Together For The Future

Cities around the world are rapidly urbanizing. With more people flocking to urban areas, cities face complex challenges related to sustainability, resilience, and equity. As faith-based organizations and religious institutions, you have a unique opportunity and responsibility to help create more just, sustainable, and livable cities. Here’s why your faith organization should make urban sustainability and equity a top priority.

The World Is Urbanizing At An Unprecedented Rate

The global urban population has grown rapidly over the past century. In 1900, just 13% of the world’s population lived in cities. By 1950, it was 30%. Today, 55% of the world’s population is urban. The United Nations projects that 68% of all people will live in urban areas by 2050.

This rapid urbanization comes with major implications for sustainability and equity. With more people concentrated in cities, demand grows for housing, transportation, food, water, energy, and other resources and services. Cities must find ways to meet these needs while also reducing emissions, pollution, and waste.

Many cities, especially in the developing world, are struggling to keep up with growth and provide adequate infrastructure and services for all residents. As populations swell, socioeconomic and spatial inequalities often worsen. Marginalized groups like the urban poor can become more vulnerable, facing barriers to affordable housing, healthcare, education, and economic opportunity.

Cities Account For The Bulk Of Global Emissions

With the accelerating pace of urbanization, cities have become major contributors to climate change and environmental degradation.

Today, urban areas account for around 75% of global CO2 emissions from final energy use. Buildings, transportation, food systems, and waste produce significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that drive global warming. Cities also account for substantial shares of resource use, pollution, and other environmental impacts.

As climate change accelerates, cities face growing risks from flooding, heatwaves, droughts, and other climate impacts. These hazards disproportionately threaten marginalized urban residents. Tackling emissions and building resilience is critical for creating sustainable, livable cities where all people can thrive.

Faith Groups Are Uniquely Positioned To Catalyze Change

As trusted community institutions present in urban areas worldwide, faith-based organizations can powerfully catalyze action for urban sustainability and social justice.

Faith groups have a broad reach, deep community ties, and moral authority that enables them to motivate and mobilize diverse urban stakeholders. They can ignite people’s values, tap into shared concern for the planet and the poor, and encourage lifestyle changes in service of sustainability and justice.

Many faith traditions’ teachings align with principles of environmental stewardship, economic fairness, and care for the vulnerable. Faith leaders and communities can activate these values to confront urban challenges and inspire change from the ground up.

7 Ways Faith Groups Can Support Sustainable, Equitable Cities

Faith-based organizations have many avenues to pursue urban sustainability and justice. Here are seven high-impact ways your faith group can get involved:

1. Advocate for Just, Green Policies

Faith groups can leverage their moral voice and community ties to advocate for urban policies and programs that advance sustainability, climate action, and equity.

You can meet with city officials and organize members to speak out at public hearings for policies like:

• Investing in public transit, cycling, and pedestrian infrastructure
• Implementing building energy efficiency standards
• Expanding affordable housing and prohibiting displacement
• Creating good green jobs programs
• Strengthening climate resilience measures and emergency preparedness
• Improving access to parks, green space, and healthy food in underserved areas

2. Make Your Facilities More Sustainable

As property owners and managers, faith groups can make their facilities more environmentally sustainable and provide community leadership.

Simple steps like conducting an energy audit, swapping LED lights, installing solar panels, reducing waste, and improving recycling all add up. You can also implement water conservation measures like low-flow plumbing and drought-tolerant landscaping.

Pursuing green building certification shows sustainability commitment. Sharing your efforts inspires others to take action.

3. Support Greening and Resilience Projects

Faith groups can initiate or support urban greening projects that boost sustainability, livability, and resilience.

Possibilities include:

• Planting trees, gardens, and green roofs on your property
• Converting parking into green space
• Hosting community clean-ups of parks and natural areas
• Participating in city tree planting and street greening programs
• Creating rain gardens, bioswales, and other green infrastructure to absorb stormwater

4. Mobilize Volunteers for Sustainability

Engage your congregation and youth groups as volunteers and activists for urban sustainability.

Members could join initiatives like litter cleanups, urban agriculture programs, community resilience projects, environmental restoration events, and more. You can also organize members to conduct sustainability outreach and education programs.

Tap into your social capital and networks to broaden community participation in greening projects. Partner with environmental groups, schools, and city agencies to maximize impact.

5. Promote Sustainable Lifestyles

Leverage your moral influence to promote sustainable living choices among your members.

Share sustainability tips and lead discussions about how values of conservation and justice relate to lifestyle decisions around:

• Housing, transportation, and food choices
• Reducing consumption and waste
• Saving energy and water
• Supporting green businesses and products
• Volunteering and civic engagement

Model sustainable behaviors on your property like composting food waste, conserving water, and recycling. Celebrate members’ sustainable actions.

6. Advance Food Justice

Food systems are major sustainability challenge in cities, with low-income areas often lacking access to affordable, nutritious food.

Your faith group can get involved in urban food justice efforts by:

• Creating a community garden to grow and share fresh produce
• Donating organic food from your property to food banks and shelters
• Supporting mobile farmer’s markets and healthy corner store initiatives in underserved neighborhoods
• Advocating for policies to promote urban agriculture and make healthy food more accessible

7. Provide Green Job Training

Your faith group can help confront socioeconomic inequities while advancing sustainability by supporting green job training programs.

Possibilities include:

• Hosting weatherization, solar, gardening, or other sustainability skills courses
• Partnering with local workforce development groups to provide training
• Advocating for policies and funding to create green career pathways for disadvantaged residents

Equipping people with green job skills lifts economic prospects while building human capital needed for climate protection. This is a powerful way your faith community can cultivate opportunity and hope.

Join Forces to Drive Change

The scale of urban sustainability and justice challenges can seem daunting. But collective faith-based action can drive real progress.

When diverse faith groups join forces, they gain influence to sway public priorities and achieve policy wins. Shared efforts also make it easier to take on big initiatives like launching job training programs.

Building alliances across faiths, and with government, business, community groups, schools, and others creates collaborative partnerships to tackle sustainability and equity from all angles.

Look for opportunities to come together through initiatives like GreenFaith’s Interfaith Partners for the Environment coalition. Find common ground across faiths to create a powerful, unified voice for justice, stewardship, and hope.

Act Today to Shape More Sustainable, Equitable Cities

With increasing urbanization, achieving sustainable development and climate resilience requires transforming how cities operate. As faith communities deeply embedded in urban life worldwide, we have an obligation and opportunity to drive change.

When faith groups large and small embrace sustainability as an expression of shared values, our collective influence can elevate justice, spur innovation, and inspire community climate solutions. By coming together to make our facilities, congregations, and cities more green and just, people of all faiths can help create thriving urban places where all life flourishes.

The moment for action is now. Let us answer the moral call, claim the mantle of leadership, and work tirelessly as forces for good to build the more just, resilient, and sustainable cities future generations deserve.