Herald Malaysia
SIBU, Sarawak – The Episcopal Commission for Creation Justice of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei (EECCJ-MSB) conducted a threeday workshop titled Ecological Pathways in the Climate Emergency from Feb 11-13. The event brought together 40 delegates from Creation Justice Commissions (CJCs), Creation Justice Ministries (CJMs), and other church ministries from Sibu, Miri, Kuching, Keningau, and Kota Kinabalu.
The workshop was a step up from earlier training by the ECCJ-MSB to cover the new challenges that the global climate emergency was presenting. A key objective of the workshop was to capacitate CJCs and CJMs as well as other church leaders to carry out the mission of advancing creation justice and resilience in the fast-changing scenario of climate solutions.
“As global temperatures move dangerously close to surpassing the 1.5C limit set by the Paris Agreement permanently, many new so-called climate solutions are emerging.
We need to be careful that these solutions don’t end up doing more harm than good. The workshop was designed to build strong advocates and mobilisers who are courageous in confronting injustices and steadfast in offering true hope and robust ecological pathways that will advance hope, truth, resilience, justice, peace and compassion for all,” said Clare Westwood, lead trainer and creator of the workshop. Her co-trainers were Hilary Kung from Third World Network and Rety Sendi from Sahabat Alam Malaysia.
The issues covered were critical updates on the climate emergency, climate justice, a just transition, renewal energy, false climate solutions/technologies, future scenarios and true ecological pathways through the lens of faith. The workshop went into some of these ecological pathways, especially building community resilience to climate change impacts and permaculture.
Many of the participants said the workshop was an “eye-opener” for them with many new topics and they also appreciated the interactive nature of the workshop. “A timely workshop, with updated scientific data. We ALL need to make changes in our lifestyles, to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change. It is another wake-up call. Things are not straightforward as everything is interconnected and the global situation has worsened,” said Gabrielyn and William Gan, participants from CJC Miri. “The session connecting the climate emergency with the Bible really opened my eyes,” shared Fr Ravi Pulagam, new CJC Spiritual Director for CJC Sibu.
In his closing remarks, Bishop Joseph Hii stressed that “Creation is the first Bible” and that we cannot fail to recognise Christ in all creation and act to save creation from degradation and destruction due to human actions including climate change.
This workshop was followed by another three-day workshop organised by CJC Sibu on Assessing Community Resilience to Climate Change Impacts which was attended by 19 participants and conducted by Clare Westwood. Vulnerable communities are facing worse floods, droughts, storms, heat waves and with these, food and water shortages, loss of livelihood and serious health impacts as a result of the growing climate crisis. The critical question is: How can we help people face a climate-challenged future with competence, confidence, courage and hope? This course presented a framework on resilience building and trained participants on how to assess rural community resilience. “I learnt a lot about the factors of resilience, new things which I had not been aware of earlier. This is extremely useful capacity building for us,” says Annie Law, a Sibu CJC Committee member. – Herald Malaysia
