New Zealand should use its voice at the UN to get more international climate change funding to the Pacific communities that most need it says the director of Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand Julianne Hickey. “At United Nations level we certainly need for there to be a commitment from the countries that are causing the environmental challenges Read more
The Vatican’s Secretary of State has made an impassioned appeal to the international community to tackle global warming. Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent a message to a UN summit on climate change, which was delivered by the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt. The archbishop said that the evidence for global Read more
The United Nations Climate Change Summit began on Monday in New York. The Climate Change Summit is trying to find agreement on ways to limit further environmental damage. “The people most affected – at grass roots level and on the coastal edge – must be part of those discussions,” says Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand director Julianne Hickey. Read more
The first draft of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment has been completed, but the Pope says he needs to be certain about the science used. Speaking with reporters on his plane flight back from Korea, Pope Francis was asked by a German journalist about the upcoming encyclical. The Pope replied that he had spoken Read more
The Catholic Church is playing its part in helping resettle more than 2000 people from a low-lying Pacific atoll threatened by climate change. Most of the 2700 people on the Carteret Atoll are relocating to Bougainville after their home islands have become increasingly uninhabitable. The atoll, made up of six islets, has suffered saltwater intrusion, contaminating Read more
A Tuvalu family has won an appeal to stay in New Zealand after they claimed they would be affected by climate change if they went home. This is the first successful application for residency on humanitarian grounds in New Zealand that has featured climate change. The Immigration and Protection Tribunal said the family has strong Read more
A recent visit to Canberra with young pasifikan leaders to lobby Australian politicians has made Sister Geraldine Kearney “more determined to be part of their ongoing struggle”. Geraldine was part of the Pacific Calling Partnership delegation to Canberra late last month, which included a small group of young people from Kiribati, Tuvalu and Papua New Guinea. Geraldine Read more
Water is creating lots of dairy millionaires, but at what cost to our environment? Recipe for prosperity: take flat land, skilled farmers, fertiliser and cows. Add cheap water. Fold in new technology, lashings of debt and permissive environmental rules. Voila! In a decade or two you have a thriving district with next-to-no unemployment, a rising Read more
The most prominent Protestant seminary in the United States will divest itself of all investments in fossil fuels. “We have sinned . . .”, wrote Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones in an article in Time magazine. Fossil fuel investments constituted 11 per cent of Union’s US$108 million endowment. Removing such investments is an act Read more
There is a church in Kiribati which is sitting out in the middle of the ocean. President of Kiribati Anote Tong says there used to be a village around it. “And why it remains there is because I’ve asked the village to build a seawall so it doesn’t go, so it can bear testimony to Read more