Diocesan Justice and Peace campaigners, Laudato Si animators, Columban missionaries and Christian Climate Action were among the 60,000 people from more than 200 organisations who walked in the Biodiversity March through Westminster on Earth Day, 22 April.
The march sounded the alarm that one million plant and animal species on Planet Earth are now threatened with extinction.
Marchers in animal costumes called for political action to defend the natural world and for international financial institutions and multilateral development banks to align their portfolios with the conservation of biodiversity.
An Earth Day Mass followed in Parliament Square, celebrated by Fr Joe Ryan, a Westminster diocesan priest, with more than 100 participants standing in the open air, one with a “tiger” draped around his jacket.
Later in the afternoon a Franciscan prayer walk stopped outside the nearby Church of England’s Church House to pray for complete divestment from fossil fuels. Later, Green Anglicans joined an international online conference where climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate was a speaker.
On Earth Day, the Young Christian Climate Network wrote on Twitter: “Let’s pray for and seek a climate justice which renews our broken world, protects our brothers and sisters affected by climate breakdown, and builds a safer and fairer world for the next generation.”
Scotland Justice and Peace tweeted: “This Earth Day, as stewards of our common home, we must keep walking on our journey to ecological conversion for the good of all of us.”
The Christian climate charity A Rocha UK announced on Earth Day that Norwich Cathedral received its Silver Eco Church Award.
The Anglican Church in Wales launched the Energy Footprint Tool during its Governing Body meeting in Llandudno the same day. The tool is an online calculator designed to help churches to estimate their annual carbon generation.
The Archbishop of Wales, Andrew John, said that “our Energy Footprint Tool is vital to us in reaching our net zero ambition as a Church” and urged “all clerics and volunteers with responsibility for utility bills to use it to demonstrate that, collectively, we care about our use of our God-given resources”.
Earth Day is celebrated annually on 22 April all over the world. Christian communities planted trees in Fiji and conducted litter-picks the US east coast. Caritas Philippines declared a climate emergency in the Philippines and promised to push for faster moves towards renewable energy.
António Guterres, the UN Seretary General, tweeted: “This Earth Day, I urge everyone to raise your voices and demand that leaders make peace with nature. Let's all do our part to protect our common home for the sake of people and planet right now and for the generations to come.”
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