Witnessing for climate justice at COP30

Yet a decade after Paris, the world is by no means on track to achieve the agreed target of staying below an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.

In fact, 2024 already logged as the first individual year to average above 1.5 degrees, and by the most recent UN reports the world is currently headed towards an average increase of 2.6 degrees by the end of the century.

Caring for our one, common home

As COP30 opened, more than 100 faith leaders gathered onsite in Belém to take stock and look to the advocacy needed in order to push for real, concrete solutions as well as genuine commitment by governments in the years to come.

Carine Josiéle Wendland, one of the many young LWF delegates to COP30 from the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB), underlined the urgency of the situation.

“Last year we already surpassed 1.5°C during several individual months, making concrete action more urgent than ever. We have to talk to our governments and to our local authorities, to demand a phase-out of fossil fuels and ensure they demonstrate real commitment to a just transition. We have to understand that we have one common home. It is not the common home for the Lutherans, or for the Catholics, but for all of us. We have one common home, and we are all a part of it,” she noted.

Hosted this year at the IECLB Belém congregation, the Talanoa dialogue feeds into the COP process through the Interfaith Liaison Committee (ILC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).