WCC news: From Sámi theology to Hinduism, WCC webinar will highlight calls for biodiversity justice

Up to one million plant and animal species are on course for extinction, most of it caused by human activity. On 22 May, the World Council of Churches (WCC) is bringing together online voices from five of the world’s major faith traditions to ask a question that is becoming harder to avoid: can Orthodox, Sámi, Buddhist, Islamic, and Hindu conviction become a living force for biodiversity justice? The occasion is the International Day for Biological Diversity. Speakers for the WCC webinar From Faith to Action: Interreligious Call for Biodiversity Justice (22 May 2026). Top row, left to right: Dr Lovisa Mienna Sjöberg, VID Specialized University; Mr Kevin Maina, Church of Kenya; Dr Alexandra Masako Goossens-Ishii, Soka Gakkai International; Prof. Dr Mathew Koshy Punnackadu, WCC commissioner for Climate Justice and Sustainable Development. Bottom row, left to right: Dr Seyed Masoud Noori, Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya; Rev. Dr Jessica Hetherington, United Church of Canada; Dr Gopal Patel, FutureFaith. 13 May 2026 The webinar – “From Faith to Action: Interreligious Call for Biodiversity Justice” – will run from 15:00 to 16:00 CEST. Dr Louk Andrianos, WCC consultant for Care for Creation, Sustainability, and Climate Justice, will coordinate the session. "Biodiversity loss is a justice crisis. The communities least responsible for the destruction of ecosystems are almost always the first to bear its consequences,” highlights Athena Peralta, director, WCC Commission on Climate Justice and Sustainable Development. “What faith traditions bring to this moment is a moral vocabulary that science alone cannot provide: the call to ecological conversion, to genuine reconciliation with the living world, and to the kind of transformation in our lifestyles and economic systems that creation justice demands, for this generation and every generation to come." Each of the five speakers arrives from a different tradition with a different set of questions. Dr Christina Nellist is one of the most prominent Eastern Orthodox voices on creation care, working at the intersection of theology and animal suffering. Lovisa Mienna Sjöberg is an associate professor at VID Specialized University whose research on Sámi theology approaches green colonialism and extractivism from within Arctic Indigenous experience. They are joined by representatives from Soka Gakkai International (Buddhism), the Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya (Islam), and the FutureFaith initiative (Hinduism). Dr Mathew Koshy Punnackadu, WCC commissioner for Climate Justice and Sustainable Development, will offer a closing spiritual message and prayer. This year’s International Day for Biological Diversity theme – “Acting locally for global impact” – anchors the session’s logic: that what faith communities do in their own contexts is not separate from the global effort to halt biodiversity collapse. The webinar forms part of the WCC’s Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action and brings together partners including the Faiths for Biodiversity coalition, Season of Creation, ACT Alliance, Laudato Si Movement, Lutheran World Federation, World Communion of Reformed Churches, and European Christian Environmental Network, among others.  Register for the webinar here More information about the event here Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action  See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland