Category: Climate Change

17 February 2025 Southern Dioceses Environment Network Meeting: with Bishop John Arnold, Salford

Now in its fifth year, this monthly Zoom meeting is a valuable space for sharing and learning about the many significant initiatives across the Southern Dioceses focused on our care for creation. It also serves as a source of support as we navigate various challenges together. This month’s meeting was a review of the past year, reflecting on the inspiring talks we’ve had. All of these sessions are available for viewing on the current page:

Southern Dioceses Environment Network

February’s (2025) meeting opened with a prayer from Bishop John Arnold and a short interview where he shared his joys and frustrations. He expressed great encouragement from the work done in schools and at the Salford Laudato Si’ Centre but also voiced concerns about global progress. He emphasised the importance of hope and the commitment to doing what we can as individuals.

To stimulate discussion, John Paul from Journey 2030 and Maureen, a parishioner from Portsmouth Diocese, shared practical and spiritual reflections, along with resources for action linked to the Jubilee Year and the 800th anniversary of the Canticle of Creation. They also posed an important question: how might we continue our journey beyond this Jubilee year, looking ahead to Jubilee 2033?

These open meetings provide a valuable space for diocesan staff, charities, and parish supporters to unite in small groups, fostering collaboration and generating ideas for future meetings. This format offers an excellent opportunity to stay informed, exchange ideas, and support one another in our shared mission.

We are always looking to welcome new voices and hear about the progress in caring for our common home. Please join us on the second Monday of each month!

Additionally, a sister group with the Northern Dioceses is actively collaborating, and we are planning a special event to mark 10 years of Laudato Si’ Week, featuring Austin Ivereigh as a keynote speaker. Keep a look out for further information!

With blessings from the Southern Dioceses,

Arundel and Brighton, Brentwood, Clifton, East Anglia, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southwark and Westminster.

Southern Dioceses Environment Network

23 February 2025, Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves. Multi-Faith Summit at Friends House

Join us for an afternoon of panel discussions and workshops, spiritual connection, music, dance and poetry, creative work, and stalls showcasing the work that faiths are doing for the planet. Hosted by Faith for the Climate, Christian Climate Action and Quakers in Britain.

The event is free, and the venue is accessible for wheelchair users and people with other mobility issues. If there will be other barriers to you joining us (e.g. travel costs or travel schedules for your journey or being responsible for children), please email mobilise@faithfortheclimate.org.uk.

We want to learn so that we can improve the events that we organise. If you could please answer the monitoring questions when you sign-up that would be really appreciated!

Breakouts

There will be an opportunity to choose from 4 breakout sessions to take part in:

1) Healing Ourselves During Challenging Times (a series of activities you can do at your own pace) – nurturing your existing spiritual resources and learning from other traditions.

2) Bridging the Divide: How Faiths Can Come Together (panel and discussion) – building new, and refreshing existing, faith connections.

3) Starting With Our Local Environment (panel and discussion) – hear from groups already taking local action about their projects and how faith values connect with this.

4) National and International campaigns (panel and discussion) – learning about campaigns that are focused on justice-based action on climate.

You will be able to indicate which stream you would like to take part in when you register.

Agenda

12:30 – 13:30 Registration and stalls

13:30 – 14:00 Welcome, housekeeping and opening

14:00 – 14:45 Plenary

14:45 – 15:05 Break

15:05 – 16:35 Breakout streams

16:35 – 16:55 Break

16:55 – 17:15 Regrouping

17:15 – 18:00 Performance and closing

Link

Faith for the Climate

23 February 2025, Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves. Multi-Faith Summit at Friends House

Join us for an afternoon of panel discussions and workshops, spiritual connection, music, dance and poetry, creative work, and stalls showcasing the work that faiths are doing for the planet. Hosted by Faith for the Climate, Christian Climate Action and Quakers in Britain.

The event is free, and the venue is accessible for wheelchair users and people with other mobility issues. If there will be other barriers to you joining us (e.g. travel costs or travel schedules for your journey or being responsible for children), please email mobilise@faithfortheclimate.org.uk.

We want to learn so that we can improve the events that we organise. If you could please answer the monitoring questions when you sign-up that would be really appreciated!

Breakouts

There will be an opportunity to choose from 4 breakout sessions to take part in:

1) Healing Ourselves During Challenging Times (a series of activities you can do at your own pace) – nurturing your existing spiritual resources and learning from other traditions.

2) Bridging the Divide: How Faiths Can Come Together (panel and discussion) – building new, and refreshing existing, faith connections.

3) Starting With Our Local Environment (panel and discussion) – hear from groups already taking local action about their projects and how faith values connect with this.

4) National and International campaigns (panel and discussion) – learning about campaigns that are focused on justice-based action on climate.

You will be able to indicate which stream you would like to take part in when you register.

Agenda

12:30 – 13:30 Registration and stalls

13:30 – 14:00 Welcome, housekeeping and opening

14:00 – 14:45 Plenary

14:45 – 15:05 Break

15:05 – 16:35 Breakout streams

16:35 – 16:55 Break

16:55 – 17:15 Regrouping

17:15 – 18:00 Performance and closing

Link

Faith for the Climate

COP29 was Highjacked by Rich Countries says Christian Aid

Source: Christian Aid

In response to COP29’s final statement, Christian Aid has said: “People of the global south came to these talks needing a lifeboat out of the climate crisis. But all they got was a plank of wood to cling to.

“This summit has been hijacked by rich countries who have failed to negotiate in good faith. The cost of their actions here will be paid in the lives of vulnerable people on the front lines of climate breakdown.

“Developing countries are already responding day in and day out to the climate emergency, dealing with homes, crops and livelihoods destroyed due to droughts, storms and floods. They came here seeking solidarity and partnership to tackle a problem they didn’t create, but have left with scraps.

“Finance is the cornerstone of climate action. It is essential to help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change. This level of funding simply won’t cut it.

“Rich countries knew they had all year to prepare for this meeting, where they were required by the Paris Agreement to agree a new finance goal that met the needs of the developing world. They have failed to do that with this paltry finance offer.”

LINK

Christian Aid: www.christianaid.org.uk/

COP29 – Faith Groups march in London

Faith representatives outside British Museum before the start of the march. Photo: ICN

Source: Jo Siedlecka, ICN

Faith groups were among thousands of climate justice campaigners who marched peacefully through central London on Saturday 16 November 2024, accompanied by colourful banners, chanting and drumming. They lobbied the UK government and world leaders to work towards climate justice, and to do it urgently. They included representatives of Christian Climate Action, Green Christian, Laudato Si Movement, Columban Justice, Peace and Ecology Team, Columban Sisters, Faithful Companion of Jesus Sisters, Quakers in Britain and Faith for the Climate Network.

The march was part of an annual Global Day of Action for Climate Justice which always takes place midway through the annual international United Nations Climate Conference, which this year is in Baku, Azerbaijan 11- 22 November. Other marches lobbied COP29 in 25 places across Britain, including Brighton, Southampton, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, and Glasgow.

The London march – organised by more than 60 groups – started at the British Museum, which has a £50 million partnership with the oil company BP. Speakers argued that the fossil fuel industry has no place in the arts. And the route was via the HQ of Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR, co-owner of the BTC pipeline with BP, which supplies nearly 30% of Israel’s oil.

At its end in Downing Street, a rally called for the UK government to end its reliance on fossil fuels and to commit to paying climate reparations…

Continue reading on Independent Catholic News

New Finance Agreement needed at COP29 say Catholic and Anglican Bishops

Source: CAFOD

Fossil fuel companies should be taxed more to provide funds for countries on the frontline of the climate crisis, Anglican and Catholic bishops have told ministers.

In a letter to the government, the Rt Rev Graham Usher for the Church of England and Rt Rev John Arnold for the Catholic Church in England and Wales called for higher taxes on major polluters. The pair are lead bishops for environmental affairs in their respective churches.

The letter comes ahead of the start of the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan next week. Proposals to tax large polluters are expected to be included in negotiations at the summit on how to fill gaps in funding for developing countries hardest hit by the climate emergency – known as ‘international climate finance’.

Poorest communities ‘paying impossible price’ for climate crisis

Bishops Usher and Arnold argue in the letter that the funding gap means climate-vulnerable countries are “being forced to pay an impossible price for measures to protect their communities and rebuild from climate disasters”.

“The fact that those who have contributed least to causing the climate crisis, face an unaffordable bill for its impacts is an injustice we cannot tolerate as a country.

“We urge you to ensure your government plays the strongest possible role in remedying this injustice.”

Tax those ‘profiting from environmental damage’

Taxing polluting activities undertaken by the wealthiest companies and individuals would raise funds from those who are “profiting from environmental damage” and “help to incentivise the transition to renewables”, the bishops state.

The bishops also warn ministers that leaders at COP29 must agree to provide more climate finance as grants, arguing that loans will only “add to low-income countries’ existing and crippling debts”.

Providing further sources of finance by cancelling debts for countries facing a debt crisis would prevent such countries facing a “choice between paying huge interest bills to overseas lenders and paying to protect their communities from the climate crisis”, the bishops argue.

COP29 began in Baku, Azerbaijan on 11 November, and is due to finish on 22 November.

For background and information, see: CAFOD’s latest report on Climate Finance solutions (May 2024)

CAFOD Campaign News: Why is COP29 Important?

CAFOD Action: Email the Climate Secretary

Faith leaders urge David Lammy to show leadership on climate

Faith leaders hold vigil outside Foreign Office, calling on government to show leadership on climate justice

Source: Quakers in Britain

At a vigil outside the Foreign Office on Tuesday, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, and Buddhist representatives handed in a letter to Foreign Secretary David Lammy. Catholic signatories included Bishop John Arnold (Salford), spokesman on the environment for the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, and Colette Joyce, the Westminster Justice and Peace Co-ordinator.

The letter asks the foreign secretary to take the initiative at upcoming COP29 by contributing new funding to the International Loss and Damage Fund.

It’s time for the UK – and its wealthiest polluters – to pay our fair share- faith leaders

It must do this in the form of grants not loans and by taxing pollution and wealth, rather than repurposing official development assistance, the letter, co-ordinated by Quakers in Britain and the Faith for the Climate network, says.

The 21 signatories call on the UK government to champion a new “collective quantified goal” for climate finance for developing countries, including sufficient funding to respond to loss and damage.

“Our call to Make Polluters Pay is partly about our history,” the letter says. “When we factor in Britain’s colonial past, the UK is the fourth largest contributor to climate change.”

It is also about our present, faith leaders including Paul Parker, recording clerk of Quakers in Britain, write.

Two fossil fuel giants, Shell and BP, are based here, enjoying record-breaking profits.

“Meanwhile, many British households are struggling to heat their homes. At the same time, communities all around the world are being devastated by extreme weather events, such as flooding, super storms and forest fires.

“These inequalities need to be redressed, to acknowledge the intrinsic value of every living being on our precious and finite earth.”

The faith leaders conclude, “It’s time for the UK – and its wealthiest polluters – to pay our fair share.”

Read the full letter here

Southern Dioceses Environment Network Report

 Dr Timothy Howles, the Associate director Laudato Si’ Research Institute (LRSI) at Campion Hall, Oxford, addressed the most recent meeting of the Southern Dioceses Environment Network on 14 October 2024.

Tim told us that the LRSI is a Catholic institute, set up by the Jesuits, but he is an ordained Anglican priest, and happy to be working in this project in an ecumenical way.

His slides covered the integral ecology paradigm which is increasingly used in Higher Education but with the theological basis found in Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’.

Laudato Si’ stresses the need for an ecological conversion for all of us (LS 217) and invites us to care for those who are on the margins (LS62). Scientists are frustrated that their data is being ignored so as Prof Chris Rapley says, “We have to change who people are, we have to give them epiphanies”.

LS25 focuses on the idea of interconnectedness, that “we ourselves are part of nature,” and so have responsibility for the delicate equilibria of the world.

The Institute produces resources and books such “Faith-based participation in natural resource governance”, “Integral ecology approaches to the new science of gene drives”, “Endangered languages in North East India”.

They also host talks such as the upcoming lecture by Dr Vijay d’Souza SJ, who will be in Oxford for a lecture on 13 November, 5.30 – 6.30pm, which is both in-person and on livestream.

Future Meetings

Next month, we are pleased to welcome back Dr Emma Gardner, Head of Environment for the Diocese of Salford, who will tell us a little more about the work she does at the Laudato Si’ Centre, the beautiful project at Wardley Hall, near Manchester. For more details visits:

Southern Dioceses Environment Network

Second Monday of every month, except April and August.

Monday, 11 November, 12.45-2.00pm – Salford Diocese: Dr Emma Gardner
Monday, 9 December, 12.45-2.00pm – Advent Reflection & Xmas Fun
Monday, 14 January, 12.45-2.00pm – Feedback from COP29

Link

Laudato Si Research Institute

To contact Dr Timothy Howles: timothy.howles@campion.ox.ac.uk

Call for a Laudato Si’ Centre in every Diocese

Laudato Si’ Animators with Bishop John Arnold during visit to the Laudato Si’ Centre

A group of 24 Laudato Si’ Animators from around England, including some from the Diocese of Westminster, visited the Diocese of Salford’s Laudato Si’ Centre during the Season of Creation. They have undertaken to write to their bishops and push for a similar centre in other dioceses.

Laudato Si’ Animators are members of the Laudato Si Movement, a global community of prayer and action. They work to bring Pope Francis’s Encyclical Laudato Si’ to life. They are trained by the Laudato Si’ Movement to get the message of Pope Francis into the parishes. Most attend bi-monthly zoom meetings and take part in prayer vigils and marches about the climate and biodiversity.

Members of the Laudato Si’ Movement support local parishes and communities to engage in ecological spirituality, sustainable lifestyles and advocacy for climate and ecological justice.

On 29 September, a group of animators met with Bishop John Arnold of Salford, the bishops’ environmental lead in England and Wales.

Their visit to Salford’s Laudato Si’ Centre began with a tour of the Centre given by Emily Cahill, the Centre’s environmental and learning officer. She stressed that Bishop John Arnold’s vision for the Wardley Hall Centre was that it would be used by everyone as a centre for learning, spirituality and wellbeing.

In four years, a lawn has been converted into a thriving garden and a woodland area is ideal for groups. Over 3,000 people have visited the centre, especially school and parish groups.

The group was given leaves from various plants to attach to sheets on which they wrote what inspired them to be animators and what hopes they had for the future. After a simple vegan lunch when they were joined by the director of the centre, Emma Gardner, they split into groups and noted down responses. The rain brought them back into the outdoor classroom where Bishop John Arnold greeted the group and a photo was taken.

Sr Joan Kerley then gave an inspiring talk about St Hildegard of Bingen and St Kateri and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Creation story. They sang two songs about creation and then started to answer the seven questions that Laudato Si’ Movement had suggested. They ended with prayers from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Greetings to the Natural World.

If a diocese was to set up its own Laudato Si’ Centre it would need land owned by the Diocese, preferably with woodland and near to public transport. Trained staff would be needed to run the centre supported by volunteers. Disabled access and safeguarding are important. In terms of buildings, the outdoor classrooms and portaloos were perfectly adequate. But it was felt the most important needs would be for prayer and vision. It was felt that centres like the one in Salford would be wonderful for getting the message of Pope Francis out to clergy and laity?

A place like this in every diocese would help towards the UK Government’s commitment to rewild 30% of the nation’s land and sea by 2030, and would be a centre for peace, reconciliation and evangelisation.

Animator John Woodhouse said: “We all responded to the inspiring experience of being in creation. How many children never experience this? So many spend their lives glued to their phones and live in a virtual world. So many have mental health issues. Laudato Si’ needs to be seen as a spiritual and evangelical document. Our young people are pushing us to do so much more and they respond very positively to the message of Pope Francis.”

LINK

Laudato Si Centre, Salford: https://laudatosicentre.org.uk/

Laudato Si’ Movement: https://laudatosimovement.org/

Laudato Si’ Animators write to Prime Minister

Protect our Common Home by artist Helen Elwes

Source: John Woodhouse

Fifty-five Laudato Si’ Animators, representing all parts of the United Kingdom, have written an open letter to the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and the ministers responsible Steve Reed and Ed Milliband. They call on the government to:

1. Introduce the Climate and Nature Bill which 60,000 marched for at Restore Nature Now rally on 22 June 2024. This bill would address many issues of concern e.g. reducing greenhouse gases, ending fossil fuel extraction, restoring ecosystems.

2. Commit to a transition from animal agriculture to organic, arable agriculture. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of many present world crises – climate change; antibiotic resistance; waste of resources and global hunger (food, land, water and energy are wasted in growing food for animals to eat).

3. Commit to the signing of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), a proposed international agreement that aims to control fossil fuel production and infrastructure expansion, and phase out fossil fuel use in a fair and equitable way. The treaty would also accelerate the transition to clean energy and economic diversification away from fossil fuels. In 2023 Pope Francis called for “the elimination of fossil fuels, and education in lifestyles that are less dependant”.

4. Support rewilding and in particular the Rewilding manifesto.

5. Ensure businesses pay for their pollution, and transition to non-polluting practices and products.

They state: “We believe that climate change is now such a threat to humanity that it should not be the subject of policies of individual political parties, but that all the parties should work together to find solutions to the problem for the common good and for the sake of our children’s children.

“Pope Francis issued a papal document Laudate Deum in October 2023 which gives a clear warning about what needs to be done urgently.

“We are sending you a photo from the march in June and a copy of a special painting by professional artist Helen Elwes who is one of the Animators which we hope you will put on your desk as a reminder that we all need to think and act to care for our common home.”