By Maira Butt
Climate change is top of the agenda for the world’s largest economies as they meet at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Meanwhile 7,000 miles away, Cop29, the United Nations conference on climate change, is meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Earlier this year, the United Nations general secretary António Guterres warned that the world was on a “highway to climate hell”. Scientists continue to raise awareness about the impact of CO2 emissions and the rapid deterioration of world ecosystems affecting both plants and wildlife.
Faith communities in climate debate
As businesses and politicians struggle to juggle the demands of the crisis, some believe that faith communities could hold the answer.
At Cop29, religious climate change activists are taking part in a “Faith Pavilion”, organised by the Muslim Council of Elders, a UAE based organisation, with a programme of workshops, plenary sessions and speeches offering spiritual, moral and ethical perspectives on climate action.
With more than 80 per cent of the global population identifying with a religion, faith groups have the potential to bring innovative solutions that put the environment front and centre, galvanising communities using faith-led principles, according to those at the forefront of such work.
It is an issue of particular importance to Muslim communities, which have been especially impacted worldwide, in places such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where droughts and flooding have taken thousands of lives.
Kamran Shezad, who sits on the multi-faith advisory council to the United Nations Interagency Task Force on Religion and Sustainable Development, has seen the impact of this work first hand.
For Mr Shezad, this work is intrinsic to, not separate from, Islam. Discussing the theological underpinnings of religious principles behind Islamic faith-inspired action, he says, “Ultimately, the Holy Quran is a book about nature.”
“If you were to open the Quran on any page, there will always be a reference to nature,” he says. “There are many chapters that are named after parts of nature, whether insects, animals, or plants. In Islam, the entire planet itself is a biosphere that we are custodians and stewards of as Muslims. Islam is full of these teachings. The Quran is intrinsically environmental.”
Grass roots education
Closer to home, in his work as part of the Bahu Trust, a Birmingham-based charity offering education and encouragement of Islam, Mr Shezad has been involved in several initiatives that encourage communities to use their faith-inspired ideas to create sustainable solutions.
These include training imams and mosque leaders on climate action, installing solar panelling, and ensuring green energy is used at all 22 mosques that are part of the trust.
“We work on issues around air pollution because they impact our children locally,” Mr Shezad told the Religion Media Centre. “And we’ve been heavily involved in retrofitting people’s homes to make them more energy-efficient, especially among the poorest and most vulnerable in our neighbourhoods.”
Recently, the Bahu Trust was awarded funding to allow small community groups of all faiths and denominations to bring their green ideas to life. “We’ve been doing plastic-free iftars for Ramadan, encouraging community stewardship, enabling campaigning and advocacy, and working with Birmingham City Council to raise awareness about the climate emergency,” he said.
Challenging financial model
Stewardship is a theme that also comes up for Omar Shaikh, of the Global Ethical Finance Initiative.
He refers to a hadith — Muhammad’s sayings —to be mindful of natural resources: “Do not waste water, even if you perform your ablution on the banks of an abundantly flowing river.” There is also guidance on never giving up on the environment, until the end of time. “If the Day of Resurrection were established upon one of you, and in his hand is a sapling, then he should plant it,” another hadith reads.
“So, there are very clear injunctions in our relationship as stewards of the earth and our protection of the environment,” Mr Shaikh says.
Last year at Cop28, Mr Shaikh launched a report on the importance of climate finance. He estimates that the global Islamic finance industry is worth almost $5 trillion. He believes the economic and financial systems that underpin climate initiatives are just as important as the projects they deliver. “Islamic finance is part of the Islamic economic logic, and this is underpinned by a moral logic that sits within Islam,” he says.
“It is different from the logic that we have about maximising returns. Again, when we think of stewardship over the earth, there is a huge responsibility to ensure that we are stewards and that we manage the resources of the planet in a way which is respectful, efficient, fair, and justly distributed as well.”
He continues: “As Muslims, we don’t see ourselves as the ultimate owners of these factors of production as traditional economics would have. But we see ourselves as stewards, so we understand that there is a hereafter. Therefore, the purpose of wealth has a different ontological position.”
But despite the strong religious, moral, and cultural precedents for green living within Islam, challenges still exist.
Azmaira Alibhai, faith and ecosystems co-ordinator at the UN Environment Programme’s Faith for Earth Coalition, says it is still at the early stages of educational work in engaging communities. First, it must map exercises to determine what resources the communities bring.
“So far it’s been minor engagements with communities and groups that are trying to establish their position on Islamic environment and trying to understand the scope,” she says.
Covenant on sustainable development
Ms Alibhai has been part of a group, along with Mr Shezad, who have set up the Al-Mizan Covenant, a statement on the Islamic principles of environmental protection, building on the work of the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change.
“What we can expect out of Al-Mizan, thinking about how we structure our work, is the implementation of some of the principles that are spoken about,” she says. These include youth groups and a global convening platform that speaks about and tries to mobilise local grassroots networks from within.
Jordanian royalty have committed to building an Al-Mizan park. “So, taking the principles of Al-Mizan and sustainable conservation, environmental action, mobilising Muslims and the network, we will be able to turn it into a real concrete project about how we can conserve degraded lands, or at least restore degraded lands,” Ms Alibhai added.
Eco-friendly mosque in Cambridge
A live example of the work these groups are aiming for is embodied in Europe’s first eco-friendly mosque.
The Cambridge Central Mosque’s architectural design, with advanced technology, makes it able to achieve a near-zero carbon footprint. It pays homage to “natural forms and materials with its forest-like vaulting”.
Grey water and rainwater are used to flush lavatories, and to irrigate the grounds. The building uses natural lighting, supplemented by low-energy LED bulbs and photovoltaic cells on the roof that generate renewable energy from sunlight. The cooling and heating system is well insulated and naturally ventilated. Heat pumps in the building’s basement ensure that more energy is produced than is consumed. It also extracts energy from the relatively stable temperature of the air or ground water, heating the building as needed and cooling it at times of high occupancy or “excess heat gains”.
Abdal Hakim-Murad, founder and chairman of the Mosque, notes: “Islamic civilisation has been based on the rejection of waste as an underestimate of God’s blessing, and so in the construction of the new mosque here in Cambridge, we were very much at the forefront of the local environmental movement.”
