Category: Caring for Creation

End of the Year Note from the Executive Director, Michael Anello:

Folks, I am astonished!

I called the Haitian Embassy in DC to schedule a January meeting about our reforestation work. The receptionist on the phone was fun to speak with, and we chatted in Creole.

To explain my eagerness for a meeting, I told her about the trees along the Jacmel Road that CODEP has planted. Sure enough, she has an aunt who lives in Léogâne.

“I know those trees,” she said. “We all know about those trees. You mean that you are the people that planted them? That’s incredible.”

This wasn’t the first time. A few weeks ago, I read in The Haitian Times about a woman who has designed shoes for a Nike program that will raise money to combat poverty in Haiti. Her design builds from the August uprisings. The shoes are the colors of the Haitian flag and AUGUST is painted on the tongue of each shoe.

As an impulse, I called her. Sure enough, she is Haitian-American and her mother comes from Léogâne . “Everyone knows those trees. It is good to learn about CODEP and what they have done.”

Yes, our trees are known far beyond the patches of land that they shade. The Jacmel Road snakes up and over the steep central mountains connecting Léogâne with Jacmel. All along the road are trees. Some are clustered in places like a checkerboard pattern. Elsewhere, they are scattered lightly across valleys providing shade for homes and gardens. One concentrated tract of trees is large enough to be seen from space!

The trees are astonishing. Our story is astonishing. Tell it to everyone you know.

Michael Anello, Executive Director

The Haiti Reforestation Partnership Project’s Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/HaitiReforest/

As the risk from dangerous climate change continues to rise, along with the realization that nations will find it difficult to achieve necessary greenhouse gas emission reductions, nature-based solutions (NbS) ¹ are being emphasized as a means to remove carbon dioxide from the air.²

To be most effective NbS must include strategies for protecting and restoring biodiversity and habitats. Climate disruption will cause species extinctions and vice versa. ³

Current extinction rates are about 1000 times higher than estimated background rates.³ The overarching causes for these declines are human overpopulation, continued population growth, and overconsumption^{. 4}

A recent alarming report on the worldwide insect populations indicates that 40% of species will become extinct over the next couple of decades. ⁵   Insects are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems. The main drivers of insect species decline appear to be in order of importance: 1) habitat loss, conversion to intensive agriculture, urbanization, 2) pollution, mainly by synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; 3) biological factors, including pathogens, and 4) climate change. ⁵  

Despite a century of conservation science, advocacy and education, extinction rates and habitat loss continue to increase greatly.⁹

The Paris Agreement on climate change calls on all parties to acknowledge “the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity, and 66% of signatories to the agreement commit to ‘green’ or ‘nature-based solutions’ in their climate pledges. ⁶

Biodiversity decline will be hardest felt by the 70% of the world’s poorest people who depend directly on ecosystem services for their survival. ^3,6

Finding natural solutions is not just a task for scientists; government agencies, businesses.  Conservation organizations around the world are putting forth proposals for NbS. ⁷

The faith voice is also addressing our ecological challenges. The Rev. Dr. George Clifford asked in a recent Ethical Musing, how will we as people of faith be involved? How can we turn our “dreams into reality, work in our parishes, dioceses, provinces and The Episcopal Church to deliver the projects, programs, and other initiatives we have designed to heal a broken, hurting world desperately in need of God’s transforming love?”⁸

And, in his rich theological essay, Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, David Bookless also calls people of faith to take action to reverse biodiversity decline, when he says, “in an age of ecological depletion, Christianity offers ultimate hope both for people and biodiversity, rooted in the redeeming work of Christ for all creation.”  He says “Christians [and all people of faith] should work with others to seek ways of living which give witness to a sustainable and biodiverse future for God’s world.” ⁹

Finally, on Sunday, April 8th, Emilie and I attended a worship service at St. Bartholomew’s New York (our church home away from home). In his sermon The Rt. Rev. Dean E. Wolfe preached about how people resist accepting the “new”. He ended by saying “there is a cost to holding onto the old things – we need a new way, we need a new way!” I could not agree more. One can begin that journey by visiting www.zerowastechurch.org.

Written and submitted by Carl Sigel

Notes and References:

1. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems, which address societal challenges (e.g. climate change, food and water security or natural disasters) effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.
2. IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 C (eds. Masson-Delmottee, V, et al.), World Meteorological Organization. Geneva, 2018.
3. I. Pimm et al., (2014) The Biodiversity of Species and Their Rates of Extinction, Distribution and Protection, Science, 344, 987-997.
4. Ceballos G, Ehrlich PR, Dirzo R. Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2017; 114: E6089–96.
5. Sanchez-Bayo, F. and Wyckuys, K. A. G., (2019). World decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers, Biological Conservation, 232, 8-27.
6. Seddon, N., et al., (2019). Grounding nature-based climate solutions in sound biodiversity science. Nature Climate Change, 9, 82-87.
7. Mace, G. M., et al., (2018). Aiming higher to bend the curve of biodiversity loss. Nature Sustainability, 1, 448-451.
8. George Clifford, (April 3, 2019) What’s Next?  Retrieved from http://blog.ethicalmusings.com/2019/04/whats-next.html.
9. Bookless, (September 2014), Let everything that has breath the Lord: The Bible and biodiversity. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/14914427/Let_Everything_that_has_Breath_Praise_the_Lord_-_Biodiversity_and_the_Bible.

This time of Spring always reminds us of new beginnings with the flowers blooming, trees budding and our grass a hue of Emerald Green.  It also garners in a very busy time for the Church with Holy Week.  It many ways we have a heavy heart as we ponder the pain and anguish Jesus was facing in his plight to death and ultimately resurrection for us all.  A key take-away is through death comes life.  Yea trust me it is hard hitting, but when we sit down and think about it something new always comes from something old.  We often think of death as an ending point, but it is just the beginning of a journey.

To parallel this to something we have all had occur in our lives, we can all look back at what we felt was a perennial failure, something that crushed our psyche.  Whether that may be job, family, community, faith, friendship—really the list is endless.  The failure shows us something that died within us only to develop into something new, that may be a future opportunity or pathway to another course we take.  In many ways the failure was more important than the success, as humans we feel we must always gauge or measure by accomplished goals, but just maybe the failure was the more important part of the equation.

Such a great position of the Church is our renowned accomplishments around the stewardship toward Ecological well-being.  A big shout out goes to the countless efforts around the Environmental Team.  As we approach this coming weekend and probably the most well-known golfing event on our planet “The Masters” we need to recognize that the Church of Nativity, as it gets the great accolade of putting on the “Green Jacket”.  In many ways I think of a powerful image that all of us have seen at some point.  The astronaut that is given the ultimate experience to sit in space and peer out the window at mother Earth.  This is so powerful and resonates especially with children as it is an awesome moment.  I think that as Jesus rose from the Earth there was a place marker that he looked upon it, as a beautiful creation, that should be loved and cared for just like each other.

Blog written and submitted by Cuyler O’Connor

Anglican theologian and biblical scholar, N. T. Wright, in his recent essay, Jesus is Coming – Plant a Tree! said that, “for early Christians, the resurrection of Jesus launched God’s new creation upon the world,” … and “God’s kingdom would come ‘on earth as in heaven.’ ” Further, Wright says, “we are called to build for the kingdom”, and “in the new creation, the ancient human mandate to look after the garden is dramatically reaffirmed.” ¹

The sad reality is that we have let God down. We are not living in harmony with the earth, and in fact, we are demanding more from the earth than it can provide. ²

In September 2011, the Episcopal House of Bishops addressed our ecological challenges by issuing a Pastoral Teaching on the Environment.³  They challenged the church to face the urgency of the environmental crisis and take faithful action as an expression of our love for God and God’s creation.
The Bishops encouraged us “to take steps in our individual lives, and in community, public policy, business, and other forms of corporate decision-making, to practice environmental stewardship and justice, including (1) a commitment to energy conservation and the use of clean, renewable sources of energy; and (2) efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and whenever possible to buy products made from recycled materials.”

Following a period of study and reflection, on October 1, 2017 in response to the Bishop’s teaching, Church of the Nativity launched our program called “Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action.”
Monthly, for one year, on our website www.zerowastechurch.org, we introduced a new theme, and for each week we offered several small actions that people could take to improve the way that they live on Earth.

The actions for our 12 monthly themes have been compiled, and Restoring God’s Earth is now downloadable as a PDF E-Book! ⁴

1. Wright, N.T. (2019) Jesus is Coming – Plant a Tree! Retrieved from https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/jesus-is-coming-plant-a-tree.
2. Steffen, W. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet, Science. 347 (6223): 1259855.
3. Episcopal Church House of Bishops (September 20, 2011). A Pastoral Teaching on the Environment. Retrieved from https://www.episcopalchurch.org/posts/publicaffairs/episcopal-church-house-bishops-issues-pastoral-teaching.
4. Allen, Stephanie, Gilmore, Dargan, Ridout, Karen, Sigel, Carl, and Tessier, Ailsa. (February 20, 2019). Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action. Retrieved from http://www.zerowastechurch.org/restoring-gods-earth-a-year-personal-action/

A report issued on October 8, 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave the world a wake-up call. With greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions climbing and climate impacts becoming increasingly more severe, the urgency to address climate change has never been greater. To date the highest priority approach of nations has been to reduce emissions of GHGs by replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources. Increasing energy efficiency has also been a high priority.

The latest climate science shows that in addition to reducing emissions, we also need to remove carbon from the air and store it if we are to have a good chance of achieving the global goals of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), the temperature limit, which almost 200 countries agreed to as part of the International Paris Agreement on Climate Change (1).

Strategies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are called negative emissions technologies. They are intentional human efforts to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (1, 2).

The good news is that we have options and several are based on natural systems (3, 4, 5). Recent research found that natural solutions like improved management of forests, wetlands, grasslands and engaging in regenerative agricultural can remove about 5.6 gigatons (Gt) CO2e (6) of carbon per year by 2030. Natural approaches also carry numerous co-benefits, from improving soil and water quality and increasing food security to protecting biodiversity (3).

By 2050, the world will need to sequester and store 8 GtCO2e annually on average—removing more emissions than the total U.S. GHG emissions in 2015 (6.6 GtCO2e). Between 2010 and 2100, the world will need to store about 810 GtCO2 cumulatively, the equivalent of about 20 years of global emissions given current rate (7).

While results from integrated assessment models show that NETs can play a key role in achieving the 1.5 degrees C goal, there are many challenges to scaling up and deploying them. First, the urgency of the world situation needs to be universally accepted. Second, in general NETs require long periods to put them into practice and third, thousands to millions of people need to be involved in the process on a planetary scale. Lastly, policy frameworks need to be established including incentives for early deployment, niche markets, scale-up, demand, and building public awareness (1).

References and Notes:

1. Sabine Fuss, S., et al, Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs, potentials and side effects 2018, Environ. Res. Lett. 13 063002.
2. Examples of NETs: Marin Carbon Project and Hyde Farm Could Make Duke U Carbon Neutral. Retrieved from https://www.marincarbonproject.org/, and http://www.wunc.org/post/hyde-farm-could-make-duke-u-carbon-neutral, respectively.
3. Minx, J. C. et al., Negative emissions—Part 1: Research landscape and synthesis, 2018, Environ. Res. Lett, 13 063001.
4. Griscom, B. W., et al., Natural Climate Solutions, PNAS, 114, 11645-11650 (2017).
5. Church of the Nativity’s project Becoming the Good Soil, Bearing the Fruit That Will Last was launched two years ago to serve as a catalyst to start and advance carbon farming and composting (NETs).
6. 1 GT (gigaton) = 1 billion metric tons = 1 petagram (Pg) = 1015g
7. Levin, K, Mulligan, J. and Ellison, G. (March 19, 2018), Taking Greenhouse Gases from the Sky: 7 Things to Know About Carbon Removal, World Resources Institute. Retrieved from (https://www.wri.org).

Source of the image above: Nancy Bryant, Lazy Heron Farm at 3 Eagles, an organic farm that is using regenerative agricultural approaches in Stanly County, North Carolina.

Even though about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, less than 1 percent is available for human use. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that the finite sources of water are being diverted, depleted , and polluted so fast that by 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will be living in a state of serious water deprivation.

Fortunately, the City of Raleigh has ample rainfall in most years and two water supply watersheds to capture water for our use and consumption. The average household however, uses about 400 gallons of water per day, and it makes sense for all of us to understand the importance of both water efficiency and conservation and take positive actions to reduce use of water in our homes, outdoors, and at work.

Water efficiency and conservation are often used interchangeably, however, they do have subtle differences. Water efficiency generally refers to technological changes such as upgrading to a high efficiency showerhead, while conservation reflects behavioral changes such as taking shorter showers.
WaterSense is a good resource for helping us to save water and find water-efficient products that meet EPA’s criteria for efficiency and performance (https://www.epa.gov/watersense/about-watersense).

We can all exercise greater care in how we use water. The next theme for Nativity’s program Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action will feature water efficiency and conservation. Tips for ensuring a more sustainable water future will be posted on our website, www.zerowastechurch.org in August 2018.

A CATECHISM OF CREATION, an Episcopal Understanding was prepared for study in congregations by The Committee on Science, Technology and Faith of The Executive Council, The Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The objective was to “help Episcopalians become better informed about fundamental elements of both Christian faith and modern science. It serves as an invitation to congregations to develop an intentional ministry of caring for creation in their own communities and to inspire them to incorporate celebration of the creation in common worship. The Catechism presents the biblical basis for the church’s commitment to an ethic of caring for creation and suggests ways in which individuals and congregations might live out this ministry. A few excepts can be found below.

1. Biblical Understanding: “Christ came not just to save our souls, but for all of God’s creation: “Christ is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3) and the one who holds all of creation together in himself (Col. 1:16-17). The New Testament teaches that Christ came to redeem the whole of creation and not merely human beings (Rom. 8:19-22; Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20; 2 Cor. 5:19).”
2. Scientific Understanding: “We can learn about the great diversity of living things and their environments, and urge our neighbors, churches and governments to become better educated about regional, national and global pressures on the environment. With better knowledge we can do a better job of keeping species and their habitats free from harm.”
3. Putting Faith & Science into Action: “As congregations we can practice conservation and care wisely for our church properties. As individuals and congregations we can become examples and provide leadership to our local communities of wise stewardship. Likewise we can seek to influence our governments to develop wise environmental policies. As Christians we have the power of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling Spirit of Christ to give us hope and courage. Confident in that power, cooperating with God, we may act with energy to make God’s good earth a fit dwelling place for all of God’s creatures, now and for the future.”

Source: Catechism of Creation, An Episcopal Understanding, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/files/CreationCatechism.pdf

During the 70th General Convention in 1991, our responsibilities as Episcopalians to care for creation were delineated in a Resolution entitled Affirm Environmental Responsibility and Establish an Environmental Stewardship Team, 1991-a195.
“Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that the 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, affirming our responsibility for the earth in trust for this and future generations:
“Declares that Christian Stewardship of God’s created environment, in harmony with our respect for human dignity, requires response from the Church of the highest urgency;
Calls on all citizens of the world, and Episcopalians in particular, to live their lives as good stewards with responsible concern for the sustainability of the environment and with appreciation for the global interdependence of human life and the natural worlds; and
“Urges all Episcopalians to reflect on their personal and corporate habits in the use of God’s creation; to share with one another ideas for new responses; and to act as individuals, congregations, dioceses, and provinces of the Episcopal Church in ways that protect and heal all interdependent parts of creation. Such action should include prayerful theological discernment and factual knowledge. It should also consider global and local links and the balance of environmental integrity with economic sufficiency for human living; and be it further
“Resolved, That the Episcopal Church, acknowledging the sovereignty of God and God’s call to us in the servanthood of Christ, continue to engage environmental issues, passionately caring for the earth and striving to live into the promises and mandates which are ours as stewards of creation; and be it further
“Resolved, That this Convention calls upon the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies to appoint an interdisciplinary, multicultural Environmental Stewardship Team, 14 members, representing each Province and a broad spectrum of Church membership, whose gifts and expertise are suitable to the task. The mission of the Environmental Stewardship Team is to educate, motivate and facilitate congregations, dioceses and provinces toward local and regional plans, advocacy and action. The Team will work with other environmental groups of common interest …”