Gender and Environment Data Alliance [launch event]
Dear colleagues,
You are invited to “The Climate Emergency: Does Religion Matter?”, the latest installment of the Temple of Understanding’s ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL Dialogues. These are special intimate discussions about the climate emergency with international ChangeMakers.
ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL interviews and dialogues are ongoing programs presented by the Temple of Understanding, incorporating our outreach in the area of environmental awareness and advocacy. We present a diverse range of perspectives, from scientific to spiritual views, on the climate emergency and offer a variety of solutions that we can all do easily and effectively in our everyday lives. World religious and spiritual visionaries, Indigenous leaders, scientists and social scientists, environmental activists, artists, musicians and writers, youth and elders, local and global people, all come together to address the urgency of the climate crisis through these ongoing interviews and dialogues.
Register here!
Speakers:
Rabbi Ellen Bernstein is an eco-theologian, spiritual leader, writer and creative. She founded Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth, the first national Jewish environmental organization in 1988. Her books include Let the Earth Teach You Torah, Ecology and the Jewish Spirit, and The Splendor of Creation. Ellen also created the first ecologically-centered Tu B’Sh’vat (Jewish New Year of theTrees) seder in 1988 and popularized Tu B’Sh’vat as a community-wide inter-spiritual ecological arts celebration for all peoples. Her most recent book, The Promise of the Land, A Passover Haggadah is the first comprehensive, ecological haggadah (guidebook) for Passover (Behrman House, 2020). In 2020 during the pandemic, Ellen launched the Earth Seder movement, helping to organize several dozen world-wide Earth Seders on Zoom. Ellen continues to write and teach on the ecology of the Hebrew Bible, and serves on the advisory board of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. To learn more please visit ellenbernstein.org and thepromiseoftheland.com.
Theodore Hiebert writes about biblical perspectives on the environment and about biblical views of identity and difference. His book The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel challenges claims that the Bible privileges humans and separates them from nature, and it shows how biblical religion is grounded in the natural world. He has made contributions about biblical perspectives on nature to such works as The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Earth and Word: Classic Sermons on Saving the Planet, and Interpretation. He is the author of the article on Genesis for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Ecology. Ted was the lead translator of the Book of Genesis and one of the editors for the recent English translation, the Common English Bible (CEB). He wrote the notes to Genesis for the CEB Study Bible and for the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, based on the New Revised Standard Version. He is the Old Testament editor for Abingdon Press’s Covenant Bible Study. Ted also writes about biblical views of identity and difference. His book The Beginning of Difference: Discovering Identity in God’s Diverse World challenges exclusivist cultural interpretations of the book of Genesis and reveals a text that embraces and celebrates ethnic identities and differences. It contains a reinterpretation of the story of Babel as positive account of the origin of the world’s cultures. God’s Big Plan, which he co-authored with Elizabeth Caldwell, is a children’s story of Babel based on this new interpretation. Ted is currently at work on a study of the book of Genesis as migration literature. Ted is a member of the Mennonite Church and has served as pastor of the Boston Mennonite Congregation. He is a frequent lecturer and teacher in adult education programs in churches in the Chicago area. He is Francis A. McGaw Professor of Old Testament and Dean of the Faculty Emeritus at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and lives in Homewood, IL.
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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com.
Around the world, faith institutions are supporting a just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy by divesting from fossil fuel companies and investing in climate solutions.
More than 500 faith institutions have made fossil fuel divestment commitments, including the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, American Jewish World Service, the Islamic Society of North America and Sydney Buddhist Centre. In 2020, the Vatican recommended that Catholic institutions divest from fossil fuel companies.
Join this interactive webinar the week before COP26 in Glasgow to hear from inspiring leaders on the steps that faith institutions are taking on fossil fuel divestment and investment in climate solutions.
The webinar will highlight the recent call from Southern African Anglican Bishops for an immediate end to oil and gas exploration in Africa. You will also hear from faith institutions demonstrating leadership on investment in climate solutions, including the Church of Sweden.
We are delighted to welcome the following speakers:
Webinar chair: Prince Papa, Africa Programs Coordinator at Laudato Si’ Movement
It will provide an opportunity to find out how your Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or other faith organization can join the next global divestment announcement in the spring of 2022.
This webinar is organized by Laudato Si’ Movement, Operation Noah, World Council of Churches, Green Anglicans and GreenFaith.
Register here!
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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, please visit facebook.com/NGOCoRIP. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org.
Join us for this official side event during the 7th session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights.
Examining the concrete situations in Marinduque Island (the Philippines) and Minas Gerais State (Brazil), panelists will interrogate whether articles in the current draft for the legally binding instrument would support the rights of victims to access justice, individual or collective reparations, and effective remedy.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sF_Md1ynQ1e4bYxqpoidqw
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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, please visit facebook.com/NGOCoRIP. For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com.
Briefing on local and global preparations for a successful COP26
Building on its previous webinar series towards COP26, the Interfaith Liaison Committee (ILC) to the UNFCCC, in partnership with MakeCopCount will hold a webinar to:
Register here: lutheranworld-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ufwmeaq3S5WSw28PH-1K8g
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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org.
Two weeks before global climate negotiations, people of diverse religions will rise to send a message: destroying the planet is against our religions.
Learn more and register here!
On Sunday, Oct. 17:
At temples, mosques, and churches around the globe, we’ll call for climate justice and care for the vulnerable by ringing our bells, singing, praying, meditating, calling the Azan, sounding the shofar – whatever is true to our tradition. We’ll also unfurl banners on our sacred buildings that make it clear: the time to act is now.
On Monday, Oct. 18:
Dressed in religious garb, we’ll take our faiths into the streets and to our leaders’ doorsteps. We’ll deliver our demands to political and financial leaders, hold prayer or meditation vigils outside government and bank offices, sing hymns about the climate, or take action rooted in our deepest values.
*Co-sponsors are religious organizations and spiritual communities worldwide who publicize Faiths 4 Climate Justice to their communities. We invite diverse religious institutions, congregations, schools, and other groups to sign on as co-sponsors. Co-sponsors commit to recruit action hosts and participants for the global day of action and organize 1 or more local actions. We provide co-sponsors with tools, resources, and one-on-one support for recruitment and action organizing. Co-sponsors, if interested, can serve on a planning team in preparation for the mobilization.
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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values, and Global Concerns-NY, please visit facebook.com/groups/1637987226437203. For more information on the NGO Committee on Social Development, please visit ngosocdev.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, please visit facebook.com/NGOCoRIP.
Moderator: Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Plataforma CIPÓ and Member of the Climate Governance Commission
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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org.