The world I want to see

Last Wednesday, some of us went along to a panel discussion inspired by the forthcoming Rio+20 World Summit. The speakers - including Caroline Spelman MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Rt Rev Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells - were asked to speak on the subject of 'the world I want to see' and then engaged in a lively Q&A session. Sara, Lizzie and Sam were tweeting avidly, so you can find more by looking up the #FaithinRio hashtag on Twitter.

First to speak was Caroline Spelman MP, who began with a review of what has and hasn't been achieved since the original Rio World Summit in 1992:

"[The original Rio Earth Summit]was a turning point in the way the world looks at the links between the environment, development, and the economy. There has been progress on poverty alleviation, with significant improvements in access to water, education and healthcare in all regions of the world. Many businesses have embraced sustainability issues, and renewable energy has grown substantially.

Yet substantial challenges remain. Approx 1.4 billion people around the world still live in extreme poverty and those who were the poorest 20 years ago are still the poorest now. Environmental degradation continues, and sustainability has not been integrated fully into economic decision making."

Spelman highlighted that in just three year's time there will be an extra one billion mouths to feed. By 2030, DEFRA forecasts that water, food and energy will all be stressed. Each of these are potential flashpoints for conflict as well as sources of suffering. We do not have the luxury of time; we need Rio+20 to hasten change that benefits the most disadvantaged. But growth should be about more than just raising GDP, she said; well being and quality of life should also be indicators of success. For these reasons, the minister pledged that the UK would to push for a meaning set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be agreed in Rio.

DEFRA have posted her whole speech on their website, so you can read what she said in full if you are interested.

Next up was Steve Waygood of Aviva who spoke on the need for better corporate social responsibility within the global business community. He said that consumer power was an important way for the masses to shape the behaviours of the multinationals, but since

"90% of the data on business responsibility is missing [from public scrutiny]"

holding businesses to account and making informed investments is hard. To solve this, Aviva are leading a broad coalition of businesses and other stakeholders to pushing for corporate accountability and sustainability. At Rio+20 they will be seeking agreement on a transparency framework to that will reveal the true state of an organisation's corporate sustainability. As Waygood himself put it: 

"Corporations should deploy their vast resources to improve lives, not just profit margins. Paying tax is just the start."

Third in the line up was Nanette, a lady working with CAFOD in the Philippines. She spoke about the importance of meaningful collaboration between communities, local government and local church to effect sustainable development, identifying that:

"ordinary people, anointed leaders and elected leaders need to take on responsibility and accountability."

She was especially keen to stress that sustainable growth must be socially just; Rio+20 must not be about developed countries making decisions about developing countries without their say or involvement. In the same way, she argued that while the Green Economy held great promise for the development of underdeveloped parts of the world, to deliver change that benefits local communities and not just shareholders, those green technologies should be in the hands of local communities, not the multinational corporations.

The presentations closed with a rousing statement from the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who spoke with great passion, challenging Christians to stand against poverty, the arms trade and the military industrial complex. He encouraged those present not to fritter away their potential but rather to spend their lives doing something that changes the world. After all:

"We can't just have a concern for poverty," he said, "we have to act to end it."

Watch the Bishop's speech in full:

Throughout the presentations and the Q&A that followed, we were reminded that the impact of climate change is not a future problem; for many in the developing world it is a real problem today. It was clear that amid financial meltdown in Europe, ongoing conflict in the Middle East and political scandals at home, keeping sustainable global development and the ambitions of Rio+20 high on the public agenda is going to be a struggle. Struggle we must however, for as Caroline Spelman identified in her closing statement, the charge we have is to leave the planet in a better condition that we received it.

February Update

Thanks to those of you who have dragged yourselves out of your warm homes to join us at gatherings already this year. Both our January session on domestic violence and the last week's pub chat on FGM were as uncompromising as they were engaging. You will be able to see a report on these discussions on this blog shortly.

With Fairtrade Fortnight on the horizon (27 Feb - 11 March), our next two sessions will be focused on the issue of trade justice. On the 15th February we will be hearing from Colin about why he is passionate about Fairtrade and how we can all make a difference to the lives of those who produce many of the goods we take for granted. Then we'll be putting that information to good use planning ways to promote trade justice in our work places, families and communities during Fairtrade Fortnight. As ever, come along from 7pm for food and networking before the main session. Let us know if you are coming on the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/236630936419875/

On the 7th March we'll be doing something new and hosting a screening of the provocative documentary film, Blood in the Mobile. As well as the movie, which looks at the murky connection between the minerals that power our modern luxuries and the bloody conflict in DR Congo, there will be Fairtrade nibbles and stalls for ethical jewellery companies. This will be taking place in the Parish Hall at St Barnabas Church on Holden Road, Woodside Park from 7pm. The Facebook page for the event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/361364947215687/

We're excited about both sessions, so we hope you'll be able to join us.

The smell of success

"Hello Rioters. Look at your friend, now back to me; now at your friend, now back to me! Sadly, he isn't me; but if he stopped using antisocial behaviour and started using job centre he could be like me. Look down, back up. Where are we? You're at an interview, with the man your friend could work for! What's in his hand? It's an application form to that job he needs. Look again... the form is now money! Anything is possible when you get a job and stop looting. I'm at a desk."

Courtesy of the excellent Stuart Smith.

Live Below the Line - Update

Today is Day Two of my Live Below the Line challenge and its going pretty well so far.

Over the weekend, my lovely wife and I worked out a menu for the week - three square meals a day and even deserts, all for just £1 each a day. Keeping it below £10 and healthy was hard, with plenty of items coming on and off the shopping list as we honed our menu to be as lean and efficient as possible. Even as a couple who are used to planning a week's food at a time, working with such a small budget meant it took much longer than normal.

The shop itself was equally time consuming, with lots of selecting and weighing veg to make sure we found the cheapest choice. Although we are doing this to raise awareness of people in extreme poverty overseas, the experience of working with such a small budget raised my empathy for those struggling on low incomes in this country.

The week before last I was queuing at the tills behind a lady for whom our challenge this week was clearly her everyday experience. Repeatedly asking the cashier to run a sub-total on her shopping, she kept having to remove items from the belt to keep below her budget. I hope I exuded quiet compassion as I waited behind her, but I fear that my mere presence, witnessing her struggle to make ends meet, may have heightened the humiliation for her. As someone who has never had to face that kind of hardship, this week of self-imposed struggle is teaching me as much about loving my neighbour across the street as my neighbours beyond the sea.

Live Below the Line

For five days in May some friends and I are going to try living on just £1 of food a day. We're doing this to raise awareness of global poverty and the 1.4 billion people on the planet today who have to exist on the equivalent of £1 a day for everything they need. In addition to making lots of noise about what we are doing and why, we're going to be giving all the money we would usually have spent on food to support Salvation Army International Development, who resource, empower and support developing communities to defeat poverty and injustice and enable them to build a better life and future.

If you've been reading this blog before, you'll know that I am involved in establishing a community of restless idealists and faithful activists, each passionate about bringing social justice to our hurting world. We've been meeting in locations around Finchley every fortnight since the start of the year and we're using this week of self-enforced poverty to live out the words we say. 

I'll be posting updates on my Twitter feed and Facebook status, as will others, so watch this space. Maybe you'd like to join us in this experiment? If so, drop me a note or comment below.

We can't end poverty overnight, but we can't stand by and ignore it either.

The social cost of fiscal profit

"In 1720, the Grande-Saint-Antoine, a merchant ship, was placed under quarantine by officials in the French city of Marseilles. Several crew members had become sick and died from the plague. But this effort to stop the spread of the plague from the ship to city was soon ended by the city's merchants, who pushed for the authorities to release the ship from quarantine so they could bring its valuable cargo to market.

Uncontained, the disease proceeded to kill fifty thousand people in the city, about half its population, and an additional fifty thousand in the surrounding area. These one hundred thousand needless deaths ensued from [the mercantile pursuit of profit and the belief that the market is god]."

From Rediscovering Values, by Jim Wallis, 2010 (hardcover, p71)