Nana Firman is the Muslim outreach director for GreenFaith, an interfaith environmental coalition, and is also the co-founder of the Global Muslim Climate Network. In this op-ed for CNN, Ms. Firman states that “as an Indonesian-born Muslim living in California, it is my faith that compels me to protect our earth” and says it “hurt to see Trump impose an executive order that effectively denies the impacts of climate change I have seen with my own eyes.”
Here are some snippets from her compelling piece:
“Muslim-majority countries around the world are some of the most severely affected by climate change impacts like heat waves, floods, droughts and extreme weather events like the recent famine in Somalia, which has led to more than 16 million people facing food shortages and death. Many Muslims live in parts of the world that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, such as Bangladesh and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Pakistan is another country that is extremely short of freshwater resources. With a continuously increasing of climate crisis, the water availability has decreased severely, which then placed the country as water scarce nation and in turn it will have an adverse influence on poverty.”
“And with last year’s COP 22 taking place in Morocco, the responsibility has shifted to the governments of Muslim majority countries and their religious leaders to step up and play their role in the growing grassroots movement across Muslim communities around the globe, to reverse the effects of climate change. That means phasing out greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, shifting away from fossil fuels to clean sources of energy, including urging the Muslim petropowers and oil-producing nations to take the lead in the transition toward renewable energy based development.”
