wfn.org | "We Don't Want to Be Covered by Water," Says Island Bishop

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8-October-1996 
 
96378  "We Don't Want to Be Covered by Water," Says Island Bishop 
 
                      by Jerry L. Van Marter 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA--Leslie Boseto knows what the failure of the industrialized nations 
to reduce their emissions of "greenhouse gases" means for his island home 
of Choiseul, one of the Solomon Islands: "We don't want to be covered by 
water." 
 
     And so Boseto, who is a bishop of the United Church of Papua New 
Guinea and the Solomon Islands and a president of the World Council of 
Churches (WCC), is a leading proponent of the WCC's efforts to pressure 
governments into adopting sterner controls over their emissions that cause 
"global warming." 
 
     Next February, the WCC will hand over to the governments of 15 
industrialized nations "climate change petitions" from their citizens 
demanding the implementation of controls of emissions causing global 
warming.  All the petitions also will be presented to the United Nations in 
March. 
 
     "The time seems right for sustained church action" to persuade the 
governments of developed countries to take specific steps to reverse 
climate changes, Lukas Vischer, a retired WCC official who has spearheaded 
a "climate change" campaign among the WCC's 332 member churches, told ENI 
in an interview in mid-September. 
 
     Progress in the effort to reverse global warming -- and resulting 
rises in sea levels worldwide -- cannot come too soon for church leaders of 
island nations.  Boseto told ENI: "The high tides are a little higher now." 
People in his region "have not recognized it before now, but they are 
beginning to ask questions about why the weather is not so predictable 
anymore." 
 
     Vischer said that people and governments in industrialized nations 
needed to hear from people in places like Choiseul.  "It is much harder to 
convince people in industrialized nations to notice what global warming is 
doing to the planet," he explained. 
 
     Decertification in Africa and salinization caused by the flooding of 
low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh are some of the other results of 
global warming that are threatening growing numbers of nations. 
 
     More than 150 nations have ratified the Climate Change Convention 
adopted by the United Nations in 1992.  But the convention "regrettably 
doesn't define clear targets for [emission] reductions," Vischer said, 
adding that a follow-up meeting in Berlin in 1995 "failed to make things 
more precise." 
 
     In response, the WCC launched its petition campaign last February to 
bring pressure by the churches on the governments of the 15 most 
industrialized nations to back up their ratification with concrete action. 
 
     The primary culprit, Vischer said, was the United States.  Though the 
U.S. signed the convention, he added, then president George Bush resisted 
specific steps, declaring that "the U.S.  standard of living is 
non-negotiable."  Since then, Vischer said, "everyone else has hid behind 
the U.S. 
 no.'" 
 
     But at a recent second follow-up conference to the convention signing 
in Geneva, Vischer said, "U.S. representatives sent a pretty clear signal 
that if this fall's [U.S. presidential] election goes well, some progress 
is possible." They were apparently referring to the possible reelection of 
Bill Clinton.  
 
     The WCC petition campaign is producing two benefits, according to 
Vischer: influencing governments to take more decisive action and "changing 
the consciousness of Christians around the world.  Churches and nations are 
aware of the problem -- the question is how far they will go." 
 
     Leslie Boseto and Lukas Vischer were in Geneva for the Central 
Committee meeting of the World Council of Churches.  

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