A classic anecdote tells of a Shoppian’s first visit to the zoo. A Shoppian is an ethnic and cultural representative from the border region of today’s Bulgaria, FYR Macedonia and Serbia— exactly where a Shopska salad comes from, in fact. So, the anecdote continues, after standing for an hour totally perplexed in front of the giraffe’s cage, staring in disbelief at the weird, long-necked creature, the man finally concludes: “There is no such animal!”

Unlike Shoppians, most people do trust their eyes, and thus have a preponderant tendency to believe that what they have witnessed is real and happening. Moreover, people have proved throughout history their ability to believe in things that other people have seen with their eyes— provided that the evidence is sufficiently credible and convincing. Today’s mission to convince more and more people worldwide that climate change is really happening, and that immediate action is needed to protect nature’s balance, includes efforts to reach the eyes and ears—and, yes, the consciences—of religious leaders. And for good reason: religious leaders have historically been most effective in persuading millions to believe in those things that very few have—or have not—actually witnessed. And these leaders have, ultimately, been successful in calling converts into action in accordance with the tenets of their particular faith.

In order to witness first-hand the effects of climate change—to be certain that it really exists—a group of religious leaders from around the world sailed around Greenland last September, accompanied by scientists, politicians and journalists. The cruise was the seventh in a series of water-borne symposia on religion, science and environment, which the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has both organised and guided since 1995. The latest symposium, entitled “The Artic, Mirror of Life,” was conceptualised in direct reference to the polar ice cap’s vital function in reflecting solar radiation and keeping the water underneath from warming up. This particular symposium was the most diverse yet in terms of number of schools of religious thought being represented. In addition to religious leaders from Christian, Muslim and Hebrew traditions, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Sikh clergy took part, and were joined by an Inuit and Saami representative from north of the Arctic Circle.

Polar prayers

On board the Fram, a sleek Norwegian polar cruiser that had been booked straight from the shipyard for the Arctic journey, delegates spent six days giving presentations and engaging in debate over a broad variety of issues, from nuclear proliferation to population overgrowth. But the religious and emotional culmination of the symposium was, arguably, a ‘Silent Prayer for the Planet.’ Assembled in prayer on the Fram’s foredeck on the chilly morning of September 7, the religious leaders beheld the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier. This magnificent ice field is suspected of being the most likely origin of the fatal iceberg that sank the Titanic on her maiden voyage back in 1912. But today the glacier is losing 35 cubic kilometres of ice to the sea each year—a worrying indicator of global warming. “Few people now doubt the science of climate change, but this prayer from the top of the world will offer a different message: that the polar pilgrimage should be joined in spirit by all those who care about the future of mankind and its relationship with the planet, be they in Manaus or Moscow, Borneo or Beijing, Innsbruck or Ottawa,” the symposium website explained.

Principles and paradox

The silent prayer and the Icefjord Commitment that followed (see sidebar), which was widely reported by the international media, could easily serve as fodder for the type of polemic championed by bestselling American science fiction author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), who once charged that environmentalism is the new “religion of choice for urban atheists.” Taking, arguably, an aggressively antienvironmental stance, Crichton argued in 2003 that environmentalism is detached from facts and scientific knowledge, and is actually more of a ‘faith’ in which no discussion about the truth is possible. While Crichton was not on board the Fram, it should be noted that many of the symposium participants come from the hard-core environmental protection movement, as well as from firmly established scientific institutions—backgrounds in which the symbiosis of religion, science and nature protection might seem paradoxical. Within the field of environmental science there are notions of ecology, biodiversity conservation and other disciplines that are deeply rooted in evolution theory and Darwinism—as opposed to staunchly unscientific and creationist versions of the world’s origins and development. Even Patriarch Bartholomew acknowledged in his opening statement that many people were puzzled during the early days of his endeavour about the kind of links his symposium was trying to establish. “Religious people were relatively indifferent, or even hostile, to science, and many scientists and ecologists could see little relationship between their world and the world of faith.”

Yet, the idea of bringing religion into the cause of protecting the environment eventually garnered political support, as EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan were enlisted as co-patrons of the symposium. For one thing, no one would seriously deny the power of religions to mobilise people for action. “As more and more people now realise, religion and environmental science are both concerned with ultimate matters, with the final destiny of mankind, the earth and the whole of creation,” Bartholomew explained on board the arctic cruiser. A most exciting outcome of the symposium is a sort of informal competition that seems to have emerged in terms of establishing which religion is the ‘greenest.’ A special address from the Vatican, for example, affirmed that preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development—and, most importantly, addressing climate change—are matters of grave concern for the entire human family. “The consequences of disregard for the environment cannot be limited to [a single] immediate area or population because they always harm human coexistence, and thus betray human dignity and violate the rights of citizens who desire to live in a safe environment,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote. Cardinal McCarrich, archbishop emeritus of Washington DC and the pope’s special envoy to the arctic, added: “The human family has been commanded by the Lord to use the Earth, but to be a good steward to the Earth—to use it, but not to abuse it.”

Higher ground

Musharraf Husein al-Azhari, a director of the Karimia Institute and a practicing imam in London, said that climate change and the degradation of spoliation of “our beautiful Earth” are issues of deep concern for Muslims, as they involve the very survival of humanity. Ven Jinwol, a Buddhist monk and president of Korea’s ‘United Religions’ initiative, explained the connection between his faith and nature protection: “We believe that nature and [humankind] are in reality one and the same. The human being is part of nature, so without the environment we cannot survive”. Jinwol— playing a high hand, as it were—added that Christianity argues justification for the exploitation of nature by human beings, which Buddhism deems unacceptable.