At the mouth of the Amazon river in Belém, Brazil, over 50,000 participants from among government officials, the United Nations, and civil society gathered together at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), eager to bridge the gap between commitments to address climate change and their implementation. While longstanding and deepening divisions across the international community posed barriers to political will, this year’s COP raised new questions and possibilities, within civil society and among UN Member States.

“This COP felt different,” said Bahá’í International Community (BIC) Representative Daniel Perell, in an interview following the conference. Perell, who attended COP along with seven other BIC delegates from Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, said that, “The conversation is shifting from dichotomy to complexity.”

“With a few noteworthy exceptions, it is less about what is necessary and more about the ‘how.’ That maturity is progress,” Perell added.

From the grassroots level to offsite events, the national space called the  Green Zone to the international Blue Zone events, a key focus of the BIC’s formal engagement across 13 events was the Global Ethical Stocktake (GES), a new initiative advanced by the COP30 Presidency, headed this year by host government Brazil, inviting diverse populations worldwide to reflect on the ethical dimensions of climate change.

In all these spaces, the BIC emphasized that while climate action is often guided by economic, scientific, and political forces, ethics and values have often been missing and can have an equal or even greater impact. 

“A just transition requires not only finance and science, but moral clarity. The Global Ethical Stocktake is a seed at this stage—but it’s growing. And we’re committed to helping it take root,” Perell said.

In an official side event, titled “From Principles to Policy: National Pathways for Addressing Loss & Damage,”  hosted by the BIC together with the government of Vanuatu and other partners, BIC delegate from Brazil Vahíd Vahdat highlighted the importance of scientific capabilities in navigating climate risks. At the same time, he urged the international community to adopt a holistic approach: 

“We will only be able to face these challenges if we also draw on our best qualities as a human civilization,” Vahdat said, during the side event. “For example, the capacity for dialogue, the capacity to see ourselves as one single big family, the capacity to trust in the ability of every community and person in every place, to have trustworthy systems and to be creative.”

At the Global Ethical Stocktake Pavilion, the BIC co-hosted a dialogue titled, “The Role of Faith Communities in Building an Ethic of Care and Climate Justice,” which showcased how dozens of grassroots conversations—ethical stocktakes—were able to filter up to the highest levels at COP30. 

“By extending solidarity beyond our own community, both geographically beyond borders and generationally thinking of those to come, we can tap into deeper stores of motivation for meaningful action,” Perell said at the GES Pavilion.

In the Green Zone, where civil society worked to bring the climate dialogue closer to the lives of grassroots communities, the Brazilian Bahá’í community hosted a discussion circle in Portuguese titled, “Convergence in Diversity: uniting diverse social actors around shared environmental goals.” The event focused on the role of children and youth and the ethical dimension of climate change, building on conversations previously held in Brasília and at Brazil’s National Congress.

“Here at the COP, we have had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with different civil society organizations and media outlets that, in some way, share … common concerns,” said Luiza  Cavalcanti, Director of the Office of External Affairs of the Bahá’ís of Brazil “One of them relates to the participation of children and adolescents in the defense of the environment, bringing this group to the center of the climate agenda.”.

“We understand that these young people are not just the future—they are already in their communities, developing different actions to respond to and protect the environment.” 

Meanwhile, outside the formal setting of COP30, BIC delegates explored with other stakeholders how faith, spirituality, and moral imagination can drive courageous climate action, at an event at the TED House titled, “The climate crisis is a spiritual crisis: A multifaith Global Ethical Stocktake.” 

In framing the event, Nika Sinai, Director of the Office of External Affairs of the Bahá’ís of Australia said: “Reducing emissions requires the technical solutions we are familiar with, but it also requires a sense of compassion and justice to understand that our choices as emitters and consumers of energy ripples across the earth and impacts both our fellow humans and the planet that we share.” 

“Therefore, we combine these two complementary systems of knowledge—science and religion, the technical and the spiritual—in our efforts to resolve the climate crisis,” Sinai added.

Viewing the Global Ethical Stocktake as the green shoots of an idea to be nurtured at future COPs, the BIC looks forward to exploring how a consideration of ethics can provide the moral clarity and intrinsic motivation needed for meaningful climate implementation and a just transition.