In the spring of 2011, the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land Declaration endorsed the following statement that the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development submitted to them:
The Council of the Religious Institutions of the Holy Land (CRIHL), representing the high representatives of Israeli and Palestinian religious authorities, recognizes the challenge global climate change poses and the imperative for action. We acknowledge the scientific basis of human-caused climate change and the threat it poses to human societies and the planet, as articulated by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We also recognize the spiritual roots of this crisis, and the importance of a religious response to it.
We call on adherents of our faiths in the Holy Land and all over the world to address this crisis by undertaking a deep reassessment of our spiritual and physical relationship to this God-given planet and how we consume, use and dispose of its blessed resources. We also call for all people of faith to reduce their personal emissions of greenhouse-gases and to urge their political leaders to adopt strong, binding, science-based targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases in order to avert the worst dangers of climate crisis.
We hope that this threat to our common home of the Holy Land and of Planet Earth will move religious adherents to overcome inter-religious strife and work together for ours and our children’s common well-being.
* The CRIHL represents the high religious authorities of the Holy Land: the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Religious Affairs (Waqf), the Palestinian Sharia Courts and the assembly of the Heads of Churches of Jerusalem. For more information, please visit the CRIHL website: www.crlhl.org