Philippines begins climate change awareness movement called “People’s Pilgrimage”

By Alison Lesley --
28 Jun 2015 --

Yeb Sano will visit many poor countries in his 6-month movement, the “People’s Pilgrimage,” to help them from effects of massive weather catastrophes.

Yeb Sano, former climate change commissioner for the Philippines, is fronting a worldwide, climate awareness movement known as the People’s Pilgrimage. Sano will walk several miles on many continents, culminating with a 60-mile journey ending in Paris.

But the goal of the People’s Pilgrimage isn’t to travel the Earth, it’s to save it from the harmful effects of climate change.

Sano has been highly visible in the global discussion regarding climate change since he gave an emotional speech at the 2013 UN Climate Summit. After witnessing the ravages delivered upon his country by Super Typhoon Haiyan, which killed thousands, Sano was moved to action.

Sano said, “The climate crisis is madness,” the Daily Mail reported.

The goal of the People’s Pilgrimage, as Sano puts it, is to bring awareness to the “moral aspect of climate change,” reported Reuters. And as a Catholic, he is eager to hear what Pope Francis’ encyclical on human ecology entails.

As part of the , Sano has been told to expect the encyclical to focus on combating climate change by addressing the issue of economic inequity around the globe.

Sano will visit many multiple locations where poor countries are struggling to recover from the effects of massive weather catastrophes, such as the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, and also sites where positive measures have been undertaken to help the environment, such as India and Qatar with their moves toward using renewable sources of energy.

It is not only Catholics who await Pope Francis’ message, but also leaders from several different religious groups including Muslims, Hindus, Protestants and Buddhists. It is likely that the very human element of the suffering caused by the aforementioned weather events and sea level rises have caught the attention of these religious groups and it is the plight of the poor in trying to recover that moved them to action.

The People’s Pilgrimage will arrive in Paris in time for the December beginning of a UN Summit designed to create a new treaty to limit global warming.