Our Work
Our Events
The Faith for the Climate Network was founded in 2014 to help organise the Pilgrimage to Paris at the time of the UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change in Paris.
Our events bring together bishops, rabbis, imams, priests and people of all faiths to provide thought leadership and to help equip faith communities to respond to the crisis of climate change.
Our first Interfaith Symposium was held at St John’s Waterloo in 2016, and was covered by the New Statesman and the Church Times.
Our second Symposium was held in February 2018 at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St John’s Wood, at which Lord Deben, Chair of the Committee on Climate Change (now Climate Change Committee) spoke.
On 26 June 2019, Faith for the Climate helped organise the faith and interfaith events ahead of the Time is Now – the largest ever mass lobby of Parliament.
More than 400 people attended workshops equipping people of faith for climate action at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square, and 1,000 people of faith joined UK leaders from many faiths on an interfaith Walk of Witness along Whitehall, to an inspirational and packed Speaker Event at Church House addressed by Christine Allen, Director of CAFOD, Imam Qari Asim MBE, Chair of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), former Archbishop Lord Rowan Williams, Quaker school striker Anya Nanning Ramamurthy, Buddhist teacher Vishvapani, and Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, the Senior Rabbi of Masorti Judaism in the UK.https://www.youtube.com/embed/iOrQR33XnOw
In May 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic-related movement restrictions, we began offering a series of online webinars and workshops. Our Events section contains recordings of past webinars and information on forthcoming sessions. These webinars are also part of our movement-building work ahead of COP26 (see below for more information).
Our movement-building efforts include supporting and promoting a range of faith-based and non-faith climate actions and campaigns. In June 2020, we mobilised multifaith support for the Climate Coalition’s hugely successful virtual lobby of MPs for a green recovery, #TheTimeIsNow. In July 2020, we mobilised multi-faith endorsement for a call to action for London Climate Action Week, spearheaded by the Church of England. In October, together with the Climate Coalition, we coordinated an interfaith letter calling on UK the government to put forward Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to get the UK on track to a 1.5˚C future.
Our Accounts
Click here to see our latest set of accounts.
Our Work on COP26
We are part of a coalition of UK-based faith groups that mobilised for COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow, 1-12 November 2021. The informal coalition we chaired last year, Make COP Count, ensured that diverse faith groups could contribute meaningfully to climate action before, during and after COP26. This coalition continues to advocate for climate justice while the UK remains COP26 president – for more details, visit the Make COP Count website.
Our Work with the Climate Coalition
We are members of the Climate Coalition, and support and encourage people of faith to participate in the two main weeks of action organised by the Climate Coalition each year, Show the Love and The Time is Now.
Since 2019, we have partnered with the Coalition and our members to produce faith-based resources for Show the Love, encouraging greater grassroots faith participation in that UK-wide week of action. For 2021, we worked with Faith for the Climate members to update our seven Faith Resources, including new actions for campaigns. For 2022, we are pleased to share The Climate Coalition’s new community action pack to equip you to take action where you are. Please share and use the new community action pack and the other Show the Love resources with your faith communities – and please tweet using the hashtags so we can follow all the inspiring faith based Show the Love actions taking place.
Our Research
In 2018 with funding from GreenFaith, we undertook research with our members and partner organisations. Key findings from that research were:
First, network members and partners see a unique and precious role for the Faith for the Climate network, both in encouraging, equipping and supporting one another in climate work within and across our faith traditions, and in the power of faith actors speaking together on the urgency and moral imperative of climate action.
Second, network members and partners want us to reach out to, engage with, and support smaller faith communities to make their unique contribution to the network and to the wider climate movement, to enable the sharing of learning and resources between faiths, and to assist with the development of resources tailored to and appropriate to each specific faith tradition.
Third, members and partners want us to take a greater role in advocacy, both equipping faith communities and organisations to engage their own leaders, and engaging directly with national faith leaders, to gain greater public, media and political awareness of faith-based action on climate.
Fourth, there was strong support for the network to operate nationally, not just in London, by having more regional events and presence.