We, voices from faith communities across the world, join in prayer for meaningful decisions at the climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow.

We pray for courage and compassion to transform those human activities destroying nature and altering the climate system on which our lives depend.

We pray our hearts to reject fear and embrace love, hope and transformation for a more healthy, safe, clean and sustainable world. We pray for strength that our lives be patterns and examples.

We pray for protection of climate activists and environmental defenders, who often risk their health, if not their lives, to break silence.

We pray for protection of the poor and most vulnerable communities, those least responsible yet most affected by our insufficient climate action.

We pray that our leaders listen to grasp the urgency expressed, in the latest science, and to guide our economic systems to reject dependence on extraction, exploitation and accumulation through dispossession.

We pray for wisdom, courage and compassion in our climate negotiators, to find shared solutions together that honour needs of the poorest, while reflecting meaningful action from the richest and highest emitters.

We pray the developed countries will lead in greenhouse gas emissions and climate finance, as they promised in the Paris Agreement.

We pray leaders in all countries will do all they can to rapidly reduce extraction and burning of

fossil fuels, and promote sustainable economic, social and political systems to stabilize global temperature rise at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

We pray for an inclusive conference, in which the voices of the least powerful are heard alongside the most powerful.

We pray, in this pandemic time, that access to vaccines is a human right for all, and that delegates attending the COP remain healthy and covid-free.

Adapted from PRAYER BY LINDSEY FIELDER COOK, QUAKER

Australian Religious Response to Climate Change