wfn.org | Adventists Support UN Ecology Call

[APD_Info_Schweiz@compuserve.com]

August 20, 2000
Adventist Press Service (APD)
Christian B. Schaeffler, Editor-in-chief
CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland
Fax +41-61-261 61 18
APD@stanet.ch
http://www.stanet.ch/APD

Adventist Church Supports UN Call for Better 
Management of Natural Resources in Central Africa

Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.A.   The August 3 call 
by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for 
better management of tropical forests in Central 
Africa has been supported by leaders at the Seventh-
day Adventist Church world headquarters.

"The region's lack of institutional capacity and 
inefficient law enforcement favours the illegal 
trade in forest products over sustainable forest 
management," says the U.N. news report. "Governments 
of the region have a limited capacity to help 
finance projects aimed at developing their forest 
ecosystems in a manner that will be sustainable. 
Complicated bureaucratic procedures and poor 
coordination are also to blame. These factors 
combine to threaten tropical forests and allow 
unsustainable forest management practices to 
persist. In response, the Secretary-General 
recommends that rural people and those involved in 
private industry be given a greater role in forest 
management. He also stresses the need to step up 
measures against illegal logging and poaching."

Matthew Bediako, general secretary of the Adventist 
world church agrees. "As a church organization, we 
take very seriously the Christian principle of being 
stewards of this earth and its resources," he says. 
"The misuse of the natural world, the destruction of 
Creation, is part of the human problem that must be 
addressed. We support attempts to improve not only 
the spiritual side of humanity, but also its 
physical and material needs. To destroy the 
environment brings added poverty and
misery."

Bediako, who like Annan comes from Ghana, says the 
church is helping through its aid organization, the 
Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). 
"Over the past ten years ADRA has met the challenge 
of de-forestation by planting more than 11 million 
trees," says Bediako. "The destruction of the 
environment in West Africa has been immense. 
International logging companies have clear-felled 
most of the rainforest from Nigeria west to Senegal. 
We are trying to heal some of the damage."

The loss of such a natural habitat and resource has 
not only impacted plants, animals, and villagers, 
but has aggravated arid weather conditions. Without 
the forests to help bring moisture and prevent 
erosion of the soil, the threat of drought 
increases.

"To date 32,000 farmers and their families have been 
assisted with tree seedlings, which will provide 
poverty reduction and food security, along with 
environmental protection," says George Baiden, ADRA 
Ghana country director. "We see this program as a 
vital method to greatly improve the quality of life 
of villagers in the community and to reverse the 
damage done to the ecology." (236/2000)