyle and Community

Quakers United for Environmental Sustainability Program (QUESP) is a new initiative formed by members from the Malava Yearly Meeting and led by Jairus Koki. Their mission is “To be true Stewards of God’s Creation through actions to combat climate change”. The formation of the program is inspired by concerns about the adverse effects of climate change affecting communities in Western Kenya, including changing rain patterns, failure of crops leading to increased food insecurity, and the destruction of water catchment areas.

Members of the group feel that they have a duty to combat the negative effects resulting from climate change by taking responsibility for the care of the world that God bestowed to us in Genesis as stewards. These effects have left Quaker churches, schools, and homes bare without trees and natural vegetation, even lacking shade to sit under when it is hot. Many indigenous trees that were known to provide shelter and conserve water catchment areas have either been uprooted or cut down for charcoal.

QUESP members feel obliged to be stewards of God’s creation and help restore it. Though still a new organization, they plan to realize this mission through several activities, including visiting churches (of Quakers and non-Quakers) to spread awareness on taking care of God’s creation; documenting indigenous methods of environmental conservation; undertaking tree nursery development and management training, and by supporting tree seedling plantings to restore destroyed habitats. QUESP is in the process of registration and hopes to achieve these dreams with the help of like minded friends.