THE WCC’S CLIMATE JUSTICE WORK AND THE BLUE COMMUNITY

The WCC’s Climate Justice Work and the Blue Community
Remarks by WCC Associate General Secretary Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, welcoming His Holiness Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, 24 April 2017

 The Ecumenical Centre, 24 April 2017

 Photos: Nikos Kosmidis /WCC and Albin Hillert /WCC

World Council of Churches

Your All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,
Honourable representatives of International Institutions,
Rev Dr Olav Fyske Tveit, the WCC General Secretary
My colleagues from the Ecumenical Centre
Sisters and brothers in the Lord

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money,

come, buy and eat! Come, buy ….without money and without cost.—Isaiah 55:1

Your All Holiness, in your address you have raised many important points which are relevant to the work of the Public Witness and Diakonia programme that I am responsible for. In the interest of time, I will only respond to your statement in your address where you said ‘The environmental crisis calls for concrete actions from each one of us.’ For the WCC, an example of this concrete action is when we became a Blue Community on 25 October 2016 at a public event held at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.   Dr Maude Barlow from the Blue Planet Project, Canada, awarded a certificate to the WC, welcoming us into the Blue Community, and also inaugurated the tap-water-based dispensers in the Ecumenical Centre.

Let me explain three criteria of being a Blue Community:

• Recognizing water as a human right.
• Saying “no” to the sale/use of bottled water in places where tap water is safe to drink.
• Promoting publicly financed, owned and operated drinking water and waste water treatment services.

In line with the WCC’s commitment toward a Blue Community, we have now personalized  glass water bottles for the WCC staff and visitors. Therefore, we do not promote bottled water in the WCC premises, because tap water is safe to drink.

In 2015, the WCC’s Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) issued an appeal in which it urged its member churches to eliminate the use of bottled water in North America and Europe, where tap water is safe to drink.  In a statement it said,

“The EWN strongly believes that among many impediments of realization of human right to water are the ‘bottled water’ industries.” It then went on to list some of the following compelling reasons to shun bottled water. To name a few:

1)       “Bottled water” industries are involved in “land grabbing” and “water grabbing” to expand at the cost of barring the poor to access safe drinking water. Many times governments shun their responsibilities to provide safe drinking water to the poor through their water distribution system, because people have the alternative of “bottled water.” The availability of “bottled water” allows the elites to ignore governments’ failures to provide the necessary infrastructure to provide safe drinking water.

2)      Bottling water wastes water: Typically, a litre of water is wasted for each litre bottled and it takes three times as much water to create a plastic water bottle than it does to fill it.

3)      Production of plastic for bottled water consumes a substantial quantity of fossil fuels and creates both air and water pollution.

4)      The energy consumed in bottling and distributing bottled water is significant; if measured in terms of the oil equivalent, it takes a quarter litre of oil to produce and distribute a litre of bottled water. The greenhouse gas emissions as a result, burden our climate and aggravate climate change.

5)      Over 63 billion plastic bottles are dumped in landfills, oceans, and landscapes each year. It takes hundreds of years for a single plastic bottle to decompose. If incinerated, plastic releases a variety of toxic air pollutants. There is no good way to dispose of plastic solid waste.

The above are good reasons to say no to bottled water.  But the economics of bottled water industry is what makes this business thrive.  In many developed   countries bottled water is more expensive than petrol, wine and milk.

This reality hit me hard in 2015, when there were floods in my country, Malawi, which resulted in contamination even of tap water. I observed that only 5 percent of the people were able to buy bottled water that was safe to drink. The majority of the people could not afford to buy safe drinking water. Sadly, despite the fact that safe drinking water is a right for every human being, the voices of Christians in Africa are silent in making sure that governments are held accountable to provide safe drinking water for everyone.

Your All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, I would like to present to you a WCC Blue Community water bottle as a reminder of the WCC’s commitment to water justice.

My colleague, Dinesh Suna, Programme Executive for WCC’ Ecumenical Water Network will present water bottles to the following people:

-      Senior Metropolitan Athanasios of Chalcedon
-      Metropolitan Jeremiah of Switzerland
-      Metropolitan Maximos of Silivria
-      Bishop Makarios of Lampsakos
-      Deacon Ioakeim (Billis, Deputy Secretary of the Holy Synod
-      Prof. Vlassios Phidas
-      Prof. Konstantinos Delikostantis
-      Mr. Mario Tarinas