Creation Care and Faith: Reflections on the People’s Summit

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Elizabeth Hostetter works with the Red UMAVIDA and Elizabeth Vincent with the Center for Ecology and the Andean People (CEPA). Both are friend organizations of Mennonite Central Committee Bolivia.

During the second week of December we, the authors, had the opportunity to attend the UN Conference of the Parts (COP) 20 People’s Summit in Lima, Peru. As part of a delegation from one of MCC’s friend organizations in Bolivia, Uniendo Manos por la Vida, part of the Joining Hands Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA), we participated in a variety of presentations, discussion groups, and demonstrations. The UMAVIDA Network is an organization of NGOs addressing environmental issues ranging from climate change to industrial contamination to food security.

Throughout the activities within the People’s Summit, several important questions were proposed and discussed at length. One of these questions was: “How can faith communities draw from their ethical underpinnings to address our dependence on fossil fuels and their hidden price tag of emissions, accelerating global warming?” During the Summit, many spaces sought to address this question, from workshops such as “Perspectives from the South” to an interreligious vigil, to a meeting with Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, PCUSA Coordinator of Social Witness Ministries and Director of Mission Responsibility Through Investment. All were looking elsewhere for the response that political institutions fail to give to the climate crisis.

Hosted by Peru, the Global South hoped to have its voice heard more loudly at this 20^th COP. Yet in spite of considerable effort from a variety of NGOs, together with the UN, to change the political conversation on climate change, even a skim over news reports reveals words such as “disappointing”. Interviewed by Mariah, a  PCUSA youth representative, Dr Nigel Crawhall from the Network of Engaged Buddhists, succinctly stated the issue,

“I have been following the COP since COP 14. I don’t think this mechanism is capable of finding the solution that we need at the time that we need it. Basically this decision should have been taken twenty years ago… It is not the nature of our political system to respond to long term challenges that require a great deal of compassion and understanding… What is important is there is a worldwide shift of thinking and in attitude. In the absence of the political solution, you are seeing much more human solidarity and cooperation…you have the human family mobilizing itself.”

Considering that our political representation is not earnestly addressing the reality of the climate crisis, we cannot underestimate the impact of collaboration within inter-faith communities in the face of accelerated climate change.

Faith communities can play a significant role in spreading awareness of the impacts and consequences of climate change through their ability to educate on a large scale and with their biblical responsibility of good stewardship and culture of creation care. Existing Sunday school and college courses address topics from conscientious eating to responsible investments. Our God-given responsibility of good stewardship of the earth invites us as churches and faith-based organizations to incorporate environmentally-friendly practices within our institutions.

The Christian faith has a rich heritage of creation care and simple living. This heritage necessarily lead to the responsibility of controlling our ecological impact with our production of waste and emission of harmful gases. We have an opportunity as a faith-based organization to support this ethic of action within the larger response to global warming and climate change causing disasters across the globe today.

Fellow conference participant, Freddy, from Bolivia, summarized the need of a united front to take a stance against climate change,

“In the different spaces of the COP 20 negotiations, there is a diversity of voices. Of them all, the ones that are deepest are the small gatherings that, like ants, build little alternative systems that demand response to the current situation of environmental crisis.

These voices are weak and sometimes imperceptible but they are amplified when joined with other voices, that march together shouting, ‘Water isn’t sold, it’s defended’, ‘turn off your motor, turn on your conscience’, ‘alert, alert, Pachamama (Mother Earth) is awake’- these are shouts from the soul, that demand justice and will not be silenced by the strident sounds of a development system that is modernist, capitalist and colonial.”

The Church has the ability and the history to empower smaller voices and to lend its own voice to climate justice.

It is crucial that as a Church we fulfill our social responsibility to love our neighbors and care for creation. The Church’s action and inaction have a direct impact on those whom we as Christians are biblically mandated to serve. While countries feeling the impacts the most are low-lying poorer countries like Bangladesh (facing the double burden of rising tides and few economic resources to mitigate loss of land), the highlands of Bolivia also feel an impact as changing and drastic weather patterns jeopardize the ability of small growers to provide for their families. Canada and the United States see the consequences of climate change in the extreme weather patterns which have gripped them in these past years. Ultimately we must accept that climate change is an issue that affects everyone regardless of country of origin or social status.

If the Church is going to fulfill its social mandate, we need to start doing now what we should have done 20 years ago: actively advocate against practices that contribute significantly to climate change and diminishing our dependence on heavy carbon dioxide contributors, such as the use of fossil fuels. Alone, the Church cannot turn the tables on climate change. But given the Church’s worldwide influence, it is vital for us to join in the global movement to halt climate change.