Global Summit of Religious Leaders

Global Summit of Religious Leaders was held as part of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the State Committee on Affairs with Religious Associations, the Muslim Council of Elders, the Caucasus Muslims Office (CMO), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Read the Baku Declaration of the Global Faith Leaders Summit by 350 leaders from secular and traditional religions, heads of prominent religious centers – patriarchs, officials from the Vatican, and Al-Azhar, along with internationally recognized religious and public figures from 55 countries and 30 international organizations.

“The voices of religious leaders stand vital for advancing climate change action and achieving climate justice”, said the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video address at the Summit.

COP29 is a “launchpad to increase ambition and ensure the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) collectively promise to almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030″. The 2024 edition of the Emissions Gap Report finds that emissions must fall 42 per cent by 2030, compared to 2019 levels, to get on a least-cost pathway for 1.5°C. Looking out to 2035, emissions must fall 57 per cent for 1.5°C and 37 per cent for 2°C. Read the Emissions Gap Report 2024.

Take Action: “World Religions for a Green Planet”

The Baku Declaration Calls upon states, international, regional, religious, public organizations and religious leaders:

• to actively participate in public discussions on combatting climate change and rally global support to make the vision for a greener future reality;
• to recognize the sanctity of human life and nature, to respect the values ​​​​of protecting all living beings and the nature, and to advocate for environmental equality and justice;
• to take a more active role in the process of solving the global environmental crisis and keeping the limit of global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees to protect nature;
• to work together to support the implementation and furthering the long-term goals of the Paris Climate Agreement;
• to foster an inclusive process in combatting climate change with a special focus on the involvement of representatives of different religions and faiths, policy makers, scholars, women, youth, indigenous people, local communities, the civil society and business circles and other stakeholders in joint discussions;
• to contribute into global peace agenda by calling on and actively working for an end of armed conflicts, extreme violence, acts of ecocide and urbicide, which hamper collective efforts to fight climate change by causing food insecurity, violence, arm race for mass destruction, destroying natural sinks and reservoirs and degrading soil and water basins, among others;
• to emphasize the need to take a single common position against attempts of terrorist and extremist groups to use the name of religion for their insidious purposes;
• to expand cooperation in preventing harmful ideologies and calls for hatred that incite racial, religious and ethnic violence, using the media and information technologies;
• to condemn acts of vandalism against religious symbols, shrines and attributes, to counter justification of such actions under the pretext of democracy and freedom of speech;
• to encourage education of young people in the field of equal citizenship, human fraternity, as well as environmental protection and the role of the media in these processes with the aim of more active participation in the fight against xenophobia and discrimination;
• to attach particular importance to ensuring human rights in a clean, healthy, stable and sustainable societies;
• to condemn the irresponsible and overuse of natural sinks and reservoirs highlighting their particular significance in combatting climate change; 
• to more effectively use the potentials of religions and faiths in solving problems related to climate change;
• to support the protection of religious, cultural and ethnic diversity, respect for it, to promote the eco-ethics based on the spiritual and moral values ​​of world religions.

Read the Baku Declaration.