Rev. Felix Mushobozi, C.PP.S. is a Missionary of the Precious Blood from the Province of Tanzania.  Currently he is serving as the co-executive secretary of the Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Commission of the Union of Superiors General and the International Union of Superiors General.  The USG is composed of the superiors from male religious congregations while the UISG is made up of the superiors from female religious congregations.  Fr. Felix is currently based in Rome, Italy.  He contributed the following article regarding his ministry. 

As a representative of the Union of Superiors General of both USG and UISG I participated at the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) which took place this year in Bonn Germany form November 6-17, which this year was presided over by the Fiji Islands. The Conference in Bonn is the next step for governments to implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement and accelerate the transformation to sustainable, resilient, and climate-safe development. The Paris Agreement entered into force last November and the era of implementation has begun. This conference has further clarified the enabling frameworks that will make the agreement fully operational and the support needed for all nations to achieve their climate change goals.

Although the conference took place for three weeks, I decided to participate during the first week because of my busy schedule in the office. My participation basically was the effort of our secretariat to ensure the visibility of the Union of Superiors General and International Union of Superiors General, especially our commitment with regard the reality of climate change and its effects endangering the life of people we serve around the word as part and parcel of our mission. I joined other groups of religious such as Franciscan Climate action group which is part of the Franciscan International (FI), the Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM) and the International Congregations of Religious at Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These groups and other civil society organizations with a UN accreditation status, organized the so-called “The Peoples Climate Summit” at which we attended at events, marches, reflections and prayer.

People from various faith background, from all continents had their representatives, including Catholic groups like Caritas Internationalis, the International Alliance of Catholic Development Agencies

(CIDSE), the Interfaith Partners for the environment (Green Faith); these include Christians of different denominations, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, members of indigenous faith from different parts. The presence of faith groups at COP23 made a difference because they were bringing to the attention of international public the witness of life their people live and how they try to adopt and cope to the changing climate in every sector of their everyday life as they struggle to have sustainable food, water, energy, medicine and other basic human needs. The alliance based on their faith show that protecting the earth is a moral imperative, not just because they care about nature, but because they care about human beings and other species, whose lives depend upon a healthy environment.

The summit of people representing the civil society organizations was following the negotiations that representatives of government were engaging in, showing the public that people on the ground were praying and exchanging ideas as to what concrete steps are in order to build an alliance of resilience. The COP23 conference in Bonn demonstrated that there is global progress towards the aim of reducing global warming from present levels of 2.5° to 1.5° and Catholics and people of faith have played an important role. On Thursday November 9, a coalition of diverse faith and spiritual groups shared a declaration and their initial commitment to lifestyle of compassionate simplicity for the sake of the climate. This declaration was delivered to the UN climate negotiators by a march of 80 bikes and 4 bicycles rickshaws.

The lifestyle component is very important for all of us as we lead our people to adaptation and mitigation of climate change. It is the role of faith leaders to work on education and training to the ways people can advance in resilience to the effects of climate change. One of the ways we can do this is to ask our people to reconsider their day-to-day styles of life easy to put into practice like: to change our electricity suppliers preferring green energy; to do our ‘home energy check’ to find out how we can save energy in our homes;  walk, cycle and use public transport as much as possible; work out our own carbon footprint and that of our communities; reduce our holidays air mileage as far as possible; buy local seasonal products rather than supermarket stores; educate our members and the people we serve about the science and the impact of climate change; consider our ethical investment options preferring the divestment from fossil fuels companies and banks; etc. This way of looking at climate change helps us to contextualize what might often seem as something that is done at the international level.

Article and Photos provided by Rev. Felix Mushobozi, C.PP.S.