In the lead up to World Environment Day on Wednesday 5th June, we will be showcasing some of the great work Renew Our World in Brazil are doing.
The team there have been busy mobilising Christians to take Creation Care seriously. Check out the videos below. You can also sign their petition.
BEFORE THE DATE
Choose a location. Ideas include a beach, riverbank or park.
Pick a date. Consider choosing an international celebration day, such as World Environment Day (5 June) or World Clean-up Day (a date in September each year).
In March 2015, the government of Malawi banned the production, sale and use of single-use plastic bags. However, putting the ban into practice was not easy. The plastic bag manufacturers appealed and got a court injunction to halt the ban. While waiting for their appeal to be heard, they continued to produce and sell the bags. This continued for more than three years.
Atualmente, 2 bilhões de pessoas nos países mais pobres vivem e trabalham entre pilhas de lixo, bebem água poluída, respiram ar tóxico e lutam contra doenças. Empresas multinacionais ajudam a agravar o problema vendendo bilhões de produtos plásticos que são usados uma única vez e descartados sem o tratamento adequado.
The Tearfund office in Haiti has managed to work closely with networks of passionate youth all over the country and have been stirring these groups to step out in advocacy. I travelled to the region of Nippes to meet these young people first hand and run a movement building Bootcamp with them. The aim was to enable a group of 40 young people to start a movement campaigning on creation care that would eventually move out into other regions of Haiti.
Today, two billion people in the world’s poorest countries are living and working among piles of waste – that’s one in four of us. Drinking polluted water. Breathing toxic air. Battling sickness. Each day waste mountains are growing causing preventable deaths.
Rashid Hameed* is 51 years old and lives in one of the 34 informal settlements in Islamabad, Pakistan. His community has no waste collection service, and rubbish is dumped and burned in the open.
Rashid explains: ‘Our slum is located on the bank of a stream, which is full of solid waste and is a breeding place for mosquitoes, flies and rats. These cause diseases in our children and old people, and we spend a great deal of money on their treatment. People living outside the slum discriminate against us because of our unclean environment.’
The earth does not belong to us – it belongs to God! It is a gift from God, a home that we share with the rest of creation. But with this gift comes responsibility.
We are being hit with more floods, more droughts, and more extreme weather -- and for many people that means less to eat and communities pushed into poverty.
Our generation are the only ones with an opportunity to act -- because time is short. This responsibility belongs to us.
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