Surviving Climate Catastrophe

The Surviving Climate Catastrophe project was part-funded by an Inter Faith Youth Trust grant for Inter Faith Week 2019 and took place from October to December 2019.

Facilitated by our trustee and Buddhist faith advisor Keith Munnings, it aimed to motivate young people to reflect and act on climate change, working in collaboration with local Derby communities. Providing resources and through promoting a range of events and activities, the Multi-Faith Centre also aimed to give students from different faith backgrounds the opportunity to plan, deliver and evaluate together the production of a booklet based on this project. This was produced in line with Youth Inter-Faith Trust objectives, specifically “to promote education for young people about the religions of the world”.

We organised a series of events collaborating with the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (UoD), the Union of Students, Derby Climate Coalition and other local partners. Events included "Towards a Theology of Climate Change", "Buddhism and the Environment" by Keith Munnings, "Belonging and Imagination in the Anthropocene" by Dr. Jamie Bird and "Are you sleepwalking into Catastrophe?" led by Alyson Lee from Extinction Rebellion.

The project enabled opportunities for young people to “listen and learn” from each other’s experience of faith.

Young people were actively involved in planning and delivery of the project. Verbal evaluation by young people confirmed that:

• most learning on Climate Change took place through well-informed seminars (delivered by scientists);
• most engagement with faith interpretations of climate change took place in discussion sessions.

Significant objectives were achieved through the Inter-Faith event “Towards a Theology of Climate Change”:

• Young people were able to share experiences of how for them texts had been able to teach them about Climate Change;
• An impressive follow-up programme was agreed, focussed upon Tree Planting as part of Creating a Community Orchard.