wfn.org | WCC FEATURE: Good news and bad news on climate change

["WCC Media" <Media@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches - Feature

Contact: + 41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release - 18/11/2009 16:22:53

>GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

>By Mark Beach (*)

Free photos and audio interviews available, see below

The World Council of Churches (WCC) United Nations Advocacy Week
came with a bit of good news and bad news on climate change.

>First, the bad news:

A United Nations (UN) official told some 80 participants
gathered for the annual global advocacy week that it appears
there will be no binding agreement on climate change signed by
world governments at the upcoming Copenhagen climate change
meetings in December.

This means "climate disruption" will continue unabated "unless
governments can ramp up the courage to address it," Olav Kjorven,
assistant secretary-general and director of the Bureau for
Development Policy at the UN Development Programme, told the
group in an opening keynote address on Monday, 16 November.

The WCC UN Advocacy Week, held in New York City, USA, from 15 to
20 November, brings together church activists from around the
world to explore several topics, including the situation of
people displaced by climate change, indigenous concerns around
the world and continuing violence in Colombia. It is also a time
when the activists build contacts and visit officials at various
UN missions in the city.

The group meets in the Church Center for the United Nations
across the street from the UN General Assembly, standing
literally in the shadow of the towering UN office and
administrative complex.

>So what was the good news?

There is still a chance something significant will be decided in
Copenhagen, so the church needs to put on pressure for an
agreement to be met.

"Are we ready to be the counter-culture church of our calling?"
asked the Rev. Elenie Poulos in an opening sermon to the group on
Sunday evening, 15 November. "Now maybe more than ever, the world
needs the kind of leadership the church has to offer."

Poulos is a Uniting Church minister in Australia and a member of
the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs.

"This is the leadership the world needs – a leadership of faith
and justice that is a living demonstration that a different life
is possible," she said.

Kjorven echoed Poulos, saying that religious groups around the
world have yet to realize the real impact they could have on
moving governments to address climate change immediately as well
as other justice concerns.

"There is another simple fact," Kjorven said in his
presentation. "You have an enormous economic clout as well that
is too rarely recognized even amongst yourselves." 

"You reach more people on a regular basis than any other
institutions in the world today," he added.

Kjorven pointed to the fact that religious groups, including
Christian churches, own roughly 8 percent of the land in the
world, much of which is forested. "In the financial markets,
religious institutions are the third largest actor through
pension funds."

When the faith groups decide high carbon activity "is a sin, to
put it in your terms" he said, and start to shift from high
carbon to low carbon lifestyles, "it will send shock waves
through the financial markets."

>"Just do it"

The fact that religious groups and in particular the churches
have enormous potential to impact climate change and in general
influence leaders and dismantle global injustice was not missed
in a keynote address Monday by Lois M. Dauway (
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1634/nccusa-honours-wcc-execut.html
), a member of the WCC Central Committee and the interim deputy
general secretary for the General Board for Global Ministries of
the United Methodist Church.

But Dauway wondered if the church was up to the task.

Saying she has been feeling "testy" lately about what the church
needs to do to dismantle global injustice, she told the group the
church needs to adopt a theological approach to deal with justice
issues such as climate change.

"I call it the Nike School of Theology," she said, referring to
the well-known manufacturer of sports and recreational shoes.

Borrowing from the Nike brand slogan to make the point of what
the church needs to do, Dauway said that it was time for action,
"Just do it, just do it!"

She told the group that churches and the ecumenical community
have the theological wherewithal to dismantle global injustice,
but "we simply do not have the will."

Recognizing that the church has done many good things, she
challenged the group to do more. "If we in the churches are truly
going to make a change in this world, we must realize that it
takes more than eloquent resolutions and sermons on peace and
justice," she said.

It takes listening to those who suffer and joining with them,
"sometimes leading, sometimes being led" and pooling the
resources of the churches. "We could indeed turn the world upside
down in the name of Jesus," Dauway said. "Lord knows we have the
power, so let’s just do it."

"The planet and its people are running out of time, and we need
to do more than just resist the dominant paradigms," Poulos said
in her sermon. "We must transform them. We need an economic
system that is not based on greed, materialism, individualism and
the fear of scarcity."

Kjorven said that given the collapse in the Copenhagen
agreement, there were things to salvage at the December meetings,
"such as a framework for a future agreement", possibly by 2010.

But he emphasized that now was the time for the religious groups
to step up. "We need a much stronger voice when it comes to the
social justice aspects of climate change," he said. "And we need
change for the long term."

The advocacy meetings, which are sponsored by the WCC United
Nations Liaison Office ( http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=3257 ),
continue through the remainder of the week with most of the
visits to UN missions in New York to take place on Thursday.

(*) Mark Beachis WCC director of communications.

>[942 words]

Media contact in New York: Mark Beach, +41 (0)79 507 6363
(mobile)

More on the United Nations Advocacy Week of the WCC:
http://unaw.oikoumene.org

Photo gallery (high resolution versions available upon
request):
http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=7363

Sound recording of the keynote address by Olav Kjorven:
http://www.oikoumene.org/fileadmin/files/wcc-main/sounds/2009/unaw/091116kjorven.mp3

Sound recording of the keynote address by Lois M. Dauway:
http://www.oikoumene.org/fileadmin/files/wcc-main/sounds/2009/unaw/091116dauway.mp3

>WCC work on climate change:
>http://www.oikoumene.org/climatechange

Opinions expressed in WCC Features do not necessarily reflect
WCC policy. This material may be reprinted freely, providing
credit is given to the author. 

Additional information:Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363 media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from
the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.