Martin Robra

Martin Robra, Dr. theol., is working with the World Council of Churches. He is at present special advisor to the general secretary. He used to be responsible for the work on ethics and ecology of this fellowship of churches with 348 member churches all around the world. This included the accompaniment of the WCC's Programme on Climate Change, the Ecumenical Water Network and activities on genetic engineering and nanotechnology. From 2007-2013, he served as director of the programme on the Ecumenical Movement in the 21st Century and secretary of the Joint Working Group between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church. He published books and articles both in English and German, e.g. Okumenische Sozialethik, Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus 1994. Before he joined the WCC in 1994, he was a pastor of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia based in Bochum and Witten, Germany. He was a student of the former General Secretary of the WCC, Dr Konrad Raiser. The WCC has focused on climate change since 1988. Considerable efforts were made to galvanize the churches' support for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Information on this work can be found at http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/ecology.html.