Balde highlighted Islamic teachings that embrace going beyond sustainable solutions to regenerative action: “It’s not about just sustaining [nature] and allowing it to be as it is. We are taught…to leave it even better than we found it.” This ethos is essential in implementing regenerative ecological and community practices. Local, ground-up initiatives that directly engage communities, like community gardens, are “[the] types of solutions…that we need to keep bringing more out to society.”
While panelists stressed religious organizing and interfaith collaboration, speakers warned against the weaponization of religious traditions by systems of violence and oppression. “One of the things that we’re working on right now in the Jewish world, particularly on the left,” said Rabbi Kahn, “is trying to figure out precisely how it is that we have contributed to the colonial projects in America that have been devastating on the environment here and elsewhere.”
“No matter what faith you’re a part of, utilizing a particular faith to commit destruction…is never okay,” Balde said about Israel’s war on Gaza. “What we’re witnessing in Gaza is an environmental issue. There is mass destruction on an unimaginable level—happening to a society, to a community, to people, to kids, to land. And that is happening in the name of religion.”
In closing, Gore stated, “sometimes you can distill values in common across traditions.” This sentiment prioritized interfaith dialogue, which can offer new and diverse perspectives to address the climate crisis and facilitate a just transition.