News
Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice, a publication launched on 11 August, provides collected reflections on this topic, including a chapter by Dr Guillermo Kerber, programme executive for Care for Creation and Climate Justice at the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Earth stewardship is a term used to signify a broad understanding of the expanded role of science in society and in engaging to the public to reduce the rates of anthropogenic damage to the biosphere.
The book launch came as one of the highlights of the Baltimore, USA 100th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA).
Kerber’s chapter on “Stewardship, Integrity of Creation and Climate Justice: Religious Ethics Insights” offers as a case study the work done by the World Council of Churches over recent decades on environment and climate change as related to other faith initiatives.
“It takes into account the two different stories of creation in the Bible and their consequences in Christian thought,” Kerber said. “Listening both to the cry of the Earth and the cry of vulnerable people, and trying to respond to them, constitutes the rationale for developing actions addressed to individuals as well as to institutions at national and international levels.”
The ESA launched the Earth Stewardship Initiative in 2009. It emerged from the new Ecology and Ethics book series, published by Springer, and elaborates a conceptual framework for continuing Earth Stewardship as an integral part of the society’s new century.
The WCC has a long tradition of addressing the links between Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. At the centre of its work on climate change is care for creation and climate justice.
Since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992, the WCC has been present at all UN climate change conferences.
Over the years, the WCC has helped foster a movement for climate justice touching millions of people around the world, including thousands of congregations who rang their bells for fair and ambitious climate action in 2009 and are connected to one another in prayer each year during “A Time for Creation”-
WCC programme on Care for creation and climate justice
Description of the volume Earth Stewardship
Blog post by Guillermo Kerber on Earth Overshoot Day, 13 August 2015
The interfaith statement on climate change
Churches prepare for COP21 (WCC news release from 22 June 2015)
