WCC NEWS: From Chernobyl to tsunami stones in Japan

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World Council of Churches - News

FROM CHERNOBYL’S LEGACY TO TSUNAMI STONES IN JAPAN: LIFE-SAVING LESSONS
ARE ON CHURCH PEACE CONFERENCE AGENDA

For immediate release: 26 April 2011

The Chernobyl disaster of 25 years ago remains a human and environmental
tragedy so severe the consequences will continue for centuries. Its
anniversary this week is especially timely given the current emergency in
Japan which echoes some of Chernobyl’s hard lessons. To learn them would
honour those who suffer from the past and could save lives in the future.

Lessons behind both tragedies will figure in an extraordinary conference
next month in Kingston, Jamaica where church representatives and partner
organizations will debate a broad vision of peace. The conference theme is
“Just Peace”; topics, like “Peace with the earth: so that life is
sustained”, will point participants toward truths that Chernobyl and
Fukushima deny.

A German theologian writing in advance of the Kingston conference calls
Christians to care for creation as a gift from God. “My dream is that
one day, the religions of the world will flow like fresh water (...)
bringing the water of life from eternity into time,” writes Jürgen
Moltmann in the March 2011 issue of The Ecumenical Review
(Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=271dcd65ce122a6b5445
).

Nuclear catastrophe turns water and wind into destructive forces.
Contamination from the 1986 nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl rendered an area
the size of Switzerland unsafe for normal life for 300 years, according to
scientific studies and Ukraine's legislature. What are the essential
lessons behind a forecast so severe?

As a fellowship of churches with members in over 100 countries, the World
Council of Churches (WCC) is affected by disasters in different places.
That was the case for member churches after Chernobyl and is the case
again today in the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan.

“Emergency evacuations of tens of thousands of people, desperate measures
to control dangerous materials, the spread of harmful radiation, and the
prospect that some survivors will never be able to go home – these are
echoes of Chernobyl for us in what is happening in Japan,” said WCC
general secretary Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit. “Our hearts go out to the
people still affected in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, as to people in
Japan.”

“Churches have a solid record in emergency aid. We see it is a ministry
that works in parallel with disaster prevention and long-term
development,” Tveit said. “But when the duration of the damage is so
great, as around Chernobyl, and when a highly developed country faces
devastation on such a scale, as in Japan, serious re-thinking is needed.
These events train our prayers and our planning toward what societies and
churches must do differently to keep people safe and protect the
environment.”

The 1000-participant gathering for the WCC International Ecumenical Peace
Convocation (IEPC) (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=cded64bca0f806cdc013 ) in Kingston next
month will meet to focus on exactly that. What are the main threats to
peace -- environmental, economic, political and military? What is our role
as citizens and consumers in creating conditions related to complex
disasters?

The WCC conference builds on long-standing ecumenical commitments that link
the integrity of God’s creation with justice and peace, and give
priority to the sustainability of communities and economies. The goal in
Kingston is to challenge churches locally and globally to deepen their
understanding of peace and broaden their collaboration in working for
peace.

Today’s challenges are not all new. Hillsides along the northeast coast
of Japan have hundreds of old stone markers to tell people where to take
refuge if a tsunami strikes. The problem is that these warnings about
high-water levels have often been ignored in present-day Japan. Whole
communities built on coastal flats below these ancestral warning stones
were wiped out by the tsunami of 11 April 2011. Nearly 30,000 are dead or
missing; more than 130,000 are homeless. The five Fukushima nuclear
reactors were built at sea level, behind a strong wall that the tsunami
easily shattered.

“We are all familiar with what has happened in Japan. We know about
short-term actions taken without adequate measures to protect future
generations from the consequences,” said Guillermo Kerber of the WCC
climate change programme (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=894acd7ab18cdb2944bd ). “Even in 
so-called
developed countries with many controls in place, people’s actions can
make themselves and others vulnerable. Rampant development, high levels of
consumption and lifestyles that are not sustainable all play a part,”
Kerber said. “A big change of paradigm is needed.”

The basic document for the convocation in Kingston, “An Ecumenical Call
to Just Peace” (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=3ce10537a02f180124d4
), speaks of the larger issues involved in terms of “lifestyles of mass
extinction” and of “weapons of mass destruction”. Both are
“violent misuses of the energy inherent in Creation”, the Call says,
and both are proliferating. Nuclear power stations, which require
dangerous and militarily sensitive technology and fuels to generate
electricity, are implicated in both trends, notes Jonathan Frerichs who
works on peace and disarmament issues for the WCC.

“Will our descendants be saved from radioactive fallout and contamination
because of what Ukraine and its neighbours have suffered? Or will the
construction of many new power plants continue regardless, increasing
long-term threats to the environment from coal as well as nuclear fuels,
and spreading technology needed for nuclear weapons to more and more
places?” Frerichs asked.

“There is a massive concrete sarcophagus covering the radioactive
wreckage of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Do we take this as a warning?
Will it serve to warn our children about future dangers, like the tsunami
stones in Japan?” he said.

The relevance of Chernobyl and Fukushima to the peace convocation in
Kingston goes beyond environmental and nuclear issues.

“Peace in the Marketplace: so that all may live with dignity” is
another thematic area at the conference. A United Nations study of the
legacy of Chernobyl found that the disaster played a role in the collapse
of the Soviet Union and that, 20 years later, between 100,000 and 200,000
people were still struggling with isolation, poor health and poverty from
the effects of the disaster. The study notes that millions more people
still consider themselves as victims, but that they do not have access to
full and accurate information about the effects of such a catastrophe. The
actual costs, in terms of lives lost, health needs, environmental
remediation and economic redevelopment, are not known and extremely
difficult to determine.

Early estimates of the costs and dangers stemming from Japan’s triple
disaster are already so high as to raise questions there about prospects
for managing a large sovereign debt, and about economies and living
standards that rely on nuclear energy. But the world need only remember
Chernobyl to know that peace with the earth has been compromised.

Website of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=ca100d688b64e4e475d1 (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=464d9f963555cfb327d3 )


WCC climate change programme (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=699674a251cbf0a0562f )

The Ecumenical Review: Subscriptions and orders (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=13192f302433ebb22523
)


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 Olav Fykse Tveit, 
from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.



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