World News
Climate change moves Ethiopian church to address food needs
Chris Herlinger
Catholic News Service
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Climate change‑induced drought that has afflicted the Horn of Africa presents
the opportunity for the Catholic Church in Ethiopia to work more closely with
the government to address food shortages and development concerns, said an official
of the country's bishops' conference.
Recalling when Ethiopian regimes in the 1970s and 1980s either did not have the
capacity or the political will to face a series of famines, Father Hailegebriel
Meleku, deputy secretary general of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, said
the country is now better poised to address its humanitarian problems, in part
because church bodies have been mobilized during recent crises.
Father Meleku said the country's leaders, in partnership with neighboring governments,
must begin to find new ways to address the adverse effects of climate change
on vulnerable communities.
Ethiopia itself has escaped the serious food shortages that have devastated
large parts of neighboring Somalia and forced hundreds of thousands of
people to flee into Kenya and elsewhere. Some Ethiopians, however, have
had limited access to food, posing a serious challenge to the country's
leaders, Father Meleku said.
Underlying that challenge is the dwindling supply of water, a particular concern
in the parched northern region bordering Eritrea. Father Meleku said securing
adequate water supplies must be a government priority.
Lane Bunkers, Catholic Relief Services' country representative in Ethiopia, echoed
Father Meluku's observation. The drought is forcing farmers to abandon centuries‑long
practices defined by distinct agricultural seasons, he said.
"That's changing because peasant farmers who rely on rain‑fed agriculture
can no longer rely on the rain," Bunkers said. "Land degradation and
climate change are serious realities in Ethiopia."
Recurring drought and food shortages have spurred Ethiopian Catholics to voice
their concerns at the international level.
In 2009, Ethiopian religious leaders, including Archbishop Berhanyesus Souraphiel
of Addis Ababa, president of the Ethiopian Catholic bishops' conference, wrote
to U.S. President Barack Obama in advance of the 2009 international climate talks
in Denmark, urging him to adopt a strong "position and full pledge on sound
climate change policy." They called such a stance a "moral and ethical
imperative to ensure a preserved environment."
CHRIS HERLINGER/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICEFather Hailegebriel Meleku, deputy secretary general of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, said the country now is better poised to address its humanitarian problems, in part because church bodies have been mobilized during recent crises. Father Meleku is pictured in a November 2011 photo.
The conference ended with no formal agreement to slow greenhouse gas emissions,
which scientists have said is the leading cause of climate change. Leaders
from the U.S. and China ‑‑ the world's largest emitters of
greenhouse gases ‑‑ left the talks promising to continue negotiating
limits, but little progress has been made since.
The Ethiopian Catholic Church has convened regional meetings on climate
change and has worked with its partners such as CRS and the church's Caritas
network to initiate humanitarian projects focused on food security. One
program finds the church having developed an early warning and disaster
response system across Ethiopia and has provided humanitarian relief and
emergency food during various crises.
The church also has focused on long‑term solutions.
In the northern state of Tigray a partnership of international, national
and regional Catholic organizations funded the construction of a 120‑foot‑tall
dam that supplies water to about 35,000 people.
The project is one example of the church's presence in a country of 82
million people that is dominated by Orthodox Christianity. Less than 1
percent of Ethiopians are Catholic even though the Ethiopian Catholic Church
traces its roots to some of the earliest Christian outposts that arose
in the country.
The prospect for continued collaboration and the support of the government
remains good, despite one disagreement over recent calls by the government
to limit the number of non‑Ethiopians involved in any denomination's
missionary work, Father Meleku said. The church explained, he said, that
non‑Ethiopians are needed because of their expertise in development,
health and education.