Church World Service and partners prepare to act on climate change

Villagers from Vista Quetzal carrying housing materials after Hurricane Stan lashed Central America two years ago. Photo: Mike Kolllöffel/DanChurchAid-ACT

May 2, 2007

Church World Service will join environmental organizations and other church-related relief and development agencies in looking at responses to public policies on climate change.

The move is in view of the upcoming global negotiations on climage change in Bali this November

"The issue for CWS is how climate change frames development and justice," said Rajyashri Waghray, who directs education and advocacy for the organization, after returning from a consultation last month on how climate change impacts development.

CWS aids and rehabilitates people hit by weather-related disasters. It also works with partners to eradicate hunger and poverty and promote peace and justice around the world. The organization advocates for food security, equitable trade, adequate funding for people living with HIV and AIDS, and access to clean water and sanitation as a human right -- all concerns affected by climate change.

The World Council of Churches provides a framework for policy on climate change that several Christian communities find useful. The Council’s Working Group on Climate Change sponsored last month’s consultation in London, which was attended by representatives from Christian relief, development and environmental organizations from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.

And at a one-day summit in Washington, D.C. last month, CWS and hundreds of representatives from development and environmental organizations agreed to work together to find ways to eradicate the root causes of climate change.

The summit urged participants to form a loose network of advocates to work on curbing the most damaging impacts of climate change on the world’s most marginalized people. Panelists also want advocates to press the U.S. government to cut global warming pollution by at least 80 percent by 2050.

The two meetings follow the U.S. Supreme Court ruling early last month that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate greenhouse gases unless it could justify its refusal based on science.

The five-to-four decision last month also ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon-dioxide produced by vehicles. Cars, trucks and buses accounted for almost 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2004.

CWS, along with the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference filed a brief supporting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in its legal action against the EPA August 31 last year.

The brief said a warming climate would cause or aggravate a host of "natural" disasters, such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, disease epidemics, and wildfires. “These disasters have serious consequences for much of humanity, but they threaten most acutely the powerless segments of society: the poor, the sick, the landless and homeless."

At their General Assembly last year, the NCC and CWS called on Christians and people of faith and goodwill to “quickly reduce their emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and speak out for engagement by their elected officials on matters of global warming."

Barely one week after the Supreme Court ruling, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that poor countries face some of the worst effects of climate change even though their greenhouse gas emissions are minimal.

In the latest of four reports, the United Nations body tracking global warming since 1990 warned of increased droughts in some parts of the world and flooding in others. One of the report’s authors said the scale of the projected changes to the planet was no longer in doubt.

The potential for conflict is also grave. Addressing the first debate on climate change at the UN Security Council April 17, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said “the adverse effects of changing weather patterns . . . could weaken the institutional capacity of the State to resolve conflict through peaceful and democratic means." According to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, climate change is an act of aggression by the rich against the poor.