Issues around climate finance are especially complex. A host of funding mechanisms are involved or are dreamed of, with different overlapping institutional arrangements. Discerning where religious communities are involved, in using and mobilizing the resources needed to translate ideas and commitments into action, is still more complex. To help navigate the mosaic, the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) has put together a brief on climate finance that introduces the various funds and ongoing negotiations around funding in a fast-evolving environment. Decisions are made in different places and at different tempo. The G20 Interfaith Forum has focused on religious involvement in climate finance issues because the G20 nations play especially pivotal roles given their disproportionate capacity to mobilize and deploy resources. The G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024 is the focus for a cascade of proposed measures to mobilize and direct funds to priority actions.
What, then, do faith communities have to do with these processes and ends, at the different levels, from global to individual? What are the areas of potential to galvanize wise action?
Faith communities have pivotal roles in four main areas.
First, they can mobilize individual and collective action at different, often interconnected levels. Pope Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartolomeo, and other global leaders have a powerful and distinctive “pulpit” to urge and convey the moral voice calling for action: speaking truth to power. This involves both a positive voice of hope and shaming for shortfalls. Strategy or policy is not what governments say. It’s what they do. And the way you see what they do is often in their budget decisions. Thus, clear voices of advocacy for allocation of certain kinds of funding are vital. This applies from the global level, for example in arguing for sufficient funds and to assure that allocations for climate action do not beggar development and humanitarian programs. It also applies at a very local level, where in fact many things happen. Religious communities—well mobilized, given their wide reach and transnational networks—have a distinctive capacity to link these local realities to seemingly esoteric global negotiations. An example is the lived realities of people living in the Amazon region, whose daily challenges in protecting forests and earning a living are tightly linked to arguments about the need to protect tropical rainforests as the “lungs of the earth.”
Faith communities in their many forms have a responsibility and a capacity to model the behaviors that can make a difference. That includes conscious conservation of energy, tackling food waste, and thoughtful mobility. When faith communities do the right things, for example modeling science-based emission targets, they can contribute to the shifts in norms and behavior that are sorely needed. Climate-conscious investment is another area in which faith communities can model positive behavior. For religious communities with substantial financial assets, this means pivoting to environmentally sustainable investments.
A common theme in analysis of the contemporary situation is the wide gap between promise and stated policies and practical action. Faith communities have largely underutilized capacities to contribute to accountability. Even where budgets are allocated, meaningful action does not necessarily follow. There are increasing mechanisms that allow meaningful tracking of budgets in public facing ways, and many more can be devised. The work of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility offers a good example of evolving coalitions and alliances to hold companies and governments to account.
A fourth area where faith communities have significant capacity is in mobilization. Religious bodies can contribute to financing action on climate through different means. Examples include, of course, cash and in-kind contributions through tithes and zakat, as well as direction of resources mobilized to exemplary programs that can contribute to multiplication and visible impact.
Faith watchdogs at different levels and with different capacities can follow and contribute to the ethical and practical debates around climate finance in meaningful ways. They can bring the practical experience of communities, especially those whose voices are often drowned out by better endowed lobbies. As an example, the complex and evolving realities of pressures for migration linked to climate change call for wisdom and local solutions. The tradeoffs between what is defined as climate finance and development programs are rarely straightforward. Informed communities at different levels are needed as broad appreciations are translated into budget allocations and programs. Decisions on priorities are never easy, but the interconnected crises we confront make them far more so.
Climate finance advocacy involves education, modeling, accountability, and resource mobilization. As a mindset and strategy, faith communities should and need not look only to public sector allocations. They can, of course, act in many cases without incremental resources, mobilize, and show by example. They can use their investment power as well as their example to have the most positive influence.
Perhaps most important is the need for continuing dialogue and creative communications that can help shift the global consensus in ways that contribute to meaningful action. If people followed their religious teachings more widely, much could be accomplished. Education has a critical function, thus helping people to appreciate the level of the climate emergency in ways that then translate into votes and action at a personal level Among the many platforms and policy “tables,” there’s a need to focus appropriate action geared to the UN COP processes, national and local governments, and the G7 and G20. A main gap is not engaging with religious people at the community level, whether it’s for social protection or basically understanding education problems. Translating micro actions into macro policy is difficult but is an area where the span of religious communities can translate into results.
