The day the Church went green

I have just returned from Lima, Peru, where I’ve attended the latest round of UN talks on tackling climate change. The twentieth Conference of Parties, or ‘COP20’ as it’s known, was the last meeting before countries convene again in Paris next December to agree a new global deal to try to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change.

As Pope Francis made clear in a letter sent ahead of the talks, climate change “affects all humanity” and is “a serious ethical and moral responsibility”.

Yet its impacts are disproportionate – the more than 400 million people most vulnerable to the impact of it survive on less than or 80p a day. Climate change is already exacerbating hunger, causing economic insecurity, forcing displacement and preventing sustainable development.

At a high-level event convened by the Peruvian bishops’ conference, bishops from all continents came together in Lima to discuss climate change with government officials. With 15 Peruvian bishops and others from South Africa, Brazil, France and Bangladesh, the event was a major step in senior church leaders laying out their position on climate change.

The event brought together President of the COP, Peru’s Environmental Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Ambassador Laurence Tubiana, France’s Special Representative for next year’s COP in Paris, expert negotiators, and representatives from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and figures from the United Nations.

Following this dialogue the bishops released a statement that spelt out the need to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5 degree Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels, and called for an end to the fossil fuel era, phasing in 100 per cent renewable energy with sustainable energy access for all.

While the Church has spoken out previously on climate issues, this was the first time that bishops from all continents had come together to share their views on the subject in one document.

The need for a shift away from fossil fuels is a view shared by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, who made clear in a joint workshop in May that our massive fossil fuel deeply disrupts the Earth’s climate and acidifies the world’s oceans.

Certainly, in the communities where Cafod works, access to fossil fuels will not necessarily solve the problem of energy access or reduce poverty. ‘The Right Climate for Development’, a report issued in September by Cafod and other agencies, highlights how despite our current fossil-fuel based energy system 1.2 billion people still do not have access to electricity and 2.8 billion do not have modern cooking facilities.

The needs of those living without reliable, safe and affordable energy will not be met by inefficient and polluting fossil-fuel grid-based electricity generation, but by off-grid solutions such as small-scale wind, hydro, and solar-powered sources that are mostly renewable.

These are more feasible, sustainable and cost-effective than connecting these communities to the grid, and avoid creating new dependencies.

In Lima I was struck by the widespread interest among delegates from all faiths and none in what the Catholic Church is doing and saying on climate change. The Church has an important role to play in these discussions, giving a voice to the marginalised communities they work alongside.

But it was frustrating that the outcome of the conference failed to reflect the positive political or civil society momentum going into the negotiations. Although some progress was made, the agreement reached in Lima still leaves a huge amount of work to be done before Paris to ensure that we achieve the kind of global climate deal that is needed.

Rob Elsworth is a climate change policy analyst at Cafod

Above: Effects of climate change seen in Amboseli national park in southern Kenya. Photo: CNS/Reuters