UNEP Executive Director, Inger Andersen introduces the Interfaith Women Council
UNEP’s Faith for Earth Coalition held the inaugural meeting of it’s Faith for Earth’s ‘Interfaith Women Council’ on Thursday 30th January 2025.
The Faith for Earth Interfaith Women Council is a platform composed of distinguished faith and interfaith influential women leaders advocating for environmental stewardship and sustainable development through their communities, inspired by their spiritual traditions.
The Inaugural meeting was chaired by Faith for Earth Director, Dr Iyad Abumoghli and an address was given by UNEP’s Executive Director and UN Under Secretary, Inger Andersen. Each of the new Council Members then gave a three minute presentation about projects they were working on. AIA’s Barbara Gardner MBE gave the following presentation which focused the Nexus between Animal Welfare and the Environment.
Address to UNEP’s Interfaith Women Council
Inaugural Meeting – Thursday 30 January 2025
Barbara Gardner – Founder of the Animal Interfaith Alliance – a unique alliance of the world’s most influential faith-based, animal advocacy organisations which speaks out on the moral treatment of animals by drawing on the combined wisdom of all faiths and worldviews.
A Key Project that we are dealing with is to ensure that the Nexus between Animal Welfare and the Environment is recognised at the United Nations. Caring for the planet and the environment starts with how we treat the other sentient beings that we share our beautiful planet with. All faiths recognise and address this, although this is often forgotten in the current practice of our faiths. It is addressed by both Pope Francis in his Encyclical on the Environment, Laudato Si’ and by its Islamic sibling, Al Mizan.
While we treat animals cruelly and inhumanely, particularly in factory farming systems, we can never protect the environment, as so much environmental damage is caused by animal agriculture, including the destruction of rainforests, oceans and other ecosystems, the pollution of seas, rivers and the atmosphere, and global warming from carbon and methane emissions. So much of our land is taken up to provide food for farmed animals which is wasteful and feeds the rich whilst the poor still remain hungry.
Also, we will never create a fair and just society where women, indigenous people and minorities are properly treated and respected whilst our hearts are hardened by the way we treat other sentient beings, which is often with extreme cruelty and brutality, as happens in the animal agriculture industry.
We are also concerned with how animals are used for testing medicines and other products. Not only does this include extreme cruelty, it is also a lazy means of product testing which fails humans, as better 21st century technology, which could be used for testing, is ignored.
So, we want to see a resolution on the Nexus between Animal Welfare and the Environment passed at the United Nations, and we want to see Animal Welfare included in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Finally, I have just been awarded an MBE in the King’s New Year Honours list for services to animal welfare, which demonstrates how interfaith work and animal welfare are now being valued by the UK Government and the King.
Animal Interfaith Alliance 