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Seven Weeks for Water 2017, week 7: "Blue Community: Churches response to the right to water", by Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri

The final reflection of the Lenten Campaign: Seven Weeks for Water 2017 of the Word Council of Churches’ (WCC) Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) is by Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri.  Dr Phiri is the deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and responsible for WCC’s work on Public Witness and Diakonia. A Malawian by nationality, Apawo Phiri was a professor of African theology, dean and head of the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics, and director of the Centre for Constructive Theology at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.  In this reflection she explains the concept of a ‘blue community’ and points out why the bottled water industry is an impediment to the human right to water. She then takes us through the journey of the WCC into becoming a blue community through one of its ecumenical initiatives, the EWN.

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Seven Weeks for Water 2017, week 5: "Normative content on human right to water in Africa", by Dr Rogate Mshana

The 5th reflection of the Lenten Campaign: Seven Weeks for Water 2017 of the Word Council of Churches’ (WCC) Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) is by  Dr Rogate Mshana. Dr Mshana, a renowned economist is a former staff member of World Council of Churches responsible for its programme on Poverty, Wealth and Ecology, later known as the Economy of Life. He is currently working as a consultant on Economic Justice for the Council for World Mission and based in his home country, Tanzania. In the following reflection, he deals with the 5 normative contents of human rights framework on water in the context of Africa. He further relates water as a key element to achieve food security, health security and gender justice.

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Seven Weeks for Water 2017, week 3: "Nexus between water and food security", by Rev. O. Kolade Fadahunsi

The 3rd reflection of the Lenten Campaign: Seven Weeks for Water 2017 of the Word Council of Churches’ (WCC) Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) is by Rev. O. Kolade Fadahunsi. Rev. Kolade is the Executive Director of Nigeria’s Kairos Foundation. He is also the programme associate for the national food security project of the Christian Council of Nigeria.  In the following reflection he underlines the inter-dependency of water and food security, given that 70 per cent of fresh water is used for food production and one third of food produced goes to waste.

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Seven Weeks for Water 2015, week 7: "Theological Reflection on Water from a Salimist (Korean Eco-feminist) Perspective", by Prof. Chung Hyun Kyung

The last in the series of theological reflections of the Lenten campaign “Seven Weeks for Water” is by Prof. Chung Hyun Kyung, a Korean Theologian teaching at the Union Theological Seminary in the USA. She reflects on the issues related to water from a Salimist (Korean eco-feminist) perspective. She highlights how we cannot serve both God and the Mammon at the same time and that Lent provides an opportunity to repent from our sins of abusing resources of mother earth, particularly of water, driven by capitalism. She emphasizes strongly on the “restorative justice” in making our relationship with God and nature – a just one!

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Seven Weeks for Water 2015, week 1: "Engendering Water: An Eco-Feminist Reading from Southern Africa", by Kuzipa Nalwamba

The biblical reflection for the first of the Seven Weeks for Water 2015 is by Kuzipa Nalwamba, an ordained minister of the United Church of Zambia (UCZ), who is currently pursuing her PhD from University of Pretoria. She highlights  the undeniable underlining gap between men and women’s political, economic and social conditions, contribution and participation,  which also gets reflected on access to water. More often than not, the burden of meeting water needs for the families, unfairly rests on the women.

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Statement to COP18 / UN Climate Change Conference Doha

On 7 December at the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), while no agreement has been reached, the World Council of Churches (WCC) delivered a statement to the High-Level Ministerial Segment of COP 18 in Doha, Qatar.

The WCC statement delivered to the plenary stressed that “Climate change is happening! It is imperative to act now without more delays in view of the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of climate change.”

The statement was read by Metropolitan Seraphim of Zimbabwe, from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa.

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Economy of Life, Justice, and Peace for All: A Call to Action

As a follow-up to the Alternative Globalization Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE) process, which concluded with the AGAPE Call presented at the WCC 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre in 2006, the WCC initiated a programme focused on eradicating poverty, challenging wealth accumulation and safeguarding ecological integrity based on the understanding that Poverty, Wealth and Ecology are integrally related. The AGAPE Call to Action is the result of a six-year process of consultations and regional studies.

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Seven Weeks for Water 2012, week 4: "Food Waste and Water"

In this season of repentance, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA) encourages us to reflect on the fact that more than one third of the food produced on this planet for human consumption - the daily bread for which we pray and with which we are graciously and abundantly gifted - is wasted; not through natural disasters, but through our own disgracefully negligent stewardship of this gift. 

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Seven Weeks for Water 2011, week 3: "The Earth is the Lord’s", by Linwood Blizzard II and Shantha Ready Alonso

The psalmist once declared, “The Earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1). From generation to generation, we have a lifespan to enjoy and steward God’s Earth. However, in recent decades, industries that unsustainably extract from God’s Earth have been spinning out of control. Their actions challenge God's sovereignty over the gifts that were created for sharing by  all Creation and for all generations. Extractive and other industries have been privatizing the natural gifts of God’s Earth and have excluded local communities from sharing in these gifts.

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Ecclesial and Social Visions of Indigenous Peoples Consultation Report

Around 35 theologians and leaders representing communities, churches and organizations of indigenous peoples in 16 countries in many parts of the world attended a consultation from 21-26 October, 2008 in Baguio City, Philippines. This consultation was called in response to a proposal by the Ninth General Assembly of the WCC to facilitate the theological contributions of indigenous peoples to enrich the life and work of the WCC. In solidarity with the struggles of the largest indigenous peoples' population in Asia, Baguio City in the Philippines was chosen as the context for this theological conversation.

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