REPRESENTATIVES of Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities gathered for a prayer vigil outside the Treasury last week to press the Government over climate change, before COP28, which starts on Thursday in Dubai.

The group, assembled by the Clive of India memorial last week, was calling on the Government to rein in the activities of UK-based fossil-fuel companies and pay into a Loss and Damage Fund that was agreed last year to deliver financial support to people worst affected by climate change (News, 25 November 2022).

Mark Francis, a member of Christian Climate Action, who was at the vigil, said: “UK political and financial power lies at the heart of this injustice. As communities suffer floods, fires, and drought, some of our wealthiest corporations make vast profits from a system that stokes climate chaos. Fossil-fuel giants and their investors are pursuing vast new reserves of oil, gas and coal, pushing our climate further beyond safe limits.”

The Revd Vanessa Elston, a pioneer priest in Southwark diocese, said: “I’m really motivated about climate justice because I believe at the heart of the Christian faith is this act of repentance. The act of turning, to name what is wrong in our world and that goes beyond just our personal sense of what we might want to change in our own lives, it goes to the systemic systems of injustice and wrongdoing.”