The Creation Care scheme aims to encourage households to make changes to care for God’s earth. Wherever households are on their creation care journey, we want to provide ideas for their next steps, and recognise progress that’s made.
Planet Purbeck
The Benefice of St Aldhelm is working in creative partnership with ‘Planet Purbeck’ – ‘Stronger Together’
James’ youtube clip introducing Planet Purbeck
David Attenborough’s appeal to the leaders of the nations in advance of COP26
Eco Church
Preaching and practising care for God’s creation – striving to be Net Zero by 2030.
Mow less, grow more
Part of the Eco Church initiative at St George’s Langton Matravers has been to change the mowing of the churchyard. Eco-champion Judy Branes explains: “The grass will now remain uncut until mid June. This change in the mowing regime has resulted in a colony of Early Spider-orchids flowering in the churchyard, which is very exciting.” The Early Spider-orchid (Ophrys sphegodes) is nationally rare and restricted to parts of Dorset, Kent, Hampshire and Sussex. The orchid is found on grazed chalk, alkaline meadows, usually near the coast. It favours disturbed areas. The churchyard mowing regime seeks to reflect grazing patterns.
What is Eco Church?
Eco Church is an award scheme to motivate and resource churches in England and Wales to care for God’s Earth. Awards are at 3 Levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold.The Eco programme helps churches to think about environmental issues and respond with practical action individually, and in the local and global community too.Whilst we have been in lockdown we have concentrated on one area of the Eco Survey i.e. Land Management, specifically the churchyard.Churchyards and cemeteries are places of tranquillity where people go to remember loved ones, but they are also becoming places where wildlife can thrive and wildflowers grow.
Here at St George’s we are working towards our Silver award.We are improving the biodiversity of our churchyard plot by gardening without pesticides and using an appropriate mowing regime in specified areas to allow wildflowers, such as wild orchids, to flower and seed, thus ensuring that birds, reptiles, insects and bats can thrive.We have established bird and bat boxes, a bird feeding station, a hedgehog house, bug and ladybird hotels, as well as a tiny pond and bird baths. Habitats for slow worms are also provided.The Prayer Garden at the back of the Church is a place for prayer and contemplation and stillness, with its flower bed, seating and beautiful views, and we will continue to enhance this area.In June we will be doing a wildlife survey of the Churchyard and the old Burial Ground, and hope to involve the wider community in this. We will show the results on our Eco notice board in the Church, and they will also be sent on to a national survey of wildlife in churchyards.
The Creation Care team would like to introduce you to the wonderful world of ‘Giki Zero’. This is a community carbon footprint tool that can help us all reduce our carbon impact on Purbeck and the rest of the planet.
• What is Giki Zero? (Giki = Get Informed Know Your Impact)
Giki Zero is your step by step guide to a lighter footprint on the planet. It will help you discover your personal (or family) footprint, find steps to reduce it and celebrate your successes.
• What’s the aim?
The aim is for everyone
who uses Giki Zero to take new steps to cut their environmental footprint. At the moment the average carbon footprint in high income countries is around 10 tonnes and by 2030 this needs to be 2.5 tonnes. It’s a big task but Giki Zero can help you with the steps you need to take to get there.
• How does it work?
Giki Zero helps you understand your personal footprint which is an important first step in discovering way to reduce it. It does this by guiding you through a series of easy to understand questions that will estimate the overall impact that you have where you can provide as little, or as much, information as you want.
You will then be able to see your environmental footprint and understand how your home, transport, food, purchases and services all contribute. You can also see how planting trees can give you a boost as you look to reduce your footprint over time.
With better information about your footprint you can then choose the steps which suit your lifestyle and budget to help reduce your impact over time. Decide on the steps you want to take, rated on impact and ease, and Giki Zero will help you turn those commitments into climate positive changes.
• Why do it?
There’s no sugar coating this one. Global carbon emissions are still rising, the world is getting hotter, animals are under threat and people around the world are already being affected by floods, droughts, fires and rising sea levels. We all need to live more sustainably and move towards Net Zero.
• What are the key benefits?
You’ll be finding new steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint. At the same time you’ll also find steps that can save you money, improve your health, protect animals, and reduce plastic use. You’ll also be able to share what you are doing with colleagues, friends and your family.
• How long will Giki Zero take me to do?
Creating a sustainable life takes time. We’ve got until 2030 to dramatically cut our environmental impact and so we expect Giki Zero to take people months, and perhaps a few years, to get to the point where they are leading a sustainable lifestyle. However, because it takes time it also means that Giki Zero is not another app where we need to be constantly checking back in to measure your progress. You can take your time, make good decisions, and see you impact reduce month by month.
• Who is it for?
Everyone in the UK! Giki Zero helps anyone who is wondering what they can do about environmental issues such as climate change, animal conservation and pollution but does not know where to start. It’s also designed for people who are already making changes to live more sustainably but who want more ideas to help them go further. By signing up you’ll be able to start doing whatever you can, as soon as you can, to help protect the environment and animals.
• Why do I need Giki Zero?
There is an enormous amount of data available about the impact of our everyday actions and consumption on the world around us, but most of this is too detailed and complex for most of us to understand easily or be able to use in our everyday decision making. The tool aims to show information and steps to people in a simple and intuitive interface, displaying the relative impacts of different activities or lifestyle choices. The hope is that this will help people work towards an overall lifestyle footprint that is compatible with the aims of the Paris Climate Change Agreement to limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade.
• How often should I be using Giki Zero?
Moving to a more sustainable life takes time. We think it’s best to check in every week just to have a look at the steps you’re taking, see whether there are any news ones you are ready with and to see how your Giki score is doing. There’s no need to check in every day – this is a marathon not a sprint!
You can sign up to Giki-Zero by clicking on this link: https://giki.earth/giki-zero-your-step-by-step-guide-to-a-sustainable-life/
Climate Change Resources
You might like to visit these websites for more information about the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency:
‘How to Save Our Planet’ David Attenborough
World Wildlife “living Planet 2020’ Report
How to reduce climate change by changing your food habits: What you can eat to protect the planetDave Bookless – ‘Planet Wise’