[Individual articles from the Summer 2017 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog each week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.]
Over the past three decades, scientists have observed unprecedented warming of the earth’s surface as a result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The impacts of climate change, including changes in weather patterns, more frequent or severe natural hazards and altered water systems, are devastating vulnerable communities in which MCC works by exacerbating food insecurity and population displacement and increasing risk of disaster. Climate change is challenging MCC’s efforts to build healthy communities, respond to disasters, provide clean water, create sustainable livelihoods and promote peace.
The articles in this issue of Intersections span the globe, representing voices from Myanmar, Ethiopia, Latin America and North America. Contributors grapple with how to respond to climate change within their contexts while exploring innovative strategies that both benefit the environment and enable vulnerable communities to adapt. Sandra Reisinger and Van Lizar discuss how an MCC partner in Myanmar is addressing this challenge by empowering women to serve as disaster managers. Frew Beriso discusses how climate-smart agriculture practices improved food security and contributed to building resilience to drought in rural Ethiopia. Finally, Darrin Yoder examines how MCC partners in Latin America and the Caribbean are sharing their climate-change related challenges with one another while calling upon MCC to support their efforts not only in strengthening climate-resilient agricultural livelihoods, but also in using MCC’s voice and influence to advocate on policies that affect communities’ natural resources and ability to adapt to climate change.
What is the responsibility of relief, development and peacebuilding agencies in the global North like MCC to mobilize their supporters in responding to the threats posed by climate change through public policy advocacy and efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Public policy advocacy around climate change is rarely straightforward, as Tammy Alexander explains in her article about the complexities of advocacy related to the Green Climate Fund. Meanwhile, Jennifer Halteman Schrock argues that Christians in Canada and the United States can play a key role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. Schrock explores the common traits of congregations engaged in creation care and offers suggestions for what is needed to mobilize other churches. While diverse and varied, the voices in this issue emphasize that by caring for the environment, we are caring for people.
Meara Dietrick Kwee is MCC learning and evaluation coordinator. Amy Martens is research associate in MCC’s Planning, Learning and Disaster Response department.
Learn more
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Parenti, Christian. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York: Nation Books, 2012.
Intersections 