IT sounds like a set-up for a joke: An imam, a priest, and a monk walk into a room. Add a rabbi, a pandit, and an Orang Asli tok batin, and most people would expect a punchline about their differences. In Kuala Lumpur in October 2026 that room became real, and the punchline was not what anyone expected.
From Oct 12 to 15, Sunway University hosted the Global Tipping Points Conference 2026 (GTP2026), the first time the gathering had come to Asia. Scientists warned that Earth’s systems are nearing irreversible thresholds, but the conference gave equal weight to positive tipping points: the moments when societies move quickly towards something better.
During the conference, the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health launched its multi-faith toolkit on planetary health, which draws on eight faith traditions to help faith leaders, organisations, and communities engage with planetary health issues.
Why should a conference on Earth’s climate tipping points make room for faith leaders?
As a doctor and humanitarian, I have worked alongside families after earthquakes, through floods and famine, and in the aftermath of war. Again and again, when tents and rations ran short, I saw people leaning on something deeper: belief, ritual, tradition, the conviction that they were not alone. A congregation that prays together also rebuilds together. Faith was how people endured, and it remains part of daily life for the great majority of the world’s population.
We are facing a planetary crisis: a heating climate, collapsing biodiversity, and poisoned air, soil, and water. Climate change is the most damaging of these, harming all forms of life as well as our wellbeing and our prosperity. The crisis demands the same endurance from us all. We already know most of the solutions; what is missing is not knowledge, but will, with the attitudes and behaviours that follow from it.
Meanwhile, falsehoods spread in seconds, and many people no longer know whom to believe. Yet the doctor, the nurse, the ustaz, and the priest still command a credibility that politicians envy.
Tipping-point science explains why that credibility is important. Social systems, like physical ones, can flip; experiments suggest that once a committed minority of roughly a quarter adopts a new norm, the rest of the group often follows.
But positive tipping points need ignition: messengers people believe, values people share, and networks that move together. Places of worship across this country offer all three.
The toolkit sets out to harness that. We gathered teachings from seven of the world’s major religions, as well as indigenous wisdom and intercultural knowledge, on how humans should treat the natural world and each other. The result was strikingly consistent. No tradition we studied treats the Earth as disposable. Each one has a specific veneration for the Earth and asks us to look after our neighbours.
The Quran names humankind khalifah, trustees on earth, and warns against israf, or excess. Christian teaching, echoed in Laudato Si’ (“Praise Be to You”) by the late Pope Francis, calls for stewardship of creation. Buddhism emphasises interdependence and restraint. Hindu tradition honours Bhumi Devi, the earth as mother. The Torah places the first humans in the garden “to work it and to keep it”, and forbids felling fruit trees even in war, the root of the principle of bal tashchit (do not destroy or waste). The Orang Asli and the peoples of Sabah and Sarawak have long treated forests and rivers as their holy scriptures, not resources.
The vocabulary differs but the conviction does not.
The toolkit is built for practical use. A khatib can draw on it for a Friday khutbah on heatwaves and floods. A pastor can link creation care to checking on elderly parishioners during extreme heat. A Buddhist teacher can frame mindful consumption as daily practice. In addition, it provides guidance during festive periods as well as offering ways of collaborating across communities.
Together, these actions can shift a nation.
Malaysia has the chance to show what this looks like in practice. Our National Planetary Health Action Plan (NPHAP), introduced in November 2025, rests on four principles. It is humanity-centric, science- enabled, nature-based, and values-driven.
A values-driven plan cannot be delivered by government ministries alone. It needs the surau, the church, the temple, and the gurdwara as partners.
The Rukun Negara opens with “Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan” (Belief in God). With faith communities at the heart of the NPHAP, Malaysia becomes a working model, not another plan on the shelf. What’s more, hosting GTP2026 suggests our region is ready to lead rather than simply absorb the consequences.
I have no illusions. Religion has been misused to divide as well as to unite, and no sermon can substitute for clean energy, sound regulation, or adaptation finance. But people rarely change because of a chart. They change when someone they respect tells them it is right.
So, back to the room. The imam, the priest, and the monk did not come looking for a punchline. They came ready to work, and now they are waiting for the rest of us. Perhaps the next conversation about the climate should start not in a ministry, but in a place of worship. That may be where Malaysia’s own tipping point begins.
Prof Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood, a physician and experienced crisis leader, is the executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University. She is the founder of Mercy Malaysia and has served in leadership roles internationally with the United Nations and Red Cross for the last decade. She writes on Planetary Health Matters once a month in Ecowatch. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
