COP30: What happened and what next?
Thursday, 4 December 2025, 3-4.15pm GMT
This event has passed – watch the recording below:
Another year, another United Nations climate conference has ended. Was COP30 a failure or a success? What did people of faith contribute at COP30 this year, and how or why does this matter?
Depending what you heard, you might be feeling encouraged, ambivalent or demoralised. And you are probably left with many questions and concerns.
We are lucky to have friends in our network who are experts from different faith backgrounds, and who contributed meaningfully at COP30. They joined us to answer your questions and give a clearer picture of what really happened, and to help us to understand not only COP30’s specific failures and challenges, but also its specific successes and opportunities that we can all build on.
They helped us to discern the different levels at which people of faith can uphold climate justice – internationally, nationally, and locally – and how these levels can and should connect.
Speakers
Lindsey Fielder-Cook is the Representative for the Human Impacts of Climate Change at QUNO Geneva. Her work focuses on strengthening international efforts to urgently, equitably and healthily transform root causes driving planetary crises, including existential rates of global temperature rise, species extinction and chemical pollution. Lindsey has over 25 years’ experience at the international level, first working on humanitarian and human rights protection in conflict zones, followed by climate change as a peace and justice concern.
Graham Gordon is Head of Global Policy and Advocacy at Christian Aid, working on issues including climate justice and international financial sector reform. He has worked in advocacy for over 25 years, including in the UK with CAFOD and Christian Aid and for six years with a human rights organisation in Peru. He has a passion to support the decolonising of the international development sector, and support local leadership in advocacy, including working to recognise the key role of faith actors.
Sonja Ohlsson is the national coordinator of Brahma Kumaris in Denmark and was a meditation teacher with the Prison Service in Copenhagen. In 2009, Sonja was instrumental in developing the Brahma Kumaris Environment Initiative in order to add the inner dimension to discussions at the UN climate change and biodiversity conferences. She has been actively participating in the annual COP climate conferences since 2009 and the biannual biodiversity COP since 2012. Sonja conducts green retreats for the BK community around the world and has also travelled with the lecture series on Healthy Mind, Healthy Planet.