How does the Anglican Alliance contribute to the Anglican Communion’s environmental and climate change work?

The Anglican Alliance connects, equips and inspires the worldwide family of Anglican churches and agencies to respond to human need, to work for a world free of poverty and injustice, to raise the voices of the vulnerable, to promote human flourishing and reconciliation, and to safeguard creation.

As the environment and climate change affect so many aspects of people’s lives – and contribute to poverty, injustice and vulnerability – they are significant concerns in our work.

Through various aspects of the our work we have deep knowledge and experience of how climate change is impacting the people globally and what churches across the Communion are doing to respond, and we are able to share this information across the Communion and beyond:

  • We are able to gather stories and information about how climate change and wider environmental issues are affecting Anglicans at the grass roots across the Communion through our regional facilitators.
  • Similarly, we are able to gather stories and information about how grass-roots Anglicans are responding to these challenges.
  • We have lots of connections: to Anglican agencies, Anglican provinces and churches, other denominations, ecumenical bodies, etc and can bring people together.
  • The Anglican Alliance has a Disaster Response and Resilience Manager, Dr Janice Proud. We respond to disasters, many of which relate to climate change and environmental issues. We offer and provide a convening platform after disasters for the co-ordination of responses across the Communion and sometimes to help in fund raising appeals.
  • This has led to an increasing emphasis on disaster preparedness and community resilience work.
  • We convene and contribute to fora for sharing information and best practice on disaster response and resilience.
  • We help facilitate disaster response and resilience training using the Pastors and Disasters toolkit and are working with other Anglican agencies to pilot the innovative Partners in Response and Resilience
  • The Alliance’s regional facilitators are actively engaged in environmental work in their regions, working in partnership with others.
  • We post stories and share knowledge on our website and through social media.
  • We share our stories, information and knowledge with the Anglican Communion’s UN team so that it reaches global decision-making bodies.
  • We work collaboratively with Anglican agencies working on environmental sustainability and climate change (including Episcopal Relief & Development, Anglican Board of Mission, Australia and others).
  • Climate change is a specific focus of our advocacy pillar. We have played a leading role in the Oceans of Justice and Renew Our World campaigns (founding member).
  • We promote the Season of Creation, World Water Day and other international days connected to the environment. We have resources, including prayers, on our website: https://anglicanalliance.org/prayer-worship/
  • We are actively working on the SDGs, including those that relate to the environment and climate change.
  • We have worked with ACEN/Green Anglicans on Season of Creation resources, the Oceans of Plastic Sunday school resource and St Francis Day lament.
  • The Anglican Alliance is on the board, and a founder member, of Renew Our World.
  • We are contributing to the inclusion of a strong environmental focus at Lambeth 2020 and see this as one step on a longer journey that leads to – and beyond – COP26 in Glasgow.