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  • San Diego Creation Care Team Success Stories

    Catholic Climate Covenant has created two short videos to discuss how different churches in the San Diego diocese in California have worked to be better stewards of God’s creation. The parish of Our Mother of Confidence in San Diego, California, has taken action to reduce water and energy usage while the Saint James Parish and Academy in Solana Beach, California, has implemented environmentally conscious projects and initiatives in their community.

  • God’s Gift of Water

    Creation Justice Ministries encourages Christian communities to consider water as a sacred gift from God that connects and sustains all life. They have created a free Christian education resource on water that includes liturgical resources, sermon starters, and ideas to take action.

  • Columbus Catholic School becomes Designated GreenSpot School

    The GreenSpot School designation indicates that a school has taken initiatives to educate their students and staff about sustainability, water issues, conserving energy, reducing waste, and green transportation. St. Mary School Catholic school has become the first in Columbus to earn this designation. They have implemented a recycling program, local garden, and composting, which qualified them to become a GreenSpot School. They have created a short video of students discussing their engagement and staff discussing the impact of becoming a GreenSpot School.

  • Water

    The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Presbyterian Mission website provides some helpful resources on critical water issues, with a special focus on the problems that result from fracking. Included are additional resources to learn more about fracking. With regard to community specific issues, they provide suggestions to encourage residents to investigate, educate, and act to take appropriate measures to alleviate the problems.

  • Report and Recommendations on Limited Water Resources and Takings

    The 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. put forth this report on recommendations regarding critical water issues. The first half discusses water with regard to ethical considerations and sustainability. The second part provides an action/study guide that is designed for individual use as well as educational purposes.

  • Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice

    This report was adopted by the 202nd General Assembly (1990) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Their Committee on Social Witness Policy urges the assembly to adopt specified policies within the document. The report covers of multitude of critical environmental issues, with sound policy recommendations and actions that congregations can take to support the myriad of sustainability issues.

  • Water

    The World Council of Churches discuss the issues of access to fresh water in various parts of the world and its impact on the survival of many communities, as well as biodiversity in general. The following excerpt provides more detailed information on this environmental injustice:

    "The survival of 1.2 billion people is currently in jeopardy due to lack of adequate water and sanitation. For the same reason, the lives of 6,000 children are lost every day. For those struggling with HIV/AIDS, poor or no water is yet another barrier to overcome.

    In today’s world unequal access to water causes conflicts between and among people, communities, regions and nations. These conflicts exist in areas where there is a lack of water or where the main part of the water resource is polluted. Very often in these situations the poorest people bear the heaviest burden."

  • How do we Communicate Environmental Ethics? Reflections on Environmental Education from a Kuwaiti Perspective

    Dr. Khadija al-Naki, an educational researcher, discusses Islamic thought in relation to environmental education. Comparing Islamic teachings with Western environmental ethics, al-Naki opens a conversation on how to develop an environmental curriculum in Islamic education systems. This article leaves the reader questioning the role of education in the environmental movement.
    Published in the journal International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education.

  • Manifesto for an Ecological Reformation of Christianity

    This Manifesto by the World Council of Churches is a call to examine Christian practices that may be harmful to the Earth, humans, and other species. It urges individuals instead to focus on what various “eco-congregations” or “green churches” are doing. The following manifesto excerpt provides a rationale for the need for ecological reformation:

    "The need for an ecological reformation of all Christian traditions is of course manifested in different ways in various parts of the world. The pain impulses associated with ecological destruction have been registered especially in those areas that lie on the periphery of current constellations of economic power. The call for an ecological reformation of Christianity has come with particular urgency from Christians in such areas (the Pacific, Africa, Asia, Latin-America) as they are more exposed and vulnerable. This call is echoed by churches which belong to (mainly protestant) countries in the global North which have contributed heavily to the exploitation of natural resources, industrial production and a style of consumption that causes environmental degradation."

  • Wanted: Innovative Farmers to Help Slow Algal Bloom on Lake Erie

    The Christian Science Monitor has written an article discussing how agricultural nutrients in the Maumee River, Lake Erie’s biggest source of pollution, are reaching record proportions. Most nutrient pollution is caused by large storms, and with climate change, these storms are becoming increasingly more common. The USDA reports that farmers are making headway toward reducing nutrient pollution on a voluntary basis, but many researchers say that these efforts are not sufficient. A recent report suggests additional outreach, an increased focus of conservation dollars, and mandated soil testing.

    Wetland restoration – bringing back bits of the Black Swamp— can play a pivotal role in clearing algal bloom in Lake Erie. The Black Swamp Conservancy is currently working on turning 60 acres back into swamp in northwestern Ohio. William Mitsch, a retired Ohio State University professor and wetlands expert, hopes to eventually restore a tenth of the Black Swamp (about 100,000 acres) to provide a substantial cleaning of Lake Erie.

  • Cleveland's St. Casimir Church Implements Green Infrastructure Practices

    St. Casimir Church of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese wins the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's Green Infrastructure Grant! The church will be implementing permeable pavers, and rain water basins with the grant. This effort helps give stormwater new life and redirect water pollution. St. Casimir's expresses gratitude for their community's support. Read more at the link below.

  • The Importance of Water to Faith Communities, and How to Conserve it!

    The Ohio Interfaith Power and Light provides information on the spiritual importance of water, along with a teaching activity for the topic. The attached also includes tips on how to help your congregation conserve water.

  • Saving Buffalo Reef

    This 11-minute video, by the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), informs the viewer of the natural, cultural, and economic importance of Buffalo Reef. This reef is located off the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan, in Lake Superior. Buffalo Reef is currently under ecological distress due to local mining activities. Current Tribal, State, Federal, and Academic efforts are underway to help restore this significant environmental feature, as documented in this video.

  • Congregational Profile: Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Grove City, OH: How it began in one parish

    In 2016, prompted by Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si,” we at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Grove City, Ohio, held two 8-week sessions of discussions on the encyclical and at the end of the second session, our pastor, Fr. Daniel J. Millisor, appointed the discussion leader, Sister Nancy Miller, OSF as chairperson and called together a team to explore how the parish might lower our carbon footprint. The Creation Care Council (CCC) of our parish meets monthly for prayer, discussion and action in response to Laudato Si’s call for greater care for our common home.

    We conducted a parish survey, with the intention of enhancing awareness among parishioners, as well as to determine if, and how, members were already incorporating recycling and composting into their daily lives. The results were highly, though not entirely, favorable. In addition to regularly inserting information and suggestions into our parish bulletins, taking the CCC members to tour a landfill, recycling plant, and the OSU Byrd Polar Research Center, we requested that all committees at the parish look at ways to reduce or eliminate their use of Styrofoam dinnerware. Rather than condemn polluters, we wrote thank you notes to businesses that showed environmental stewardship. We began annually purchasing and giving away seedling trees to plant on Earth Day. We took on trying to improve parish recycling efforts – providing new recycling containers for all parish offices, inviting a local official – an environmental expert – to explain to us what is and is not recyclable, preparing an interactive recycling quiz at the parish festival, and then attempting to bring recycling to the parish picnic and festival.

    The efforts to incorporate recycling in parish events “failed” the first year, but we got it right the second year and this (the third) year, we successfully introduced food waste composting to Lenten Parish Fish Fry dinners, the Parish Picnic, and our largest parish event of the year: the Parish Festival. The 2019 Parish Festival served an estimated 5,000 meals, working with food vendors to increase their ability to serve compostable dishware and cutlery. In total, the CCC was able to divert 2,704 gallons of waste from the local landfill, which constituted 86% of all waste at the Festival.

    We also exceeded all expectations in soliciting nearly 100 volunteers to help teach and monitor correct depositing of these materials - without tapping the usual volunteer corps that was still needed to keep the regular parts of the festival going. With the support of our pastor and dedicated CCC members, we’ve come a long way, and still feel like we have only just begun!

  • Bishop Hartley High School, Columbus, OH

    Bishop Hartley has assembled a Care 4 Creation faculty committee, which focuses on long-term plans at the school. There is also a Care 4 Creation Association, which is for students and is also student-led. Instructors Rick Kohut and Ann Hawk have spearheaded some of the more long-term creation care projects there. Each have set up a vermicomposting bin in their classrooms, offering that it works well and is relatively low maintenance. Students from one of Rick’s classes had worked on a project where they created a poster/chart with pictures of endangered animals. Some of the students from Rick's classes engaged in the school's climate strike. One highly motivated student, Jamal, wrote a letter about the event which he sent to local politicians. Ann has been attending a yearly AEP Ohio energy efficiency program, and they in turn provide her with free energy savings kits for each of her students. AEP also offers energy saving kits for residential customers who are willing to complete their online Home Energy Profile. In addition, two new drinking fountains are about to be installed at the school that are designed to fill reusable water bottles. The school is also in the process of creating water bottles for sale with their school’s logo on them. The intent is to cut down on students and faculty purchasing and bringing in individual plastic bottles of water.

  • Engaged Organizations: The Catholic Foundation of Ohio - Columbus

    The Catholic Foundation of Columbus, Ohio is designed to be responsive to interests that come from within the diocesan parishes and schools. To the extent that those interests have included creation care work, there has been grant activity. Dan Kurth, Director of Grants for the Catholic Foundation, offers that the foundation’s rubric for creation care initiatives is essentially: Does this project have any green energy sustainability pieces to it? The energy efficiency component of the foundation’s responsive grants is the main integration of a Laudato Si' principle into the foundation's grant work. As the Laudato Si encyclical has grown in awareness, more funding has become available as energy efficiency-related projects have become more commonplace over time.

    The foundation has recently partnered with the Columbus Catholic Diocese on their Diocean Loan LED program, which has had considerable impact on diocesan savings. In addition, the foundation encourages schools to establish their own maintenance reserve funds in order to maintain more efficient operations. Specifically, there is a push to have schools and parishes upgrade their boilers, change over to LED lighting, and replace their windows with more efficient ones.

  • Engaged Organizations: Christ the King Catholic Church, Columbus, OH

    Jason Cervenec, Education and Outreach Director for OSU's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, has helped plan and carry out a number of initiatives for events and projects at Christ the King Catholic Church over the past few years. With the assistance of Deb Steele, the Volunteer Coordinator for Ohio Interfaith Power and Light (Ohio IPL), Jason has organized energy audits that were conducted by Ohio IPL programming and support. The LED retrofit with diocese Facility Director, Bruce Boyan, has been a noteworthy achievement at the parish as well. Additional energy efficient projects have included window replacement (also with Bruce) and the installation of an HVAC system. While the parish center is currently undergoing renovation work, Jason and other parishioners have reviewed the plans to look for additional efficiency and sustainability improvements. Recently, Jason had designed creation care bulletin inserts, with feedback from the Creation Care team at the Columbus Catholic Diocese, that have been widely circulate around town. The annual creation care information program that Jason initiated has garnered substantial support, with roughly 30 people in attendance each time. An additional work in progress project includes the installation of a bike rack station outside of the parish.

  • Bloomberg Business Posts Infographic to Show “What’s Really Warming the World?”

    Occasionally, an outstanding graphic emerges to help us understand some of the complexities of climate science, such as this recent series of graphs published by Bloomberg Business. If you have wondered how all the various factors and forcings involved in global warming interact, these infographics based on data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies are very helpful.

  • Muslims and Water Conservation

    The United Nations recognizes World Water Day on March 22. The Muslim community is taking this message to heart with discussions of water conservation. The following excerpt provides a brief summary of the Muslim khutbah with regard to the topic of water scarcity:

    "The purpose of today’s khutbah is to remind us that the conservation of water and more broadly environmental consciousness should be an integral part of what it means to be a conscientious Muslim. An environmentally conscious Muslim is someone who lives in reverence and harmony with nature and uses water and all other natural resources frugally and sparingly."

  • Water Shield

    Water Shield is a program hosted by GreenFaith that helps congregations learn how to conserve water as well as maintain high water quality. This program promotes stewardship, and can help gain a community recognition for their efforts in the environmental awareness world. Water Shield is an eco-merit badge that is bestowed upon faith-based institutions that have taken steps to conserve water, protect water quality, and mobilize its members and community to do the same at home.

  • Changing the Columbia River Treaty

    Many groups, including faith communities, have called for a restructuring of the Columbia River Treaty. The original treaty was written in 1964, and has become outdated. The people calling for the change want the river to be valued for its ecosystem services that were not included in the original treaty.

  • World Help Providing Water for Kirinda, Uganda

    World Help, a Christian organization, is raising money to provide clean drinking water to the people of Kirinda, Uganda. They are attempting to fund three major projects, a water well, piping, and irrigation. The lack of clean sources of water for the people who live here is causing diseases and additional hardships.

  • A Sermon for World Water Day

    Susan Barnett, founder of Faiths for Safe Water, brings attention to World Water Day by highlighting award-winning filmmaker and photographer, Haik Kocharian. Haik recently releasing, “Blessed by Water,” showing rare images of water in tradition, ceremony and spirituality as celebrated by the Christian Orthodox community in Ethiopia. Susan continues to discuss the concerns of clean water worldwide: 663 million men, women and children are forced to drink low quality water; and one third of the world's population don’t even have the dignity and safety of toilets. The article concludes by encouraging church leaders to use their collective voices to advocate for increased access to safe water and sanitation in order to improve global health, nutrition, poverty, gender equality, food security, human security, and peace.

  • World Water Day Synopsis

    The United Nations and the global community in general recognize World Water Day as a reminder that much of the world faces a global water, sanitation and hygiene crisis. 663 million people—comprising mostly the poorest and most marginalized in the world—live without access to safe drinking water. In addition 2.4 billion people lack access to improved sanitation. The article suggests various ways that individuals can contribute to improving the water conditions in these areas.

  • Anamchara Faith Community Celebrates Earth Day 2016

    This year, the Anamchara Faith Community will be providing an Earth Day celebration in the woods at Bernheim Forest in Bullitt County, Kentucky. The service will include biblical passages that give honor to the importance of trees, with the plan to plant at least one during this time. This service will draw from different faiths and cultures, ranging from the Catholic faith to Native American customs and traditions.