'The Sun and Wind Are Willing': Faith and Indigenous Leaders Make Moral Case for Energy Justice

A panel of faith leaders, Indigenous voices, and global advocates will argue that the world’s failure to deliver energy security.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, May 25, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A panel of faith leaders, Indigenous voices, and global advocates will argue that the world’s failure to deliver energy security for all is not a problem of supply or technology but a failure of political will and moral imagination, in a public webinar hosted by the G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20) on June 4.
“God has already provided more than enough renewable energy to power human and planetary flourishing. The sun keeps showing up for work every day. The wind has not gone on strike,” said the Rev. Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith and one of the webinar’s speakers. “What’s missing is the political will and moral imagination to ensure that every child can study at night, every clinic can refrigerate medicine, all women can cook without inhaling soot, and every community can thrive without poisoning the air and destabilizing the climate. The sun and wind are willing to power the world. The question is whether our politics and moral imagination are willing to let them.”

The webinar, “Spiritual Exploration of Possible Pathways for Providing Energy Security for All,” is being convened by IF20’s Anti-Racism Initiative and will run at 14:00 EDT on June 4. Organizers say it is intended to surface a perspective they argue has been largely absent from mainstream energy-justice scholarship: faith.

“A just energy transition is not only an institutional and fiscal project but a moral and cultural one,” said Tariq Al-Olaimy, co-founder of FutureFaith and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Faith in Action. “Faith communities are already among the largest non-state holders of land, capital, and trust on Earth, with the multi-century time horizons this transition requires. They are where spiritual imagination meets the operational capacity to deliver energy security for all.”

Recent scholarship has documented how racial disparities are embedded throughout the production, governance, and impacts of global energy systems, and how energy transitions themselves can reproduce colonial patterns when they ignore Indigenous rights, historical trauma, and sacred land. Speakers will argue that the faith voice—which shapes how billions of people understand obligation, restraint, and the common good—is rarely brought into dialogue with anti-racist, Indigenous, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives on these issues.

Sima Luipert, a Namibian human-rights activist and fourth-generation survivor of the German colonial genocide against the Nama and Ovaherero peoples, has become a prominent critic of Namibia’s green hydrogen agenda, arguing that projects marketed as sustainable risk reproducing colonial patterns when they ignore Indigenous rights and the sacred significance of places such as Shark Island. She will join the panel alongside Aisake Casimira, Dean of Strategic Visioning at Pasifika Communities University in Suva, Fiji.

Ja:no’s Bowen, Faith Keeper of the Cold Spring Longhouse of the Seneca Nation and a member of the IF20 Anti-Racism Initiative, will moderate the discussion.

“As human energy needs continue to grow, we must remember to ground ourselves in spiritual teachings connecting us to Mother Earth in ways that inspire us to support her well-being, so that we too remain healthy,” Bowen said. “We must ask ourselves how we create and distribute enough energy for all people while causing minimal damage to the Earth.”

Prominent religious leaders have increasingly spoken to this challenge. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis warned of a “superdevelopment of a wasteful and consumerist kind” coexisting with dehumanizing deprivation. In Al-Mizan: Covenant for the Earth, Muslim scholars critique a global economy in which the wealthiest one percent hold more than the 4.6 billion people who make up sixty percent of humanity. The World Council of Churches has denounced the modern global economic system as a form of neo-colonialism. The June 4 webinar will draw on these traditions and others as it considers how spiritual imagination can underwrite the operational work of a just transition.

Register for the free webinar at: https://bit.ly/pathways-energy-security

Speakers will include:
• Ja:no’s Bowen (Moderator) — Faith Keeper of the Cold Spring Longhouse and member of the Beaver clan of the Seneca Nation; Director of the Seneca Nation Department of Seneca Language Teacher Support and Community Outreach; member of the G20 Interfaith Forum Anti-Racism Initiative; recipient of an Ed.M. and M.P.P. from Harvard University
• Fletcher Harper — Episcopal priest and Executive Director of GreenFaith; co-founder of Shine, a faith-philanthropy-NGO campaign to end energy poverty with renewable energy by 2030; Ashoka Fellow (2011); author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Earth
• Tariq Al-Olaimy — Co-founder of FutureFaith; member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Faith in Action; advisor to Greenpeace MENA, the G20 Global Land Initiative, and Oceans5 on engaging faith communities in economic and ecosystem restoration
• Aisake Casimira — Dean of Strategic Visioning at Pasifika Communities University (formerly the Pacific Theological College) in Suva, Fiji; researcher in socio-political analysis and biblical theology; native of the island of Rotuma, Fiji
• Sima Luipert — Namibian development practitioner and human-rights activist; fourth-generation survivor representing the Nama Traditional Leaders Association; advocate for historical justice, reparations, and Indigenous-rights perspectives on Namibia’s green hydrogen agenda

About the G20 Interfaith Forum
The G20 Interfaith Forum seeks global solutions by collaborating with religious thought leaders and political representatives to help shape the overall G20 agenda. It draws on the vital roles that religious institutions and beliefs play in world affairs, reflecting a rich diversity of institutions, ideas, and values. Through its extensive network of networks, it helps prioritize key global policy goals and point toward practical means of implementation at every level of society. For more information, please visit www.g20interfaith.org.

Marianna Richardson
G20 Interfaith Forum
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