In June 2017, in response to the planetary climate crisis, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist religious leaders joined hands with indigenous peoples from five tropical countries to form the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative devoted to protecting the world’s last great rainforests.
The Initiative works with partners across the world and in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, and Peru. These countries contain 70 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests and suffer from rampant deforestation due to wildfires, mining, logging, agriculture, roads, dams and other infrastructure construction.
In August 2019, the Initiative was adopted and endorsed at the 10th Religions for Peace World Assembly, where more than 900 senior religious leaders, representing over 1 billion people around the world, agreed to work together through the Initiative on efforts to protect and restore the planet’s rainforests.
Significant advances were also made in the five countries last year, such as a training program of over 180 religious and indigenous leaders in Congo, an education and planning event in Brazil with the participation of more than 90 faith leaders, or political debates with mayoral candidates in high-deforestation municipalities of Colombia.
Source: interfaithrainforest.org
