 So many people have been speaking about the climate crisis but the real question is why is it that we're still not acting at the scale and speed that is necessary? For 150 years we built up a world based on the assumption that we can exploit the planet for free and it translates to very dramatic impacts happening right as we speak. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier which means it exacerbates existing inequities in our society. We need to remember we're on the same planet and this is the planet that we need to make sustainable for the whole of humanity. Making much faster progress toward all 17 sustainable development goals is the best pathway to adjust the future for all and public-private partnerships will be absolutely crucial to this transition. We know that this transition will require a fast adoption of a lot of new technologies and the question today is how to find the appropriate way to find this technology. Younger generations are demanding a sense of purpose. They want to look at companies and say I am investing with you all for this reason. The solutions are there. What we need is governments to regulate, to invest and we need business to act with values. History will look at us, people, politicians, corporate leaders. These times require not only solutions but speed. There is nowhere else to look than the mirror. We are the ones that need to do this. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening. I'm Catherine Marshall, Executive Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue and Professor at Georgetown University. I'm delighted to welcome you to this discussion of critical issues around religion, matters and faith in action. Very much focused on how religion is involved in the kinds of crises and changes today. We are in New York City during the annual meetings of the United Nations General Assembly but with a host of other events around that. Focused on what is called often the poly crisis of climate, of conflict, of COVID still with us but also concerns about polarization. And it's a somber mood that we're seeing here because there is a sense that many of the promises that have been made with this sustainable development goals are not being achieved. That there is so much that still needs to be done. So it's a somber mood and one that is challenging leaders and partners in every sector to find new ways to work together. So our focus today is on religion and what does religion, what does faith to related but different things have to do with all of these poly crises. What is being done and what more can and should be done. Last week in Berlin there was a meeting run by the Sant'Agedio community but the theme of it was the audacity of hope. And I think that is our theme today, the courage, the audacity that we hope to see coming from religious communities. And try to take some of the promises, some of the broad statements and translate them into action. So we have a wonderful panel today, diverse, and people who are deeply engaged in thinking about these issues and have been for many years. So we're going to repose questions to each person but then have a discussion about what matters, why religion matters, but still more of what it can do and what are the major areas where more action, where more audacity is needed. So let me turn, I'll introduce very briefly the three panelists. Bonnie Dougal is the principal representative of the Baha'i community. She is deeply involved with the United Nations sitting here in New York and that's very much her focus. The Reverend Susan Henderson is the principal executive, the chief of power and light, interfaith power and light. She has long experience at a very practical level in dealing with the religious involvement in a very practical set of issues around energy but also with a strong preoccupation with climate change. And Rabbi David Saperstein, who was the former ambassador for religious, international religious freedom, the United States and the State Department has multiple hats as well and is very deeply involved in these issues. So let me start with some hopefully fairly provocative questions. Bonnie, I think you have, you exude hope and an idea of what can be done, the sense of common purpose. Maybe you could speak a bit to how you see this potential unity, the distinctive qualities of religion and how they relate to the challenges that we face. Thank you, Catherine. Religion has the capacity of lifting our vision from the rocky road to the distant horizon and I don't believe there's ever been a time when there haven't been crises in the world. We are just living in a time where news carries faster, we are more aware of what's happening in the world around us and things are pretty grim. However, it's the conviction and aspiration that leads to motivation and that's the power of religion. Though what we really need to learn better, as you asked, is how we can work together better because we can have congregations of noble-minded individuals with high thoughts but their actions contribute very little to the betterment of humanity and that's not going to do a whole lot of good. We really need to learn how to take that motivation and turn it into action and every individual has the capacity. So it's not the great learned clergymen and women that have the understanding that they can share but even at the very local levels, young people have capacity, their parents have capacity to make a difference in the communities where they live. We have communities all over the world, Baha'i communities that are learning to discuss these issues together and turn some of their deliberations into action and I can give one quick example in a little town called Tana in Vanuatu where there was a Baha'i-inspired organization that was speaking with youth about environmental issues and the youth began to think about these ideas but how do they apply them to their community and they came up with some plans and suggested it to the community leaders and lo and behold, gradually they took a body of water and they announced that this was not going to be used for anything but conservation purposes and soon they found that marine life that had been considered extinct was coming back and the Department of Ecology of the country came by to see this and it was really just through those conversations and a call to action that made that happen. Well that's a very inspirational idea that everyone is involved in this challenge. Susan, you have a very large experience I think with very practical issues that involve different communities coming together. You also have a tremendous amount of energy and focus on the global as well as the very local climate change issues. How do you see the path to action coming from this? Well thank you that's a great question and I want to start with sort of not what I would call a strategy but I want to start with what I would call a value and I think the value that religious communities bring or can bring is a sense of humility. To understand that we are as you have said in a global poly crisis, we can't do this work alone. No one of us can do this work alone. So we have to find ways to overcome our own sort of organizational egos if you will and the competition that is often seems to be a part of racing for solutions. And instead look at what is our common goal. We have a common goal here. We want to solve these issues, these crises and in order to do that we need to put together good strategies and I would say from the faith based standpoint one of the strategies is to follow the science. We need to understand that the science is real, it's speaking to us, it's evolving and we need to pay attention to what the scientists are saying. With our common goal I think we can find companions on the journey. We can look around our communities and we can find those who share our common values and our common goal and we can find ways to work together and so that can be community based organizations, it can be businesses, it can be finance, it can be indigenous communities, environmental justice communities, youth who are leading the way, women, the people are there and as people of faith we don't only live our faith within the walls of a building. We live our values out into the world and can take action together and come together and I think that's how we will eventually solve these crises is by building relationships, building trust and finding common values to work together. Well that's the whole theme I think which is dominating this week at the UN General Assembly which is partnership and collaboration which takes us to David Saperstein who has as much experience as anyone I know in dealing with fractious, difficult issues, religious discrimination conflict what one group is calling religious side. David how do you see this combination of the peacemakers of bringing together finding the power of religion to take us forward to build hope in this very complex crisis that we're facing now? First I can't tell you what a pleasure it is for me to be with this particular panel into faith, power and life so many of our synagogues as well as the churches we work with all over the country the master has worked with you and through you to strengthen their work on environmental concerns and Katherine you have been one of the preeminent voices on the global scene about religion and sustainable development it's been an honor to work with you World Faith Development Dialogue and I can't tell you how pleased I was to hear what you said since my wife and I spent time on Tana and we saw how the connection of the communities there with nature and to guide that passion that they have in that connection into such a constructive way is really a blessing and a model for communities all across the world so it's a particular pleasure for me. If we're going to succeed in dealing with any of the economic, justice, environmental, justice issues that we face it is going to require changing people the way people live, use their resources, working community, have a sense of responsibility not just to their community at the time but one of religion's great gift to concepts of ethics in humankind is this idea of the moral responsibility have for generations yet unborn the generations to come we have to change institutions the economic institutions away the capitalist system works institutions in our local community to make sure they're seeing things as religion does through an inequality lens an inclusive lens the economic inequality the justice inequality the gender inequality the geographical inequalities on a global level that we face and we have to change policy and engage with policymakers religion plays a role in all of those things changing people changing communities changing institutions we are both the most local way that people organize their lives and the most global way and there are structure religious structures all the way in the spectrum in between so religion brings a great value added we live in a moment in human history Catherine when there is more multi-faith interfaith cooperation going on in both the western countries and globally than ever before in human history we know also that religion can be the source of strife and differences and divisions but in this growth of interfaith cooperation A we can do things together none of us can do alone and B we're modeling the very kind of world we're trying to create so this is an extraordinary moment and on every one of our concerns religion is value added it is value added in the way that we have access to local communities and conserve local communities we have all kinds of networks social service networks that are feeding people educating people providing healthcare to people here we're a trusted entity in many areas where otherwise there's unstable government and corruption here we may be the most trusted institution in those communities so we can be a powerful value added in so many of the kinds of concerns that we're discussing today so it infuses everything that we're talking about and I look forward to hearing the conversation well David I think you're putting some of the potentially provocative answers to the question of why religion matters and what that translates into faith Bonnie I'd be interested in your take on some of the contentious issues and how the religious element addresses those here at the United Nations because of course that's for example I know the Baha'i community exercises great leadership on one of the most complex issues which is the role of women maybe you could bring us into a little bit of where you see the pros and the cons yeah so we've been engaging on the issue of equality of women and men gender equality we've worked on strengthening the UN system through the efforts that eventually created UN women today and we've been involved along with other faith-based groups and the feminists and I think the value that we brought was that we could bring the two groups together at the table to discuss some of the issues and at one point we had started a network of what we call faith and feminism so that the faith groups could come together with the feminists understand what some of these issues are and the fears that some people have connected to religion and likewise the feminists confront or ask the questions of faith groups and see how we can tease out some of those impediments particularly at local levels to and you know I believe and my Baha'is believe that women and men are equal in the eyes of God and we all come from the same creator and we have to be able to allow women the potential to progress and contribute to society and men benefit from that and the more we can talk about these issues the more the understanding sort of begins to and the fears dissipate and I think it's not happening enough at the local levels so at the global level we have these conversations we mostly all in support of the many agreements particularly during the Commission on the Status of Women which is one of the most well attended international events on gender equality however when things get down to the local levels we find that there seems to be that miscommunication and the suspicion and I think we need to do a better job of translating some of these messages down to the grassroots. There is a paradox that I think we all face because we're all committed deeply to gender equality and the paradox is that as citizen rights gender should never play a role in terms of the rights of citizens but the structure of many religious groups with clergy having authority and women not being allowed to be clergy in many faith communities really does create an ongoing paradox that I think we all have to struggle with and therefore a kind of affirmative effort to find appropriate roles for women to play authority structures in the interfaith coalitions that we have and to offer another model that can parallel the model of individual faith groups who have a right to their views whatever I may think of them here and you know is an ongoing challenge for us in terms of the gender lens that we really have to all be committed to. I think we're coming very much into the core issue that we're facing in this panel which is we know religion matters. We use a number that 80 to 84% of the world's population has a religious affiliation which suggests that it's simply foolish to ignore the religious dimension and yet if you do word searches of many policy documents you find nothing about religion. So we're in some senses trying to overcome prejudices or blinders but we're also trying to look at the complexity of the issue because it is a vastly complex world. Susan I think it would be interesting if you could take us a bit into the journey of the climate issues where maybe as much as in any of these poli crises whether it's conflict or children or health the religious roles are enormous but the climate one the existential crisis that faces us you focus so much on the potential collaboration. How do you take that further? Yeah well absolutely and I think you know we only have to look at the history of major social movements in the United States to understand the powerful and invaluable role of faiths and religion in advancing change here in the US and we're far from done of course with that. When I think about working in the interfaith space as I do I think that you know all major religious traditions share at least two things in common and I would say the first is a calling to care for our sacred earth and the second is a calling to care for our neighbor and in particular our most vulnerable neighbors and when we're working on climate change we're talking specifically about something that impacts both of those directly. We can look around just at the summer and the horrendous climate disasters that we've been suffering here in the US and globally and recognize that it is our most vulnerable neighbors who are suffering the worst and the longest and have the hardest time recovering from these disasters and so you know religion has a tremendous amount to say because we are implementing very practical actions. So we run a program called Cool Congregations where we're working with congregations to reduce their energy use as an act of faith and so very practical measures within facilities and we can talk about how much property religions own globally. It's an immense number but to your point earlier David you were saying you were talking about policy and we're saying we can't stop with practical action. Practical action is modeling behavior change and that is important but if all we're doing is modeling behavior change but we're not getting the policies right we are not going to achieve what we need to achieve here and that is why we are engaging people of faith and conscience around the country as climate advocates and saying you need to speak up at all levels of government for the right policies in your cities and your states the federal level related to the COP you know there's a growing faith presence at the COP and also you need to vote. You need to vote with climate in your heart and that is what is going to transform ultimately our society on this issue. This seems to me to be a perfect example of the value added of religion. So in the climate change legislation that was written here in the United States it was the religious community that drove to ensure that concern about the equity issues was there. In other words adaptation and mitigation for the poorest countries that have done the least to create the climate change crisis we face and with the least prepared and able to actually adapt to either new forms of energy or repairing the damage being done to the environment. In some of the important legislation that was considered in our congress that wasn't there at all and the religious community drove to get it on the tape and at the COP conferences the religious community's presence has been one of the most outspoken consistent voices to insist that this be a central part of what was going on. So this seems to me to be a classic example on the policy level of where the religious community really is making a difference as you described in its concern for the vulnerable, for the poor and our moral responsibility to ensure that in moving and transforming to a new world they are not only not left behind but they are front and center to ensure that they will be treated as equally as any of the developed nations. David as you were speaking I was reminded of the Hans Kuhn phrase that there is no peace in the world without peace among the religions and there is no peace among the religions without mutual understanding. You have emphasized the collective will and power. An example could you talk a little bit more about how you see the interfaith dimension of this proceeding in other words the complexity of this world and how you mobilize the common force, the audacity. First this isn't new here in other words interfaith communities think about some of the great issues I think through the United States lens but through an international lens as well and think over the decades that we have been doing the work that we have been doing here and I mean whether you are talking about it when I first came in the PL480 the Food for Beats program driven in no small measure by the religious communities. Working is an interfaith voice consistently engaging with the senators and congresspersons in shaping the program. If you look at the debt relief issues from 20 years ago the enormous role the religious communities played on the global level to ensure that debt relief became a reality here I mean I remember sitting in the room off the office the cabinet room in the White House with President Clinton with like Bono on one side and Pat Robertson on the other side here I mean it was an extraordinary group of people that came together on that issue where you talk about PEPFAR and the HIV AIDS funding you talk about the role the religious communities in COVID ensuring poor countries were provided but often they at the grassroots level were the actual people who were helping to provide some of the vaccinations and education that people had against this information that was going around. You can go down the list of where these powerful interfaith coalitions actually have been making a difference already on this. It is a problem because it's a challenge for us because often the economic and political entities that are doing similar work don't know us they don't understand what the value added is they don't understand what it means to deal with the religion they think about religion through the most extremist expressions of religion that are so divisive and powerful here yet make up only a very small percent of religious communities in the world and miss the vast array of social capital benefits the religious community brings to bear and I'm really proud that the United States USAID here in the United the main arm of our government in the US just launched this week and we were there when Samantha Powers announces this extraordinary effort to revamp the way the entire USAID programs engage with religion to maximize the development making a campaign to urge other countries to develop this similar models is actually a moment of opportunity and this poly crisis challenges that we face that really can be transformative so I remain optimistic that a lot of improvements can be made on the challenges that you set out before us so Bonnie I think in this panel but in so many other settings one can see a common ground that really links some of the most diverse from Adventist to Zoroastrian communities in this concern for the most vulnerable among us how do you and the humanitarian crises that we face that if anything seem to be increasing because of conflict because of disease because of the looming climate crisis maybe you could comment on how you you focus so much on the unity this sense of common purpose of common humanity how do you see that translating one of the challenges but how are they being overcome yeah so you know when you when you speak to the essence of who we are as humans whether you're a seven-day Adventist or a Zoroastrian as you said I think the the the calling is the same what motivates us is the same it's the well-being of humanity of old people as you said the neighbor and every religion aspires to do good in the world and to build a better future so when whenever we are having these conversations if you start at that level and then build out from there there's so much a common ground for us to focus our energies on I want to talk about what David was saying about you know those minorities on the extremes where unfortunately with media attention and part of the the the purpose of those minorities is to capture capture the news all of the attention goes to that but when you really look at the congregants of all the major faiths the aspirations are common and they are all the same and I think we need to build on that and increasingly have these conversations so that we are we are we are taking up the space and not allowing those extremes to come and port any efforts it's a challenge though because you know the old maxim a million planes land safely and the media doesn't say a word about it one crashes and the media all over the world is focused on it and the same is true with religion here it's the extremists who are willing to use force to impose their views on others political views religious views on others and persecute those who differ with them here with violence and coercion that captures so much of the news and the real story of the million planes here the millions of efforts of communities all across the world that are working for the betterment of their communities and their nations and the global scene really get missed and that's a challenge for us in terms of the future how do we get attention to the extraordinary work that innovate power and light that your church is doing your community is doing all over here that remains a major challenge for us because it becomes a filter through which even well educated people or involved in politics and development they just get fooled into joining into seeing it through the filter of the extremists and yet I think that that also applies to some of the major areas of progress that we've made as humanity you hear so much deep concern about poverty but people forget the extraordinary progress that's been made in reducing infant and child mortality and extending our lifetimes by decades within our life time but Susan you give wonderful examples from your direct experience someone told me years ago that what you need is fire from above sort of fire and inspiration clearly the voice of Pope Francis or the patriarch and some other leaders they have a global influence so that's sort of the fire from above but there's also the fire from below which is what happens at the community or even at the family level the individual level how do you see in the kind of effort that you're dealing with these coming together in practical ways that's a great question and you know I want to name what I think what I see as a challenge which is the sense of urgency that we all feel right we know that we're in a crisis we know we need to act now we know the time is short that can be very paralyzing for people and also it can result in solutions that don't work for everyone so you know it might be easy to go into a community and say what you need to do is X and that's going to solve your problem right it's harder and it takes a lot more time to go into a community and listen and understand what the needs of the community are as expressed by the community and then to be able to build a strategy and a plan to act on the problem as they see it and so we try to do what we'll call it the bottom up top down squeeze right like that's what we're really talking about here you know we love Lodato Si, we love Pope Francis' very outspokenness on the climate crisis and the global poly crisis let's face it he talks about the intersected issues in Lodato Si we are highly anticipating the letter that's coming out in early October as sort of a follow up to that and we think that it's important to have these global leaders who are speaking out and really capturing the attention and using the platform they have for good and we also recognize that it is the grassroots it is often and most often the activity at the grassroots that makes the most difference because we can see change at the local level change can happen much more quickly at the local level than it can happen as we know through Congress or through the COP or you know any other global mechanisms that we have in place people at the local level can say you know we need to put solar on the roof of our building and they can get it done and they can also work with their city council to change policy which we've had folks within the IPL community who have done just that put solar on our building the city code won't allow us to do it so we're going to go in and change the city code so not only we benefit but our entire community benefits so I think it's the both and I think it's you know having those strong messages that come from speakers who are capturing a lot of attention that's very important but the real action happens at the local level it's with solutions that are being implemented that's the important point I was just going to comment on when you said fire from above I thought you meant you know our creator God and you were going to talk about COVID because I think the COVID crisis was the ultimate you know fire from above and we were all humbled brought to our knees all the fishers in our society in our systems our economic systems were exposed and if we haven't learned from that experience and if we cannot build back better and improve the way our relationships whether at the international level or at the local level then I don't know what else we should expect because yes we can have these statements etc but if we are not paying heed then I think you know we are doomed and maybe deserve it but really I think as a hopeful faith-based actor I think there's a lot we could learn from these setbacks and learn to do things better there's an extraordinary set of lessons that can be learned from the COVID crisis good and bad and many of them do involve the religious communities in ways that are not always at the front of consideration which I think takes us back to this sort of question that we start with the challenge that we start with which is that perhaps some business is seen as an ecosystem and is understood and there's a tremendous focus on business but religion is as much an ecosystem as much a complex world that involves the mind the hands the heart that is so how do we take this to a next step we're coming close to the end of the discussion but we I think if we can explore what David has termed the value added but also the value subtracted how do we how do we deal with that with that issue in more practical ways the fact that the religious dimension is so often not front and center in thinking about these aspects of the poly crisis whether it's COVID or the future of children or mental health or energy how do we how do we do that and I would just add before I turn to all of you that it is very heartening to see the World Economic Forum which brings together so many different communities taking this challenge of bringing that religious system the ecosystem the ideas the passion the audacity which we looks to in in business into the religious world so maybe Susan you can start us off on that well sure I so I'm kind of finding myself thinking about about hope because I think in a lot of ways you know people are of faith are people of hope but hope can can sound like a negative word it can sound very passive you know like sort of I hope everything will work out you know and and that means I don't have to do anything myself and I think one of the things that that religion can add is a sense of active hope so the idea that hope means that I have agency and that what I do matters and can make a difference in the outcome right like it's it is not passive it is very much an engaged hope that says I I hope therefore I take action engaged and active hope that's I think a one phrase to take away a bunny well hope is that I believe I believe in the potential of humanity to to build a better world and and the capacity of every individual to be able to contribute to this and that's what hope hope means to me but yes again it shouldn't be passive everybody has the capacity if governments are failing well then the community has to come together to work with the government to make things happen I I I think we all have the responsibility we can't just sit back and wait for others to fix things David Nick Kristof wrote a column this weekend about the UN General Assembly where he really is challenging the overall community to to turn words and promises into real action and I think that's something you focused on and thinking about the many positive elements that the religious communities bring how do you how do you see us taking this discussion and some of these ideas forward and building on what value this particular communities which are so interrelated with others the religious community is not a separate distinctive community it's part of the overall ecosystem with its fractious divisions and its positive side how do we turn this religion matters faith in action into something more tangible so I look at the work that you do with the world faith development dialogue that really does needy gritty evidence-based efforts to really find out what works and what doesn't work in USAID's conference a year ago the evidence-based conference really kind of is affecting things on the global level to really try to measure where we can and how we can be most impactful so just a fast then rejoinder and answer to your question to each of you one is IPL's greatest strength is empowering local houses of worship to really be effective in all the ways that you indicated there are 300,000 of them here in the United States here the most common public building more than schools more than churches excuse me more than schools more than hospitals more than fire stations and police I mean it's an extraordinary institution and millions of houses of worship across the globe think about the whether potential of what that means in fighting for climate change again here in resolving these economic crises secondly here in terms of the work that you are doing and what you were saying before about the improvements made it is true that the percentage of the world population that's in poverty has greatly fallen in the last 60 years but we still have 2 billion people living at about 3 dollars a day or more and really when 2 million kids a year dying from poverty related causes and we talked about the benefit of debt relief that crisis with us again the highest levels in 50 years and the improvements we made in our last campaign 20 years ago eases some of the pressures on it but it's going to spin out of control if we don't deal with it in the next say you know in the in the next 5 years and finally to pick up on what you were saying Bonnie here if we have one message one message to the world it is that we are not the prisoners of the mistakes of the past we can be we must be and if we work together well we will be the shapers of a better and more hopeful future for all God's children that's what we believe more than anything and it's a message the world needs now more than ever before and I think that the common theme of hope is very much related to what we can do and that's I think the message on the progress that we've made that it is possible the impossible is possible even if it takes a little longer as it says in the Bible we are prisoners of hope we've come unfortunately to the end of our discussion where I think we've just opened so many different lines of thought examples challenges so I have to thank this remarkable group of people who the World Economic Forum has brought together here and to thank all of you who've been listening I hope that this is a conversation that we will continue because religion matters and faith can achieve miracles and we need to work to make sure that that's what happens so thank you very much thank you