Since Prince Philip's death on Friday April 9, aged 99, there has been a huge surge in interest in His Royal Highness's role in inspiring the faiths to take environental action.
Media from around the world have reached out to FaithInvest chief executive Martin Palmer in the last few days to find out more about how Prince Philip inspired the largest civil society environmental movement on the planet – that of the world's faith communities.
"His Royal Highness was the first world leader to understand that the religions of the world could be natural partners for the conservation movement,” says Martin, who was Prince Philip's Religious Advisor on Conservation up to his death.
"Since then, all the major faiths have declared the environment to be a faith issue and now have programmes of practical action on the environment. Much of that would never have happened without the explicit support of Prince Philip."
That inspiration led to the establishment of our founding body, the Alliance of Religions and Conservation in 1995 (of which Martin was Secretary General) and then to the establishment FaithInvest in 2019, after Prince Philip commented that the faiths' resources – buildings, investments, purchasing power, etc – could revolutionise practical action on the environment.
If you would like to find out more, you can read our tribute to him here.
Martin has given many interviews on Prince Philip in recent days. Here is a link to his interview on the BBC's Sunday programme yesterday. The piece runs from minute 36.26 to 43.25, and includes a tribute by Dr Rajwant Singh, on the Sikh community's response to Prince Philip's death.
Martin wrote the reflection on Prince Philip for the BBC's Sunday Service of Thanksgiving for the Duke of Edinburgh, broadcast yesterday. You can read it below.
He will be speaking on BBC Radio 4's Beyond Belief programme at 4.30pm today (Monday April 12). You will also be able to listen to it after the broadcast.