Everyone can get involved in the Communion Forest. Your contribution could be protecting your local landscape, advocating for nature or embarking on an ambitious tree growing project. Find out how to get started by clicking the button below..
By acting together as a worldwide Anglican Communion, we can have a big impact in the global response to care for our planet.Every action taken can help to protect habitats and biodiversity; provide food or green space for people to enjoy; defend against soil of coastal erosion; sequester carbon; prevent environmental destruction; reduce pollution in urban areas; contribute to peace building.A project doesn’t have to be new – but could continue or add to an activity that has environmental benefit.You might choose to take up a project that involves:
Actions churches can take
• Protection: Advocate and take action to stop deforestation or prevent the destruction of other habitats.
• Restoration: Restore a piece of waste land or other degraded environment.
• Creation: Start a forest initiative on church land or support a project in the wider community.
• Growing: Protection and restoration should be considered ahead of establishing something new. Where something new is set up, the emphasis should be on growing, not just planting. It is about growing the right kind of tree in the right place.
• Multiplying: Help others get involved. Be a ‘multiplier’, by setting up a tree or plant nursery to enable wider participation in afforestation.
Bishops have a key role to play in ensuring creation care is an integral part of the mission, life and witness of the Church. You might choose to:
Actions bishops can take
• Promote the Communion Forest initiative in your diocese.
• Include tree growing to celebrate occasions and services, for example birthdays, marriages, births, baptisms and confirmations. Give confirmation candidates a seedling or sapling to plant and care for as a symbol of their spiritual growth.
• Use your voice and influence to protect and restore forests and other ecosystems.
• Set aside a plot of land to grow appropriate indigenous seedlings so that the diocese and community have a source of inexpensive tree saplings.
• Engage with young people. They are often severely affected by climate anxiety and already taking action. Encourage them, amplify their voices, involve them in Communion Forest activities and help them to connect their environmental activism with their faith.
• Use the Season of Creation as a special period for promoting this initiative and creation care.
