Insights

Regrounding Climate Action: The Global Ethical Stocktake at COP30

Clara Chavez-Ives & Rosie Semlyen November 21, 2025

The Global Ethical Stocktake seeks to move ethical discernment into the heart of climate policymaking. Conceived in the lead-up to the United Nations climate conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, the GES took shape through six Regional Dialogues and countless grassroots dialogues (Self-Organized Dialogues). At COP30, the insights and messages that emerged in the GES process were represented by global and community leaders, Indigenous peoples and advocates, faith communities, youth and

“Deeping the Moral Force”: Science and Spiritual Leaders Convene Global Ethical Stocktake Dialogue

Ned Joyner November 20, 2025

“The moral compass and the ethical will for change remain elusive—yet on the horizon, because people realize something is missing. We have to deepen the moral force. The spiritual, the moral, the ethical need to be infused with the policy, science and law that are driving climate responses.” Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder of Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, opened a powerful online forum hosted by Center for Earth

A Movement Grounded in Love: CEE Hosts “Sacred Resistance” Book Dialogue

Timothy Cross November 20, 2025

“What are you fighting for? What are you fighting against?” Scholar-activist Mark Clatterbuck asked these questions when introducing “Sacred Resistance: Eco-Activism and the Rise of New Spiritual Communities” (Orbis Books, 2025) on Tuesday, October 21, at a dialogue in Union Theological Seminary’s Burke Library. Nearly 40 people crowded into the library to hear about the collection, which is built around five case studies of spiritually-based eco-activism written by activists leading

Toward a Spiritual Awakening: The North America Global Ethical Stocktake

Clara Chavez-Ives & Rosie Semlyen November 3, 2025

“Our survival depends on a spiritual transformation, as much as a technical revolution.” SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and Potawatomi writer and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer gave this advice during the North America Dialogue of the Global Ethical Stocktake on September 19, 2025, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In the lead-up to the annual UN climate conference (COP30), where countries negotiate actions and commitments to

Changing Paradigms, Protecting Nature: Ecocide in International Law

Allegra Lovejoy October 8, 2025

As the global environmental crisis intensifies, new environmental law paradigms are gaining momentum, offering stronger tools to protect the natural world as well as ensure justice and accountability. Among these emerging approaches is the growing movement to recognize ecocide as an international crime, which has advanced alongside efforts to establish legal rights of nature. Both movements seek to enshrine in law values that many people hold dear, but are not

UN Plastics Treaty Falters as World Struggles to Break Free from Plastic

Rosie Semlyen September 25, 2025

From August 5–15, 2025, government delegates, scientists and civil society representatives reconvened in Geneva to resume the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2), tasked with developing the world’s first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution. Hopes were high in 2022, when the international community voted for Resolution 5/14—an ambitious global agreement addressing the full life cycle of plastics, from production and design to disposal. But by the close