CCBI commends Rio Earth Summit

by Angus Macdonald CHURCH leaders. including Cardinal Basil Hume. this week called on Christians to pray for a sucessful outcome to the .forthcoming United Nations "Earth Summit" in Brazil.
The international conference, beginning next month in Rio de Janeiro, brings together representatives of governments and non-governmental organisations, as well as over 150 world leaders, to consider the future of sustainable development on the planet.
The six presidents of the ecumenical Council of Churches for Britain and Northern Ireland (CCBI) hailed the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) meeting as "an occasion of great importance for all humanity" and urged Christians to "pray for a positive outcome as we acknowledge that the world and all its people belong to God our creator, redeemer and sustainer."
The six including Cardinal Basil Hume and Anglican Archbishop John Habgood of York reminded Christians of the need "to share the resources of the
world and to struggle against the poverty and injustice which enslave so many of our-brothers and sisters."
Echoing some of the dire enviromental warnings of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales at their recent Low Week meeting, the six presidents declared: "The issues on the UNCED agenda underline how far short of God's good purpose we have fallen. The problems of environmental misuse and of the poverty that are evident on every continent must become urgent priorites for the governments of the world if life is to survive."
The Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland which includes the Catholic Church in England and Wales as well as the Church of England was set up in 1991 to replace the now-defunct British Council of Churches, and has become the main forum for ecumenical church initiatives in Britain and Ireland.
But there were suggestions this week that the Archbishop of Canterbury's outspoken criticisms of Catholic Church teaching on birth control made after the CCBI statment could split the churches' united front in Rio.
"As an approach to the Earth Summit in Rio, Dr Carey's interview appears for the most pan unhelpful," said Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool.
Dr David Gosling, one of two CCBI-sponsored representatives at the summit, stressed that the issue of global population control was secondary to the question of First World pollution and over-use of resources.
"Third World countries know that their population control is important. but they don't like being lectured about it by First World countries who with only 20 per cent of the world's population are using up 80 per cent of the world's natural resources," said Dr Gosling.
• A Brazilian Catholic bishop will be heading a delegation of Brazilian church leaders visiting Britain in advance of the Rio summit to speak about prospects for the global environment.
Bishop Aloisio Senesio Bohn will meet with British Church leaders to stress that fighting poverty is the key to solving the world's environmental crisis.