The Baku Declaration of the Global Summit of Religious Leaders, themed “World Religions for a Green Planet,” held as part of the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was adopted.
The participants of the Summit expressed their deep concern about global climate change, loss of the biodiversity, desertification, drought, land degradation, forest fires, environmental pollution, food security and water scarcity, noting the importance of accelerating joint efforts to discuss the causes of these problems, and to create and improve healthy ecosystems.
The world religious leaders expressed their gratitude to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev for his patronage and special attention and his meaningful address to the Global Summit of Religious Leaders within the framework of COP29 and wished the COP29 success in its work.
Emphasizing the Summit’s support for the “Religious Pavilion” organized within the framework of COP 29 to provide dialogue between religious leaders in order to find effective solutions to climate problems, the Summit participants applauded the Republic of Azerbaijan for taking leadership in fighting climate crisis and addressing environmental issues and in this context, designating the year of 2024 as the “Green World Solidarity Year.”
The participants also hailed the significance of the “Baku Process” initiated by the Azerbaijani President, and the Global Intercultural Dialogue forums aimed at developing inter-civilizational dialogue, as well as the Baku International Humanitarian Forums, the Summits of World Religious Leaders, the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the International Baku Conference “Religions and Intercultural Cooperation.”
They emphasized the need for regularly hold interreligious events of this kind, where representatives of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other faiths and beliefs from different regions of the world, could come together to voice up a unified and unanimous position on the problems threatening the modern world.
The Summit participants also expressed deep concern on ravaging armed conflicts, acts of terrorism, and violence on religious and ethnic grounds, accompanied by human casualties, environmental disasters, plundering and destruction of cultural and religious heritage, as well as the grave consequences of the acts of ecocide and urbicide policies for combatting climate change.