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Bishop Arnold Temple at a side event of the WCC Central Committee meeting on 15 June, 2018. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC

Bishop Arnold Temple at a side event of the WCC Central Committee meeting on 15 June, 2018. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC

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By Philippa Hitchen*

You wouldn’t pay two thousand times more than the value of a cup of coffee, so why pay that for a glass of water?

That’s one of the reasons why members of the World Council of Churches’s Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) are encouraging you to consider joining the “Blue Community” and to stop using bottled water in places where tap water is safely and freely available.

The network grew out of efforts by Brazilian Catholics and Reformed Churches in Switzerland to raise awareness of the crucial issues of water and sanitation as basic human rights.

Two years ago the WCC joined the Blue Community, pledging to respect the right to water as a free and public resource. Plastic bottles have been replaced by tap water and refillable glass bottles bearing the logo “Water for Life.”

Cities, countries and churches around the world are also signing up to the pledge, but for Methodist Bishop Arnold Temple from Sierra Leone, it’s not happening fast enough.

“Water is a real crisis issue in our world today,” he explains, especially in the developing world, where children. – particularly girls - are walking for miles in search of water, instead of being able to go to school. This often exposes them to the dangers of being raped or assaulted. Yet governments, he says, do not seem to be paying enough attention to the problem.

Bishop Temple, who teaches eco-theology at Freetown's College of Theology and Management, says Pope Francis’s encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, on the need to care for our common home, is a “vital document,” which he encourages all his students to read. We are happy that the Vatican is addressing these issues, he says, “and we’re happy that we can address it as we’re walking together in the pilgrimage of justice and peace.”

He warns that by 2050 there is likely to be more plastic in our oceans by weight than fish, adding that “if we’re saying it’s not our business, then we’re saying we have no respect for the upcoming generation.”

* Philippa Hitchen is a Vatican-based journalist


Audio: Interview of bishop Arnold Temple

Learn more about WCC’s Ecumenical Water Network