From Global Summit to Local Summit: Efforts to Improve the Environment
“Think
Globally, Act Locally” is a slogan
appropriate to our time, and can be illustrated by two recent efforts,
one from
international faith communities at the recent Conference of Parties 21
United Nations Climate Summit, and the other from bioregional watershed
groups at the annual Watershed Summit sponsored by the Susquehanna
Chapter Trout Unlimited in Lycoming County, PA.
In Paris in late 2015, four faith-based
networks presented signatures from 1.8 million persons on behalf of the effort
toward climate justice at the international summit to stabilize the climate
from further global warming. These
faith-based climate campaigners had on-site representatives, holding “Faith in
Climate Justice” signs, present their petitions to principals of the summit.
The four networks were
1. The Global Catholic Climate Movement,
representing thousands responsive to the 2015 papal environmental encyclical on
“Our Common Home”;
2. Religions for Peace, established in
1970;
3. Our Voices, composed of the UK
Conservation Foundation and the U.S. Green Faith; and
4. ACT Alliance (Act Now for Climate
Justice campaign).
The ACT Alliance consists of 140 global
churches and faith-based organizations, including Bread for the World, Baptist
World Aid (USA), Christian World Service, Lutheran World Federation, the ELCA,
and the World Council of Churches, among others.
Among the comments posted: “We need to have citizens engage and mobilize
to protect the world’s common heritage, the planet”; “Defend Life!”; “This is a
responsibility we cannot walk away from”; “Here is a deep urgency”; “We must have
solidarity as one human family”; “This is a spiritual and moral issue”.
Locally, and exemplifying efforts across
the United States in other locales, a Watershed Summit hosted by the
Susquehanna Trout Unlimited (TU) chapter recently provided examples of on-going
efforts and accomplishments to help preserve, protect and enhance our area
streams and watersheds. Thus, in
north-central PA, and especially Lycoming County, testimony was given from the
local TU group, that has as its mission the preservation and restoration of
cold water fisheries.
It
partners with,
and heard from at the summit, the Susquehanna River Greenway
Partnership, the watershed creek groups (Pine, Muncy, Loyalsock,
Lycoming, Larry’s, Black Hole), the
Lycoming College Clean Water Institute (CWI), the USDA county
Conservation
Districts, the county Planning Dep’t., the Northcentral PA Conservancy
(NPC),
the Waterdale Environmental Education Center, the Endless Mountains
Resource
Conservation and Development Council (EMRCD), Loyalsock State Forest bog
research, and the state DEP Growing Greener Program.
Local readers are encouraged to support
one or more of these regional efforts.
Readers beyond this region are encouraged to support those watershed
groups in their areas that also have conservation/preservation/restoration
efforts.
To read more of the local effort, see below, and scroll down to the Watershed Summit summary:
