IECLB climate activist Jorge Fernando Cunha at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. Photo: LWF/A. Hillert
Jorge Fernando Cunha, youth leader with the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil
(LWI) - A medical student and an active member of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB), Jorge Fernando Cunha was part of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) delegation to the UN climate conference, COP30, that took place in Belém, Brazil, earlier this month.
It was a groundbreaking experience for the 25-year-old, who also participated in an LWF Peace Messengers training held in Guatemala in May this year. His experience at COP marked a high point for him, the culmination of a journey which began way back in primary school, where he and some school friends embarked on an environmental awareness campaign to “teach” adults about the damage being done to planet Earth.
Today, his research focuses on children’s health and education, with the idea of working in paediatric medicine when he has finished his studies. And although he only discovered the Lutheran church during the COVID-19 lockdown, his Christian faith forms a vital foundation for both his professional life and his passion for preserving the earth for future generations.
Tell us a bit about yourself and where you come from?
Yes, I’m a fourth-year medical student and I live in São Luís, the capital of the state of Maranhão in north-eastern Brazil. I was born and grew up here, but my grandparents on both sides came from rural areas and worked in the fishing industry. We don’t live in the very poorest part of town, but it’s not the wealthy side of the city either.
I do research into the health and education of children and teenagers, and I am a part of the International Federation of Medical Students Associations. We have a committee dedicated to human rights and peace, and I am a regional coordinator for that work. I am also president of the board of our church community and represent them on the IECLB’s working group to draw up a socio-environmental policy which will be published next year.
You didn’t grow up in the church, did you?
No, my family was Catholic and then later, we moved to a Pentecostal church but that didn’t speak to me on a theological level. During the pandemic, I joined an online session of the Lutheran church and realized that this was the place where I could live out my faith. I usually say that I was a Lutheran all my life, but I just didn’t discover the church until then.
The church is actually in my neighborhood, but our community is only 20 years old, so we don’t have many people who have grown up with the church. It is a small community with less than 50 registered members, but we have visitors and other people who come to worship with us every Sunday.
Where does your passion for climate justice come from?
When I was only about seven or eight years old, my mother gave me one of those school notebooks that had information written on the sides of the pages about garbage disposal, water pollution, or climate change. As a child, I thought that obviously, other people don’t know about this, because if they did, they would have done something to stop it by now.
With my friends, I started a neighborhood group of children who met in my home and shared some snacks while we discussed how we could let other people know what was happening to our planet. We got some folders with the information that we wrote out by hand and put them into the mailboxes of our neighbors’ houses.
That’s how it started for me, but later at our state school my professors were concerned about attacks that were happening against indigenous people. We had discussions about land rights and about the importance of preserving indigenous culture to help preserve the planet. Before studying medicine, I also went to law school for four years where I learned about environmental law. Here in Latin America, nature is increasingly seen as a subject of rights and that was life-changing for me as I started to see things in a different way.
What was it like for you to attend a COP meeting for the first time?
When I joined the church in 2020, I got involved with a youth campaign for environmental justice. For almost two years, we took part in actions to promote recycling or public speaking or promoting green ideas on social media. I was always interested in going to COP and I was part of the online LWF delegation last year as I couldn’t get a passport in time to attend the meeting.
This year was my first time at any international event of this kind and it was groundbreaking for me because it was a place of so much hope seeing so many people fighting for climate justice. That was a really powerful experience for me.
You talk about hope, but many people at COP were disappointed with the outcomes?
Yes, I was also disappointed to see how some people try to go back on decisions or proposals made a few years ago. But at the same time, for me it was a place of hope because I could see how many people there are working for change, taking the ideas of climate justice forward. So even now that COP30 has ended, I can still feel the strength of those people who continue to work for these ideals.
What are the next steps that you’ll be taking to continue this work?
As part of our church’s youth program here in Brazil, we coordinated a project called ‘COP of the Evangelical Youth’ supporting the presence of 14 young people at the conference in Belém. We organized devotional and spirituality sessions, as well as workshops to prepare them to go back to their communities, their churches, and ensure that climate justice is integrated into all our lives and beliefs as Christians.
We discussed ways of supporting them to create their own projects to have an environmental impact, how to transform their ideas into actions, how to find funding and so on. Some of them want to work on solar panels, or collect rainwater for use in church, or design community gardens. Others plan to talk to local companies about how to protect the planet while saving money at the same time. I’m hoping to support some of them with the next steps for these different projects.
At the same time, I realize how people don’t always understand how environmental justice relates to their personal, their family or their community life. So now I am planning to do some informative posts on our Instagram to show how climate justice relates to every single area of life.
Beyond politics and economics, how do you think that voices of faith can make a difference in this work for environmental justice?
In the COP negotiations themselves, it’s hard to see the faith groups being represented, and I’m not sure if that is the right place for them to be. But I think that spirituality affects all aspects of our lives, whether people believe in God or not. Spirituality is something that we all bring with us and it gives us strength to keep fighting and working for what is right.
As Christians, I believe we should be the ones who keep on hoping, who don’t give up. We might be tired, we might need to rest a bit, but we don’t give up. As people of faith, we must look into the souls of all those who are struggling and tell them that we are here for you. We will help you to continue this journey for more justice in the world.
Earlier this year you were also a part of the LWF Peace Messengers training that took place for the first time in Latin America, weren’t you?
Yes, that was another really powerful experience for me because we were given the tools to work more effectively on conflict resolution and promoting peace in our different contexts. We discussed many topics including human rights, gender and climate justice, intergenerational communion, but also what it means to belong to a global communion of Lutheran churches.
During that training, we were encouraged to address areas of conflict in our own local or national churches that could use some peacebuilding efforts. At the end, we were invited to submit a project for LWF funding and I was very happy that my proposal was accepted to work on mitigating regional differences in the IECLB. I will be working with the support of volunteers from the IECLB youth and I am very excited about this.
What is the most important lesson that you are taking away from these experiences as part of the LWF family?
At a technical level, at COP I went to a lot of health-related sessions and realized how much more I need to study to be able to do something to support people struggling with the effects of climate change. At the start I was very worried about how I would understand and really participate in the proceedings, as it’s not really my area of study. But then I realized how important it is to listen and learn from others of different backgrounds, cultures and ideas.
The other really heartwarming lesson that I learned from both experiences is that I am not alone. For our generation, we are always surrounded by information and ideas, but I think we feel increasingly isolated and alone. So, this was the most powerful lesson for me to know that I am not alone, but that I am part of this beautiful communion of people of faith.
