B002 Build Eco-Region Creation Networks for Crucial Impact

This resolution offers concrete next steps to fulfill:

2022-A087 -- Commit to Net Carbon Neutrality by 2030

And be it further Resolved, that the General Convention request the diocesan bishops of every diocese to begin to build networks of landowners and creation trustees in each diocese who will devote portions of their land to reforestation, prairie restoration, wetland and coastland preservation; adopt and share regenerative agricultural and ranching practices; collaborate with neighboring dioceses for best water practices to protect our watersheds; collaborate on creative means of distributing food; and pray for future generations dependent on the land and water we steward; and be it further

2018-D053 -- Call for Model Policies for Sustainable Church Land Use

Resolved, That the 79th General Convention recommends that all dioceses, faith communities and institutions create partnerships enabling the use of church-owned land for regenerative agriculture and biodiversity conservation projects in order to sequester carbon and to mitigate climate change;

This resolution responds to the call of experts at COP28 who demonstrated that there is “no pathway to safeguarding and restoring ecosystems, staying within +1.5 and safe-guarding biodiversity, as well as feeding 10 billion people by 2050, without transforming the ways we produce, distribute and consume food and inhabit our land and in-land waters.” The resolution continues partnership with the Anglican Communion Forest and aligns with the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework.

The faith of the Church informs and underpins this resolution. First, we understand and embrace the truth that Christ has made us one body, bound together in the overflowing love of God. This way of understanding the world, which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr expressed as “the interrelated structure of reality,” can also be called “the Body of Christ” or “the Beloved Community.” Ecological Regions help us understand through experience that we have a true home in God. When the Origin Story in Genesis says that God set a dome in the heavens, it is a way of expressing the wholeness of Creation. Our responsibility is to serve and tend towards this integrity of Creation. A significant step towards a healthy stewarding of Creation is the discernment of eco-regions. Humans attending to our ecosystems, nurturing the existing interconnections between species or “tending the wild” as Indigenous People have done for millennia, is part of God’s design. By relating to existing ecosystems, we trend towards understanding the Earth as whole.

Explanation

This resolution offers concrete next steps to fulfill:

2022-A087 -- Commit to Net Carbon Neutrality by 2030

And be it further Resolved, that the General Convention request the diocesan bishops of every diocese to begin to build networks of landowners and creation trustees in each diocese who will devote portions of their land to reforestation, prairie restoration, wetland and coastland preservation; adopt and share regenerative agricultural and ranching practices; collaborate with neighboring dioceses for best water practices to protect our watersheds; collaborate on creative means of distributing food; and pray for future generations dependent on the land and water we steward; and be it further

2018-D053 -- Call for Model Policies for Sustainable Church Land Use

Resolved, That the 79th General Convention recommends that all dioceses, faith communities and institutions create partnerships enabling the use of church-owned land for regenerative agriculture and biodiversity conservation projects in order to sequester carbon and to mitigate climate change;

This resolution responds to the call of experts at COP28 who demonstrated that there is “no pathway to safeguarding and restoring ecosystems, staying within +1.5 and safe-guarding biodiversity, as well as feeding 10 billion people by 2050, without transforming the ways we produce, distribute and consume food and inhabit our land and in-land waters.” The resolution continues partnership with the Anglican Communion Forest and aligns with the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework.

The faith of the Church informs and underpins this resolution. First, we understand and embrace the truth that Christ has made us one body, bound together in the overflowing love of God. This way of understanding the world, which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr expressed as “the interrelated structure of reality,” can also be called “the Body of Christ” or “the Beloved Community.” Ecological Regions help us understand through experience that we have a true home in God. When the Origin Story in Genesis says that God set a dome in the heavens, it is a way of expressing the wholeness of Creation. Our responsibility is to serve and tend towards this integrity of Creation. A significant step towards a healthy stewarding of Creation is the discernment of eco-regions. Humans attending to our ecosystems, nurturing the existing interconnections between species or “tending the wild” as Indigenous People have done for millennia, is part of God’s design. By relating to existing ecosystems, we trend towards understanding the Earth as whole.