MEDIA STATEMENT

Naomi Osinnowo asks, is caring for our planet an essential part of social justice?

NAOMI OSINNOWO |

Being an environmentally friendly church may seem like yet another responsibility, but... what if caring for our planet is an essential part of living out our faith? asks Naomi Osinnowo.
 

Christians taking a stand to tackle environmental issues isn’t new. On World Environment Day in 2006, the Church of England launched Shrinking the Footprint, an ambitious environmental campaign to encourage its churches to review and reduce their energy output. With 16,000 church buildings and 5,000 church schools, plus offices and clergy housing, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, championed the church taking seriously responsible energy usage. He said: ​“For the church of the 21st century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice. It is therefore central to what it means to be a Christian.”

Going back even further, A Rocha, a Christian charity that engages communities in nature conservation, held its first meeting in the north of England in 1983, before establishing a field study centre in Portugal a few years later. The past few decades have seen A Rocha expand its international network of environmental organisations, gain ground across the globe, and launch in February 2016 Eco Church, an awards scheme for churches, which is backed by The Church of England, The Methodist Church, The United Reformed Church, Tearfund and Christian Aid.

As these and other Christian campaigns and projects continue to gather pace, and national and international governments ramp up their efforts to protect the environment, we’re seeing in the UK a growing number of switched-on, engaged and informed Christian congregations that have assimilated environmentally friendly practices into church life.

“As of this summer, 1,000 churches have signed up to Eco Church, of which just over 250 have received an award,” says Rich Bee, engagement director at A Rocha UK. ​“Our target is to engage 4,000 churches in a decade, 10 per cent of the 40,000 churches in England and Wales, which would make creation care mainstream in these nations.”

A little bit of help, please

But, let’s pause to consider the possible increasing number of churches that want to step up their ​‘green game’ but don’t know how to, or those that may struggle to see how they can fit this type of stewardship into their church culture, ministries or budget. Simon Dennis, lead pastor at Sheddocksley Baptist Church in Aberdeen, comments, ​“We take environmental responsibility seriously and our members are diligent and godly stewards: our community café recycles both plastic and food waste, and we are a lead partner in the development of a new community garden to grow organic veg and bring local people together in a safe, shared outdoor space. We also recently invested £20,000 in solar panels, which is a lot of money for a small church like ours, knowing it will benefit the planet and help us steward resources well. I’m not sure there’s a next level, but if there is more we could do, we’d like to know.”

Meanwhile, Christy Smith, senior pastor at Brighton Elim Church, says that over the last couple of years, as environmental issues, namely plastic pollution, have garnered more attention in the media and within Christian circles, he’s started to think even more about what his church can do ​“to look after God’s earth, which He has created for us”. ​“I’m very concerned for the planet,” he says. ​“On a personal level, my wife and I try to use fair trade products, and we don’t use plastic carrier bags. Within the context of the church, we have taken part in ​‘big clean ups’, to tidy our beaches after festivals, and we’re thinking about using ethical products.”

Without paying attention to the environment, these problems could get even worse.

But Christy admits that despite believing that planet preservation should be an integral part of his church’s mission, and Christian organisations and denominations should be at the forefront of such stewardship, he’d benefit from support and guidance to overcome some of the challenges. ​“One of the challenges we face is busyness,” he explains. ​“The age range of our congregation is nine to 90, so a lot of preparation has to go into the Sunday morning service, where we encourage the elderly members of our congregation, entertain the youth, preach the gospel, and educate long-standing Christians. Other obstacles include our small pool of volunteers as well as encouraging church members to think differently. For these reasons, we could do with some outside help.”

Interconnected creation

Rich Bee, engagement director at A Rocha UK, acknowledges that church leaders have to be pragmatic about what they do and prioritise, and so he recommends Eco Church, which encourages churches in England and Wales to celebrate what they already do to look after the environment and helps them to figure out what they’re going to do next. ​“The initiative urges church families to look at biodiversity, climate change and plastic pollution in the context of the ​‘whole issue’ that the church has been called to care about – famine, child mortality, malnutrition, etc – as opposed to a separate or additional problem,” he says. ​“Every single one of these concerns has a link to the destruction that people have caused to the environment. Climate change, for example, is a major cause of people being forced out of their homes, which is a justice issue.

“If we give to poverty alleviation programmes, which is a good thing, so that they can help communities out of poverty, but insist on, say, driving to church even if it’s only half a mile, and don’t change our behaviour, we’re giving with one hand and taking with the other. Poverty alleviation is great, but not moving to address the root causes begs the question: why are we giving? Jesus calls us to do more than just give some money. It’s about radical wholescale lifestyle change.

“We all find it difficult, but if we all do it together and avoid judgemental attitudes that don’t encourage people, then I think we stand to make a significant difference. The church is the biggest sector of civil society. If we all stood up and said we’re going to make this an integral part of our outward witness to the world, the potential to make those changes and shape the national debate is huge.”

David Shreeve, environmental adviser to the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, agrees with both Rich and Christy, that people of faith, whose teaching and worship constantly remind them of their responsibilities to look after God’s world, should really be the vanguard of environmental concern and campaigning. He says, ​“Added together, Christians total far more than the members of any environmental organisation. But whilst there has been obvious interest and concern in many quarters of most faiths, it could not be said to have been ​‘mainstream’. But, there is a greater acceptance by faiths of the importance of the environment, and, importantly, there is a feeling in the world generally that the faiths have an important role to play.”

Like Rich, David, who creates awareness for environmental issues and projects, recognises the weight of responsibility that is on the church, and the financial and time implications thereof. ​“Isn’t money always an issue?” he asks. ​“The trouble is, that ways of saving it often cost money initially. Solar panels and new boilers, for instance, will save money and energy in the long run, but cost money now, and there are so many demands on churches. Nevertheless, the cost of environmental improvements needs to be looked at as an investment.”

Cost-effective solutions

Yet he also points to innovative solutions that can tackle both environmental issues and the current needs of Christians and the wider community which cost very little, if anything at all. ​“I’m very keen to see faith organisations use the space around their buildings for therapeutic gardening, which should not cost very much at all. Faith leaders have seen a large increase in problems caused by mental issues, for example. We know that gardening can help reduce depression, and so encouraging mental health and community groups to use faith space for gardening projects would cost very little but could prove of great value to the local community.”

The underlying message is that more and more Christians are becoming aware of their responsibility to take care of God’s planet as much as His people. Rather than see this as two separate acts of faith, it’s important that Christians recognise that they’re intrinsically linked and work towards improvements in both areas. David concludes, ​“I once spoke to a group of clergymen about what churches should be doing for the environment, and when I sat down I heard one of them say, ​‘These greenies have to understand they must get in the queue – I have the homeless, the hungry, the depressed all wanting my help.’ I wanted to answer that by saying: without paying attention to the environment, these problems could get even worse.”

Over the last four months of 2021, two related billion-dollar-plus pledges were unveiled promising much-needed funds for land conservation efforts by Indigenous communities. 

The pair of commitments—a five-year, $1.7 billion pledge by governments and philanthropy and a 10-year, $5 billion foundation-backed initiative called the Protecting Our Planet Challenge, which earmarked 20% of its funding for work related to the other pledge—were landmarks in their size and significance. The announcements came as a growing scientific consensus confirms what Indigenous peoples have long known: They play an outsized role in preserving biodiversity and preventing deforestation.

But given a long history of such funding going largely to white-led international NGOs, many observers were concerned from the outset about what share of the money would actually reach Indigenous leaders. One recent study found that Indigenous peoples and local communities (or IPLC, the summary phrase favored in development circles) receive less than 1% of climate finance—and just 17% of such funding involved an IPLC organization.

This week, a pair of organizations launched a new funding mechanism to serve as an intermediary to channel money from both pledges directly to Indigenous organizations and communities, and send future conservation support in that direction, as well. The goal is to bypass the hurdles such groups often face as they seek funding from philanthropy and other sources.

Dubbed the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, which goes by the very pronounceable acronym of CLARIFI (i.e., “clarify”), it is a product of two organizations—the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition of more than 150 organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America that work on resource rights for Indigenous peoples and others, as well as the Wyss Foundation-backed Campaign for Nature. 

CLARIFI wants to achieve two overarching goals: recognizing the land rights of Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples and local communities (particularly women within these communities) for at least 400 million hectares of additional territory; and expanding those communities’ legal land ownership to cover at least 50% of all tropical forests. Aside from any conservation goal, these milestones are in service of securing long-overdue rights and protection for Indigenous territories, a mission that is sometimes overlooked as climate change takes center stage.

One challenge the fund faces is that, historically, just 11% of the funding directed toward Indigenous peoples and local communities has been for securing land tenure, a cause which tends to be more politically sensitive than, say, forest management, according to a Rainforest Foundation Norway study. 

“In a nutshell, this is really filling the gaps—the gaps within the financial, climate and biodiversity sectors, but also filling a gap in recognizing the rights of local communities,” said Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of RRI and president of the related Rights and Resources Group, which coordinates the initiative.

While there are many details still left to hash out following CLARIFI’s launch this week, not to mention the matter of raising the estimated billions of dollars necessary to secure Indigenous land rights, here’s an overview of its intended role and how it came about.

A “missing link” between funders and Indigenous peoples

RRI is already involved in two international financing mechanisms. One of them, called the Strategic Response Mechanism, provides groups with grants of $10,000 to $100,000 to address unforeseen challenges or opportunities. The other, the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, known as the Tenure Facility, offers grants of $1 million to $2 million in countries with an established framework for land rights. 

The new fund will, in part, fill the gap between those two structures. It aims to provide grants of $100,000 to $1 million to on-the-ground groups working to secure land rights, but which are not located in areas with the type of legal environment required by the Tenure Facility. “Maybe thousands of organizations are out there but have not been able to [get] funding to do such work,” Bandiaky-Badji said.

The fund, which will be legally based in Washington, D.C., also plans to serve as a pass-through organization for grants of $5 million to $50 million to an emerging set of national and regional funds set up by Indigenous and community organizations around the world to support land rights. Among other challenges, those funds struggle to receive support from American foundations and individual donors since they are not based in the United States, Bandiaky-Badji said.

To design and guide the fund, RRI members elected a five-person steering committee, including one member each from Africa, Latin America and Asia to ensure geographical diversity. The committee, whose other members are Bandiaky-Badji and a representative from Campaign for Nature, will later grow to include an even wider range of representation from Indigenous peoples and local communities from the RRI membership and key donors.

“CLARIFI addresses a need long felt by Indigenous and community organizations for a vehicle that mobilizes funding directly to them for activities not yet supported adequately by any donor,” said Pasang Dolma Sherpa, executive director of the Nepal-based Center for Indigenous Peoples’ Research and Development, who serves on CLARIFI’s Steering Committee, in the fund’s announcement.

Multiple billion-dollar goals

To secure land rights for Indigenous communities at a rate sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change, research suggests an enormous investment is needed. Last year, RRI and the Campaign for Nature did an in-depth analysis of land rights in countries around the globe. They looked at the historic rate at which such rights were recognized—and how much that progress cost, relying on more than a decade of experience. Based on those calculations, they estimated that a full $10 billion is needed by 2030 to achieve the 400 million hectares goal, and thereby stay on track with the goal of conserving 30% of the planet by 2030, a key milestone in mitigating climate change.

As a first step, RRI and allies set a goal of raising $1 billion by last year’s international climate change conference in Glasgow, known as COP26. At the time, some considered that amount “too ambitious,” Bandiaky-Badji said. But ultimately, governments and foundations pledged $1.7 billion over three years. To be clear, none of that funding is currently committed to CLARIFI, but the fund hopes to be one of many intermediaries to channel that money and future pledges to Indigenous communities and related organizations.

Private philanthropy helping to shift the sector

Private philanthropy’s increasing presence in this field, most visibly in the commitments last year, is laying the groundwork for this new work and helping set new standards compared to what was common under public grantmakers, according to Bandiaky-Badji.

In early December, the Bezos Earth Fund announced its latest round of grants, including a $25 million grant to RRI. Bandiaky-Badji said the majority of that funding is intended for regranting, an exercise she said would serve as a pilot in drafting the administrative procedures of CLARIFI. Notably, another Bezos recipient, ClimateWorks Foundation, which received $30 million, is partnering with the Tenure Facility to distribute that funding.

Philanthropy can be infamous for its exacting requirements. But some new funders in this area are taking a different path. “They are also coming up with new requirements that are flexible, and could be very helpful for Indigenous peoples and local communities,” Bandiaky-Badji said. “For example, they are not really asking [for the] classical bilateral donor’s requirement of coming up with this output-outcome way of reporting.” 

RRI is developing alternative approaches to due diligence, financial management and reporting that will not block less traditionally formalized groups from accessing funding. It aims to come up with arrangements that are appropriate for those communities while still ensuring transparency and donor confidence.

“That’s a new dimension that the private philanthropists are bringing into the sector, which is really key. And I think they should keep on doing more of that,” Bandiaky-Badji said.

 New tool will make it easier for countries to measure ecosystems

New York, 29 April 2021 – An innovative artificial intelligence (AI) tool that will make it easier for countries to measure the contributions of nature to their economic prosperity and well‑being was launched today by the United Nations and the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3).

Developed by the Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and BC3, the new tool can vastly accelerate implementation of the new ground-breaking standard for valuing the contributions of nature that was adopted by the UN Statistical Commission last month.

The tool makes use of AI technology using the Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES) platform to support countries as they apply the new international standard for natural capital accounting, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Ecosystem Accounting.

The new open-source and user-friendly digital tool, called the ARIES for SEEA Explorer, enables, for the first time, rapid and standardized yet customizable ecosystem accounting anywhere on Earth.

“The ARIES for SEEA Explorer is a game changer for governments that want to implement the recently adopted SEEA Ecosystem Accounting standard,” stressed Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the Statistics Division. “This application allows countries to jump-start accounts compilation from global data sources, which they can refine with national data or model parameters.”

The ecosystem accounts produced by countries will track the extent, condition and services provided by nature’s ecosystems – such as forests and wetlands – in the form of physical and monetary accounts and indicators. The adoption of the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting has been heralded as a historic step forward for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to move beyond GDP in tracking global progress.

Bert Kroese, Deputy Director for Statistics Netherlands and Chair of the UN Committee of Environmental-Economic Accounting said, “The ARIES for SEEA Explorer will give countries a much-needed tool to make progress with the SDGs and the monitoring framework of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Its low barrier to entry will ensure that no country is left behind when it comes to ecosystem accounting.”

Risenga Maluleke, Statistician-General of Statistics South Africa and Chair of the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics said, “The launch of the ARIES for SEEA Explorer on the UN Global Platform is an important step to mainstream the measurement of ecosystems and their contribution to the economy and wellbeing into global, regional and domestic statistics that will feed into policy and decision making. Better measures of nature will contribute to better policies to save our planet.”

Building economic systems that value nature as a central source of human wellbeing, environmental health and economic prosperity in the post-COVID-19 world is essential, according to Susan Gardner, Director of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division. “Having technology that incorporates and integrates the latest data, models and understanding of nature’s contributions through natural capital accounting will facilitate well-informed nature positive decision-making from businesses and governments – driving tangible action on biodiversity loss and climate change and a sustainable future for all,” she said.

The new platform could lead to greater collaboration. Ferdinando Villa, Ikerbasque Professor and Lead Investigator of ARIES at BC3, added, “There is a growing global demand for sustainable management of our natural resources, and to achieve this, scientists and decision-makers need to collaborate more and more. AI-based tools like the ARIES for SEEA Explorer hold the key to a future where open integration and reuse of knowledge, by both, is possible.”

The ARIES for SEEA Explorer is available on the UN Global Platform: a cloud-service environment supporting international collaboration among all countries in the world by sharing scientific knowledge, data, methods and technology.

A number of countries have already started using the ARIES for SEEA Explorer. The Explorer will continue to be expanded in the near future, by adding the functionality to derive indicators that allow to assess progress towards SDGs and the emerging post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

NOTES TO EDITORS

About the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA)

The Department helps countries translate their global commitments into national action in the economic, social and environmental spheres. It is a leading analytical voice for promoting inclusion, reducing inequalities and eradicating poverty, and a champion for tearing down the barriers that keep people in poverty.

About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

About Basque Centre for Climate Change

The Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) is an international interdisciplinary research centre based in Bilbao for the study of climate change promoted by the Basque Government to promote science and research.

For more information please contact

William Speller, United Nations Environment Programme
Helen Rosengren, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Amelia Ochoa Escala, Basque Centre for Climate Change

Source: https://www.unep.org/