Alliance of Religions and Conservation – History
 |
 |
|
People of faith from across Europe joined WWF in Assisi to pledge their care for the planet |
1986: Beginnings at Assisi
1995: Launch at Windsor
1997: World Bank links
2000: Sacred Gifts in Nepal
2002: Celebration of Creation
2003: International President
2005: Tenth Anniversary
2007: Faith and Forestry
2008: Plans for Generational Change
1986:Beginnings at Assisi
In 1986, HRH Prince Philip, then President of WWF International issued an astonishing invitation. He asked five leaders of the five major world religions – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism – to come and discuss how their faiths could help save the natural world. He decided to do this at Assisi in Italy, because it was the birthplace of St Francis, the Catholic saint of ecology. It was a unique occasion, involving some of the world’s leading environmental and conservation bodies sitting down for the first time with the world’s major faiths to discuss how they could all work together. It created more press interest than any other WWF event to date.
Before the event there were some concerns about how such diverse interest groups could work together. But these proved to be unfounded. Each participant had been given a special invitation: “Come, proud of your own tradition, but humble enough to learn from others”. And this applied as much to the secular environmental groups as it did to the great faiths.
The mood of the Assisi meeting was captured in the words of welcome by Father Serrini of the Franciscan Order: “Each religion will celebrate the dignity of nature and the duty of every person to live harmoniously within the natural world. We are convinced of the inestimable value of our respective traditions and of what they can offer to re-establish ecological harmony; but, at the same time, we are humble enough to desire to learn from each other. The very richness of our diversity lends strength to our shared concern and responsibility for our Planet Earth.”
From this meeting arose key statements by the five faiths outlining their own distinctive traditions and approach to the care for nature. And from these came the seeds of ARC.
return to the top of the page
1995: Launch at Windsor Castle
After the Assisi meeting, WWF, assisted by its religious advisors led by Martin Palmer, began to develop a programme of working with each major faith on a wide variety of conservation projects. By 1995, the original five faiths had been joined by four others, the Baha’is, Daoists, Jains and Sikhs and the work had grown so considerably that Prince Philip decided to create a new independent organisation to coordinate it. That year he – together with representative of the nine world religions - founded the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) in the grand setting of Windsor Castle, England. For the first time an organisation existed to link the secular worlds of conservation and ecology with the faith worlds of the major religions.
When planning the meeting, we asked the faith leaders what they saw as the biggest problems for them and their tradition in terms of contemporary society. They cited two things. The first was mass communication, especially satellite TV with its particular brand of Western values; the second was the power of economic forces such as the World Bank.
So at the birth of ARC we also invited leading figures from the BBC World Service and the World Bank. This decision helped shape aspects of ARC’s work in the future, especially the links with the World Bank.
return to the top of the page
1997: World Bank links forged at Lambeth Palace
In 1997 ARC arranged a meeting at Lambeth Palace between leaders of the nine religions and the President of the World Bank Mr James Wolfensohn, as well as some key World Bank staff. The aim was to discuss ways in which alternative economic models arising from the faiths could help reduce poverty and environmental destruction. From this historic meeting, held at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London Palace, came many links between the faiths and the World Bank, of which the ARC/World Bank projects and the new ARC/World Bank book “Faith in Conservation” are part.
return to the top of the page
2000: Sacred Gifts in Nepal
By 2000 ARC had been approached by two other faiths – the Shinto and Zoroastrian religions. They became members of ARC in November 2000 bringing the total of faiths members to eleven. In November 2000 ARC and WWF, joined by conservation bodies, partners such as the World Bank and an array of foundations, celebrated the first 26 Sacred Gifts for a Living Planet in Nepal, in the ancient city of Bhaktapur. The event put ARC and its work firmly on the international scene and ARC’s work tripled within one year of the Nepal meeting. The meetings also led to an exciting scheme, by which religions would become more actively involved in socially responsible investing of their stocks and shares.
return to the top of the page
2002: Celebration of Creation for Queen Elizabeth II
In November 2002 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II hosted a celebration dinner at Buckingham Palace for ARC and its key supporters and religious leaders. As a thank you, and in celebration of Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee on the throne, ARC held a Celebration of Creation in London’s historic Banqueting Hall, which Her Majesty and HRH the Prince Philip attended.
|
 |
 |
Eleven faiths gathered with ARC and WWF in Nepal to offer gifts to the planet in the millennium year 2000 |
return to the top of the page
2003: International President appointed
In June 2003 His Excellency the Prime Minister of Mongolia Mr Nambaryn Enkhbayar agreed to accept the post of International President for an initial three years.
return to the top of the page
2005: Tenth Anniversary
We celebrated our tenth anniversary at Lambeth Palace, with many representatives of the faiths we work with telling their environment stories. environment stories We were able to celebrate a new association of Cambodian monks acting for the environment, which formed at Pnomh Penh that year, as well as an ARC gathering of Muslim leaders in Kenya, and the ground-breaking ceremony for the first Daoist Ecology Temple, on Taibaishan in China.
return to the top of the page
2007: Faith and Forestry Initiative
The inaugural Faiths and Forests meeting in Visby, Sweden culminated in a unanimous agreement to go forward and create a Religious Forestry Standard. Once accepted, it will cause millions of hectares of forests around the world to be managed according to religious, environmental, social and economic criteria. The plan is that between 2007 and 2013, a series of regional gatherings will be undertaken in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. These will be fed in to the proposal, culminating in the launch of an agreed International Religious Forestry Standard at the most sacred event in Japanese religious and social life: the rebuilding of the Grand Shrines at Ise.
return to the top of the page
2008: Launch of the Seven and Eight Year Plans for Generational Change
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and ARC announced that they would partner in a programme to involve major traditions in the world’s faiths drawing up generational plans of action to be launched in November 2009 at Windsor Castle. The aim is to take the next seven or eight years embedding practices and protocols into the way major faiths conduct their education, building programmes, celebrations and energy sourcing. “This is an extremely exciting development which will have a real and long lasting impact on the health of the environment and on people’s lives,” said ARC’s secretary general Martin Palmer, who is working as a co-chair on this programme with the UNDP’s deputy director Olav Kjorven.
return to the top of the page
|