It is increasingly recognised that faith leaders and faith-based organizations (FBOs) are essential contributors towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and addressing environmental and climatic crises. Acknowledging this, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the Faith for Earth Initiative to strategically engage with FBOs, mobilise greater faith-inspired environmental action, scale-up faith actors’ capacities and catalyse greater synergies between them and other stakeholders. This short, self-paced, e-learning course, focusing on sustainable lifestyles, forms part of this commitment.
Humans are overexploiting natural resources in order to satisfy their needs and wants, often overlooking or not understanding the damage being caused. This behaviour, tied into dominant socioeconomic systems, is having a devastating effect on our planet, with widespread environmental degradation occurring globally. It is imperative that people adopt more sustainable lifestyles to reduce both individuals’ and society’s use of natural resources to minimise our collective environmental footprint (bearing in mind that this responsibility is not shared equally). Fully addressing this issuee requires the engagement of all sectors of society, with this course focusing on the role of faith actors, drawing on the particular qualities and comparative advantages they have.