Faith and Sustainable Lifestyles

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.

The goals of this course are to:

• Build the capacities of faith actors and outline the linkages between faith and lifestyles, demonstrating the roles faith can play in addressing the issue.
• Have participants end the course with a better understanding of how they can reduce their environmental impact and carbon footprint.
• Help contribute to the attainment of SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production – as well as SDGs 10, 11 and 13.

Since its inception in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been the global authority that sets the environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment. UNEP’s mission is to provide leadership and encourage partnerships in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations. UNEP works closely with its 193 Member States and representatives from civil society, businesses, and other major groups and stakeholders to address environmental challenges through the UN Environment Assembly, the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment.

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