In October, 50 women climate activists of faith gathered in Frascati in Italy.
Organised by Wilton Park, in partnership with the British and Irish Embassies to the Holy See, Islamic Relief and the International Union of Superiors General, women from 15 different countries and 8 different faith traditions, came together to birth a new network of women of faith and their allies, committed to radical collaboration for climate justice.
Together they estimated they represented at least 73 million women worldwide. Not surprising when groups like the Mothers’ Union -with over 4 million members in 83 countries- or UISG with its 600,000 Catholic sisters across the globe, or the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation and its 6 million women, are around the table.
The power and the potential of this group of women didn’t go unnoticed. Veteran UN climate activist and former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, reminded the group ‘You are here to draw on your power. 5.8 billion people identify with faith- that’s 80 % of the world’s population. Faith can be the foundation of transformative change to tackle our climate and nature crisis.’
That, in itself, is not a new rallying call. Wilton Park helped bring the world’s top Faith leaders together in 2021 before COP26 to produce the Vatican Joint Appeal Process committing themselves and their followers to climate action. But the faith leaders who met then at the Vatican with Pope Francis were almost exclusively male- despite the fact that it’s women of faith who are the powerhouses of climate action, pioneering projects from climate smart agriculture to renewable energy. So, here’s the difference then. Three years later, this was a meeting of women of faith all wanting to work together, to learn from each other and to scale up the climate action they’re already taking.
Young and older sat around the table. Ridhima Pandey, a young Hindu climate activist who has been busy taking the Indian government to court for its climate inaction, celebrated her 17th birthday with us. Indigenous women came from Cameroon and Tanzania. Leaders of organisations like Interfaith Power and Light which reaches about 4 million US women for environmental stewardship and climate action targeting congregations to cut energy using their Cool Congregations Programme or like the Laudato Si’ Movement based on Pope Francis’s encyclical letter, the first ever Papal encyclical devoted to the crisis of our planetary home. The movement has over 10,000 trained grassroots leaders working for Climate and Ecological Justice. 60 percent of them are women.
And this was a meeting driven by a sense of urgency- the ‘fierce urgency of now’- recognising that that women and girls are most impacted by climate change and yet their voice in climate change policy making nationally and globally is often overlooked. As one participant said ‘Please don’t waste the opportunity for revolution or coup d’état. Women of faith may be the best last hope to save the planet’.
Mary Robinson was just as candid. She founded Project Dandelion, a women led global climate justice movement, and indicated why women of faith should join forces. In spelling out why, she shared this: ‘I went recently to a funeral of a glacier in Iceland. We are not just witnesses; we are accomplices to the destruction of climate change and nature. It’s an existential threat, rooted in injustice and women of faith can be active change makers. We are on the cusp of a wonderful world. What if our best times are ahead of us and we can have a world powered by solar energy, a circular economy, a fairer and more just world?’
That optimism set the tone for the meeting. ‘Let’s hear the echoes and find the heartbeat of hope’, said one Indigenous woman, ‘The power of optimism is in our hands’. Another participant put it this way: ‘What creates, what drives hope is actually a vision of justice, that something can actually change. The collaboration of women is important to that hope.’
There was the hope too that that such radical collaboration by a group of women leaders would bring a more collegiate style of leadership, challenging a world run by male leaders where militarism and conflict rules and where 2.4 trillion dollars is spent annually on arms. The impact of that spend and growing global conflict on climate change was never far from the surface. One participant pointed out how the conflict in Gaza has led to manmade famine, the pollution of soil and clean water, with half of all tree cover and farmable land destroyed and the contamination of coastal waters and soil. Another powerful intervention from Lebanon reminded us ‘The fight for the future of our planet cannot be put on hold. Communities at war are further exposed to the impacts of climate disasters, food shortage and health crises. That’s why our commitment to climate action cannot be delayed.’
So how to go forward after a meeting where there was talk of networks of friendship, of mutual support and of a new openness and trust?
Pope Francis gave the group his blessing at an audience in St Peter’s Square. Perhaps just as significant was the image of Mary Robinson giving the leader of the Catholic Church a Project Dandelion badge, reminding him that the dandelion is a symbol of resistance, perseverance, potential, health and healing. Beside her stood a group of ‘Dandelions of Faith’, wearing their distinctive yellow wooden badges, all committed to going back home and getting on with the job.
