Blog: Sustainability is not exclusive to the progressive activist

Alina Danii Bijl | 8.10.2018

Religion and politics, from my ideology, you have to split the two. You cannot argue your political opinion only with an explanation from your religion. What I do believe in again is arguing your political ideology from your religious values. It was precisely for this reason that I was present, together with Dorise van Driel, at the Church & Sustainability Network Day organised by the Sustainability Working Group in Apeldoorn.

The afternoon began, over coffee, tea and organic snacks, with a conversation about the church and how it can deal with the idea of sustainability and how that fits within its faith. It soon became clear that in the past there had never been much focus on the idea of protecting the earth. Early in the conversation, I came up with the question of whether we should teach children and youth from the very beginning that the earth is important. Raised as a Christian, I had never had a lesson on sustainability during the time I attended children's and youth services. Personally, I didn't come to terms with sustainability until late in my adolescence, because a problem is within conservative communities. It is almost as if the conservative, and mainly Christian parts of the Netherlands want little to do with the responsibility of our earth. It is time to spark the conversation about sustainability within churches, as the Working Group in Apeldoorn is doing.

A little later in the afternoon, we talked about green churches and fair-trade churches. These are churches that use only fairtrade products within the church and they also pass on that conviction to their community. Fairtrade is nice and all, because it is very humane to give people fair wages and working conditions, but how sustainable is it in the end. Isn't it perhaps already time to go a step further and focus on local production. But again, the argument came that sometimes, especially in winter time, it is better to import. This is because of greenhouses that use a lot of energy and heat to make a product. Then it is still much better to get something from Africa, as it emits less.

At the end of the afternoon, we got a lesson from Reinier van den Berg, meteorologist, on climate change. It's almost funny to see that people still say climate change doesn't exist. That debate should have ended years ago. The discussion that should be there is how to adapt. According to Reinier, the simple but unsaid solution is afforestation. We need to plant trees along roads and all over the city. This makes for a healthier climate to live in and besides, trees capture CO2. They are also good sound buffers and ensure that the soil they stand in does not simply wash away in a flood. In addition, deforestation needs to be regulated. For instance, at a project in the Amazon forests, he had seen a way that ensures we can still cut down trees, but in a responsible way, through a chessboard system. It is important to talk about solutions like this because it is a step towards improving our planet.

At the end of the day, whether you are religious or not is not important, the earth concerns us all and we should all take an interest in this kind of conversation, because climate change and sustainability is not exclusive to the progressive activist. Visit a networking day, do some online research, or just watch a few videos on YouTube. The time to discuss whether climate change exists is over. Take action and start looking for a solution.