On 11 September 2025, ESSC Research Director and RAOEN Coordinator Pedro Walpole SJ shared about COP30 and the role of the Society of Jesus in Episode 1 of the Faith and Ecology Podcast: A COP30 series. The Faith & Ecology Podcast is an initiative of the Jesuits for Climate Justice: Faith in Action at COP30 Campaign.
The other resource persons in this podcast are Reem Al Saffar (MENA Youth Network, Imperial College London) and Budi Tjahjono (Franciscans International). COP30, the 30th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in Belém, Pará, Brazil from 10-21 November 2025.
Pedro’s talk starts at 12:51 in this 21-minute podcast and the transcript of his comments are shared below, with some edits:
Over the last 30 years, I’ve worked with several indigenous communities, particularly in the Philippines, in forestry work throughout Asia. I am now living with the Pulangiyēn people and I take responsibility with the community for the Apu Palamguwan Cultural Education Center that is a K-12 government recognized school.
The Society of Jesus needs to show up at COP to listen and to learn how globally the socio-political stage of environmental accountability is shifting. In our language, that’s basically social justice – social and ecological justice.
COP is not the heart of the crisis. It’s the pulse. Each year the COP rises and it falls. Jesuits can listen to this pulse and learn so we can return to our countries and communities and act with others and in mission for our common home throughout the year.
So number one are the negotiations in what’s called the Blue Zone. Jesuits and Jesuit institutions can engage by translating and preparing materials on the key topics. The focus for this year is really strengthening the Loss and Damage Fund mechanisms and this needs to reach the most affected, which is not to be assumed.
Second is to set clear targets for a fair energy transition to reduce CO2 and methane.
Number three is to set clear goals to develop a global food system based on food sovereignty and agroecological practices.
For number four, cancelling the debt for poor countries. This has been an ongoing saga that we must continue to present.
And number five, I would say put the indigenous people’s rights and leadership at the center. valuing and protecting nature and prioritizing sustainable livelihoods over profit-driven models where the margins are suffering. This is central to COP30 negotiations.
The second area is the social space in the Green Zone and beyond. Outside the formal halls, we network, we build alliances and grow the public will for climate justice, working with civil society, the church, youth, indigenous leaders and researchers to broaden the agenda and deepen the understanding. This is what’s crucial.
The third area, if you like, is accompaniment. What is most important is to be able to walk with the people, whether at home or in COP, amplifying life changing stories and local commitments. This is where faith meets action. As Jesuit collaborators, we are a very small delegation but we help our partners navigate the process and carry these priorities back home.
So what do we bring as Jesuits? We are networked. We are a way of proceeding very simply, very humbly. Ecojesuit’s journey reminds us of collaboration across the local, the regional, the global levels, as that is how change moves.
It’s been a longstanding challenge for the Society of Jesus to engage universally with the UN system. We have effectively done that through the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). And locally for example, the Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa (JENA) has engaged the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya. Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) in the Philippines holds UNFCCC observer status as do some other organizations enabling a limited collaboration.
Our Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs) also need to find ways to communicate in a secular world.
So we’ve been at this for some time. I’ve been at it for over 30 years. We have learned that collaboration is the method. Community change is the measure.
The other dimension is keeping the conversation whole. Integral ecology means social, economic, cultural, political, and ecological threads binding together. We’ve got to find the dynamics way beyond planting a tree. We have to actually care for our people, be with our people, not just act for our people.
Great work has been done on this. This is where we get an integral living of the UAPs.
Let’s look back a minute. At the time of Agenda 21 that gave birth to the UNFCCC, what was the world busy with in 1992?
Well, the whole fiscal situation of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall was in crisis. On the side, we all who were alive saw, but really looking back, I can’t manage the figures. There were 220,000 people who died in Somalia of famine due to drought and war. That’s huge. Here in the Philippines, we were just coming out of the worst typhoon (Thelma) that we could remember. An estimated 8,000 people died (with around 2,000 listed as missing) in Ormoc City, Leyte in central Philippines in November 1991. They were just washed out. And I attended the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The main issues there for us were water and Indigenous Peoples.
So where are we today?
The same realities, but we are half a degree warmer. So we have to understand that nothing is established forever. We have to, with each generation, claim the good that is there. Claim the hope and seek the right action.
Episode 1 of the Faith & Ecology podcast is available here.