Nusa Dua, Indonesia (ENI) — The (Lutheran) Church of Sweden says it is to convene an interfaith climate summit in Uppsala, Sweden immediately before a United Nations climate change conference in Poland in 2008.
“On the basis of my experience here in Bali, I am all the more convinced this kind of initiative is absolutely urgent,” the Rev. Henrik Grape, sustainable development officer at the Church of Sweden told Ecumenical News International, during the final stages of the December 3-14 UN climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia.
Government negotiators at the Bali talks are seeking to inject new safeguards into negotiations for a global agreement to fight climate change after 2012, the target date for some nations to reduce climate-change inducing emissions under the first phase of a protocol that was agreed at Kyoto, Japan in 1997.
The negotiators hope the global pact will be adopted by the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009, which follows the meeting scheduled for 2008 in Poland.
In a statement presented to the Bali conference on December 14, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches said the world’s faiths could act as “agents of change” for a global response to climate change.
“Societies must shift to a new paradigm where the operative principles are ethics, justice, equity, solidarity, human development, and environmental conservation,” the WCC stated.
The Swedish interfaith gathering November 28-29 is to be hosted by the Archbishop of Sweden, Anders Wejryd, and will seek to deliver a strong ethical and religious message on issues such as declining food and water supplies in many developing countries, Grape told ENI.
Between 30 and 40 religious leaders from the world’s main faith traditions are to be invited to the meeting, whose provisional program includes an inter-religious ceremony in Uppsala Cathedral.
“I can already say that the vice-president of the European Commission, Margot Wallström, has given us strong support, and will be actively involved, as will Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and Nobel [Peace Prize] Laureate,” said Grape.
Swedish church leaders hope that a manifesto drawn up at the Uppsala meeting will be presented by Archbishop Wejryd to a formal session of the UN conference, scheduled to meet December 1-12, 2008 in Poznan, western Poland.
“We hope that this would start a dynamic on-going process, both within the UN climate change meetings and outside them,” said Grape. “We hope that from being a Church of Sweden initiative this will grow into a broadly-based ecumenical one, and eventual leadership by the largest Christian denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, would certainly be a welcome development.”
