June 2014

DIOCESE OF LESOTHO ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE The Diocese of Swaziland held its first Environmental Conference hosted by Bishop Adam Taaso on the 30th May and 1st of June 2014. Our guest speakers were Rev Dr Rachel Mash, provincial environmental Coordinator and Canon Dr Andrew Warmback, Natal Diocesan Coordinator. We were blessed to be joined by Rev Sam Sifuleni, Diocesan Coordinator from the Diocese of Harare. The conference was organised by Mr Tumelo Hoohlo and his able team! WHAT WILL BE THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN  LESOTHO? Rev Dr Rachel Mash “Lesotho is categorized as one of the countries highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, deserving special attention” (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) The first session considered the environmental challenges faced by Lesotho: Generally there will be an increase in extreme weather events: longer droughts and heavier rain and storms. Reduced rainfall will affects the production of crops.  The country will experience frequent droughts that result in poor harvests and large livestock losses to rural farmers, exacerbating poverty and suffering. Higher temperatures will lead to  more pests. There may be up to 25% decrease in maize yield. Increase of alien plant species , less irrigation and drinking water available. As well as these, Lesotho will experience increased flooding and drought, damage to infrastructure , loss of crops , community displacement. Heavy snowfalls, strong winds and floods  pose devastating social impacts . USING OUR LAND FOR ORGANIC FARMING : Mr Henry Ramapeile Our country is the way it is today because of our cruelty.  We plough our fields, our soil would be rich, but today because of our cruelty to the soil itself, in the sense that we use chemical fertilizers, those micro organisms are dead. That is why you see poor growth unlike 50 years ago when you saw rich vegetation and rich crops  God gave us everything, we are poor because we want to be poor. Kitchen garbage is gold! You can make a liquid fertilizer. Organic farming is important because it is a cheaper way of improving soil fertility using local resources. It uses minimum tillage with minimum soil disturbance. There is no  use of poisons or chemicals in pest control. Organic farming needs less water than conventional methods—an adaptation strategy for climate change ECO-THEOLOGY—Canon Andrew Warmback, Diocesan Environmental Coordinator, Natal Diocese What does the Bible say? Canon Andrew shared several of the passages which can be used for sermons. Gen 1:1-5: Creation –  God created—and the Spirit of God was hovering ,  what do we say every Sunday? – “ We believe in God creator of Heaven and Earth” Gen 9:8-13: After the flood, God makes a covenant.  All living creatures are included. We will never be destroyed again. Isaiah 24:3-7: Prophet –  devastation and curse upon the land. If we turn away from God, the earth becomes like a desert. Mark 4:30-32: Mustard seed: spiritual growth is like the growth of a tree Mark 4: 35-39: Calming of the storm. – Jesus has a close relationship with nature –  he walks by the lake, prays by the mountain (small carbon footprint) kingdom like a mustard seed, he pointed people to nature to help them understand God. Love your neighbor, which can be a human or a lake. Rev 22:1-2: The vision of the end is of rivers of water, trees and human life.  Some theology says destroy this earth we will have a new heaven and a new earth. But Revelations shows that the new heaven is here on earth—earth renewed Mark 16: 15: Preach the good news to ALL creation!  Not just to the humans. We need a born again world, redemption for all creation. Other teaching and theology: The fifth mark of mission of the Anglican Communion says “To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth” . There is a “Green bible’ which has the words of scripture in green. (like the red letter Bible). Liberation theology-  exodus story is for all of human communities. “Cry of the poor, cry of the earth”. Feminist theology – have a theology that affirms the feminine. HOW CAN WE RESPOND? Rev Rachel Mash Simply put, we need to “Love the Earth as much as God does “ Archbishop Emeritus Tutu Becoming an Eco-congregation involves three things Worship, Local Church action and Advocacy Worship: In our worship, we need to preach , pray and include the care for creation in our liturgies. We can ‘get out of the box’ with outdoor services. We can celebrate environmental days such as World Environment Day, Water week, Season of Creation, Arbor week, St Francis day. Young people can get involved with dramas, dance, poetry or music. Local church: we need to consider our water use, mending taps, putting in a water barrel. We can look at using our land for organic farming to create jobs and food. We need to consider waste, by recycling and composting. We can have outreaches into our community – clean up days, tree planting. Advocacy: we need to act nationally or regionally on issues such as climate change, renewable energy, pollution etc.   The day ended with a solemn vow being made,led by Bishop Taaso “We the clergy and laity of the Diocese of Lesotho after this environmental conference held at Durham Link on the 31 May 2014, at which we were reminded of our responsibility towards the environment :Do commit ourselves to becoming more environmentally friendly, to preserve and look after it and to do all those things which will turn the environment back to what it looked and appeared like when God put us in charge of it.So help us God.”

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There were no plastic bags in the garden of Eden, Littering is a sin, Keep Witzenberg clean – these are some of the slogans and posters the youth came up during World Environment Week. These posters were used to decorate St Matthew’s Church (Bella Vista) when the Green Bishop, Geoff Davies preached and celebrated on Green Sunday, 1 June. Bishop Geoff in his sermon reminded the people of Witzenberg that all of us are called to be stewards of God’s creation. He furthermore re-iterated that Environmental justice is equally important as Political justice. The Bishop also informed the congregation of the dangers of fracking and the devastating effects it has on the environment.         To coincide with youth month and World Environment Day, Revd. Doctor Rachel Mash, presented a workshop on Saturday, 14 June in the Parish of St Matthew (Bella Vista) for the youth and Sunday School Teachers. Teachers from as far as Montagu/Ashton, Robertson, Worcester and Ceres attended the workshop. Revd. Rachel introduced teaching methods in order to convey environmental issues. She encouraged all Christians to Go Green and provided helpful lifestyle tips to reduce our carbon footprint. The people of the Boland are very dependent on the produce of the land and the effects of climate change can lead to job losses and economic decline. All of us can play our part, when we re-use, reduce and recycle. The Prayer of Confession which was used in the liturgy for Green Sunday: O God of justice and plenty, whose generous earth was created for its own beauty, for the nourishment of its people, and to sing of your glory. We confess that through our sinfulness we have harvested injustice and pollution, and not your abundance; the land has become strange to us and our songs of celebration have turned harsh. Forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your Name.

SMALL ISLAND STATES AND GLOBAL WARMING Bishop Terry Brown     We sometimes have very strange ways of imagining or writing about small island states and global warming. For example, we may think of the small island as a kind of oil rig, locked forever at a certain height from the bottom of the sea, being overwhelmed by the rising sea level, incapable of response, a victim. Or we may speak of small island states as “sinking” into the sea when precisely the opposite is happening. We may assign blame to some, innocence to others. Indeed, small island states themselves sometimes take on these explanations. But it is not really as simple as all that.   Quite a few years ago, I arranged to have a small holiday house of bush materials constructed beside the sea on a small atoll-enclosed island on the east side of the large island of Malaita in Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Because it was so close to the sea (the children swung from the nearby tree to dive into the sea), I arranged for the house to be on high timber pillars, the local fashion.   I had many enjoyable trips to the house but began to notice something. Rather than the sea encroaching upon my house, climbing up the pillars, sand was climbing up the pillars and my house was (so to speak) moving away from the sea. More and more sand was being deposited upon the beach. Now the tree near my house was rather far away from the sea and children could no longer dive into the sea from its branches.   I asked local people what had happened. They took me to the other side of the island, where a seawall had been constructed to protect a large church nearby. There the seawall was being eaten away by the sea and a side of the church was in danger of falling into the sea. It appeared that the sea was rising and taking away the island.   Of course, I learned, it was all about currents that were both depositing and removing sand. This would be very evident after big storms. Sometimes big gaps closed with more sand, sometimes islands were torn in two. There was a sense in which the island was alive, actively responding (often quite well) to the rising sea level, when not interfered with.   I am not suggesting there is no climate change crisis. Small island states are very vulnerable. But nature also has considerable capacity to adapt. But we contribute to climate change and paralyze nature’s capacity to adapt when we attempt to engineer or control nature: when we cover cities with concrete, when we destroy mangroves and replace them with seawalls, when we replace natural riverbeds with cement ones (remember New Orleans), when we strip the land of forest and seas of fish, when we destroy forests to grow grain to produce ethanol, and when we (including the citizens of small island states) insist that cars and trucks are the best transport, buying more and more of them beyond sustainability and putting tons and tons of pollution in the air.   I lived about 22 years in the Solomon Islands over about 40 years. During that time I have seen enormous destruction, now culminating in killer storms, flash floods, rapid sea level rise and increasing poverty, violence and corruption. It is time to reaffirm the “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation” championed by the World Council of Churches decades ago.   Poverty also causes environmental destruction and climate change: the need to sell a precious area of rainforest to foreign loggers to pay school fees, the need to live on an urban flood plain because no other land is available, the failure to repair a polluting truck because there is no money to do so, and dumping garbage anywhere because the city cannot afford garbage collection.   Small island states are often just as guilty as big continent states. Just because the latter produce more pollution, it does not mean the former are off the hook. Some of the world’s worst pollution is in small island states around the world, where the need for cash in the face of poverty brings about the destruction of nature. Part of the solution is a lot less global money spent on war and much more on poverty alleviation.   The answer is a personal commitment to leave only a very light carbon footprint on this earth, to allow nature a fair amount of freedom and respect, and to address the economic and political structures of global society that both cause global warning and prohibit it from being addressed politically. The problem is not nature’s, the problem is ours.   Pope John XXIII was fond of quoting the proverb, “drops of water wear away the stone”. No matter how small our contributions to addressing climate change and global warming may be, no matter how small our island state is, let us be those drops of clean water, wearing away the stone of global warming.   Bishop Terry Brown was Bishop of Malaita, Anglican Church of Melanesia, from 1996 to 2008. He is currently Bishop-in-charge of Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, in the Anglican Diocese of Niagara, Anglican Church of Canada.         I