Churches remind COP31 of lives behind the data, says Rev. Charissa Suli

Churches remind COP31 of lives behind the data, says Rev. Charissa Suli

valter

Thu, 11/12/2026 - 06:23

When Pacific peoples speak about climate, they speak about land, ocean, and ancestors, says Rev. Charissa Suli, president of the Uniting Church in Australia. On some islands, she says, the water is rising. Suli is at COP31, the 31st UN climate conference, in Antalya, Türkiye, as a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) delegation. She says the churches have a task there that negotiators do not have: to remind the people in the rooms of the human lives behind the data. The WCC spoke with her about faith, the Pacific, and what she wants young people to know.

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Photo: Valter Hugo Muniz/WCC

Suli, who has led the Uniting Church in Australia, a WCC member church, as president since 2024, calls herself “ a daughter of the Moana,” the word for the ocean in many Pacific languages.

Fiji, Tuvalu, and Australia hosted the Pre-COP, the meeting of ministers that prepares the negotiations, in Nadi, Fiji, on 5–8 October. Pacific countries asked there to keep the 1.5°C limit on global warming within reach, to make climate…