Useful Resources for Dioceses & Parishes
The Nathan E. Cummings Foundation awarded
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Environmental Justice
Program two-year funding to assist five major projects in Connecticut,
Michigan, Florida, Iowa and California as well as two other smaller
projects.
All five special projects were to meet four specific goals:
- To build more comprehensive vision,
projects will address multiple conditions
as experienced by diverse constituencies
- To address concrete issues which closely
link social and economic justice and
environmental protection
- To build on broad institutional engagement,
coalition with citizen groups, and reliable
research
- To integrate broad social teaching
and education with direct public policy
activity
The CenterEdge Project was
designed to begin a state-wide dialogue
focused on the impact of sprawl on low-income
communities and on water quality. The
Project involved all four Catholic dioceses
in the state as well as the Connecticut Catholic
Conference. Bishop Peter Rosazza of
Hartford was elected Honorary Chairman of
the CenterEdge coalition serving as its public
spokesperson and was directly involved in
many of the key meetings and in planning
the coalition’s strategy. With
the involvement of so many diverse groups
in the goals of this project, the coalition
became a major player in the state on these
issues.
The CenterEdge project published of the Connecticut Metropatterns by
Myron Orfield and Tom Luce. The included “sprawl maps” offered
detailed depictions of urban sprawl and subsequent impacts on low-income
residents and on the environment.
In addition, the Connecticut Catholic Conference published a pastoral
statement on April 1, 2003 Common Ground, Common Good: Toward
Greater Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice in Connecticut. It
was announced by Archbishop Daniel Cronin (retired), and was mailed
to every Catholic pastor in the state. This statement and the Connecticut
Metropatterns report generated an enormous amount of dialogue
about urban sprawl, the resulting environmental damage of uncontrolled
sprawl, and the impact of both on low-income populations.
The project helped swell the ranks of Catholics connected with the
state’s Catholic legislative network and they joined a state-wide
coalition to identify policies that can move the state in a more positive
direction. These included: cooperative land-use planning to
strengthen communities and preserve the environment; tax and state
aid reforms to stabilize fiscally stressed schools, help communities
pay for needed public services and reduce competition for tax base;
an enhanced role for state government, councils of government or other
regional organizations to help solve regional problems while ensuring
that all communities have a say in decision-making. Taken together,
the state-wide coalition and the Metropatterns report have provided
serious and sustained direction for continued work on a more sustainable,
more just and more livable state.
This project focused on the
environmental, economic and social impacts
of large scale hog-farming. As
the project unfolded, a broad alliance comprised
of diverse constituents—from family
farm advocates to animal rights groups and
from academic research institutions to citizens’ councils—became
engaged in a state-wide dialogue. The
dialogue and resulting coalition has tackled
a range of environmental issues including
the impact on the quality of community life,
human health, as well as safety and sustainability
of the water system.
During the second year of funding, it became apparent that the social
dimensions of the issue were as prominent as the environmental issues. Many
Catholics are directly involved in the controversy: CEOs of large
pork processors, small independent hog producers, property owners
in proximity to a large-scale feeding operation, local elected officials,
and low-income workers in large-scale hog confinements.
The Cummings Foundation grant enabled the lead agent of the project,
National Catholic Rural Life Conference, to put together facilitator
and participant guides entitled, Swine Production: Who is my neighbor? With
these tools, staff traveled throughout the state conducting meetings
in parishes and demonstrating how the parish can be a place for civil
and reflective conversations on issues of this complexity.
Project staff consulted widely to develop the materials and increase
their own knowledge of the issues around large scale animal confinement
operations. Consultations included experts from the University
of Iowa, Iowa State, North Carolina State, University of Minnesota,
and Cornell University. Several other institutions, including
the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, the Institute for Agriculture
and Trade Policy in Minnesota, the National Institutes of Health,
the Humane Society and Iowa Citizens Council were also brought on
board. Many of these groups and have joined with others to form
Rural Advocacy 2002, a coalition which worked to represent rural residents
at the Iowa statehouse on a variety of issues including environmental
issues and regularly convened by the project staff. All four
Catholic dioceses in the state are engaged in the effort to combat
the negative effects of large-scale animal feeding operations.
Finally, six study papers were developed by staff of the National
Catholic Rural Life Conference (three dealing with the effects of
large-scale animal confinement facilities and three outlining the
Catholic Church’s teaching on these issues). These papers
became the basis for the ongoing education efforts of Catholics and
others across the state.
The first year of this project
began with a seminal speech to an ecumenical
group (1,200 people) on Martin Luther King,
Jr. Day by Cardinal Adam Maida, the Archbishop
of Detroit. In that address, he highlighted
a number of the problems Detroit faces
from its inattention to mass transit issues:
the lack of economic opportunities for inner-city
residents (they cannot reach better jobs
in the suburbs), a segregated city, more
traffic congestion, increased air pollution,
and an inability to attract businesses to
the city center, among others. From
this speech and groundwork already laid by
some of the Archdiocesan staff, Detroit’s
Transportation Equity Project began. The
goal of TEP was to reach a broad array of
groups including citizen and environmental
groups, government and academic experts,
among others.
As they proceeded, archdiocesan staff targeted three spheres of influence: (1)
the leadership of the Catholic Church in Southeastern Michigan, including
clergy, laity, and diocesan administration; (2) Catholic leaders beyond
the metro Detroit including the five other diocese across the state
and the Michigan Catholic Conference in order to replicate their experiences
and develop an effective public policy voice in the state capitol;
(3) all people of faith and other like-minded secular organizations,
i.e., anyone who shares in the principles of Catholic Social Teaching
on issues related to land use, the environment, transportation, and
economic development.
Through this Archdiocesan leadership and the coalition that is the
Transportation Equity Project, citizens have begun to address the
social, economic and environmental consequences of sprawl in metropolitan
Detroit.
In the first year of the project, Archdiocesan staff engaged over
25 religious and community groups in an effort to move forward with
the goal of creating the nation’s largest new mass transit system. From
the Sierra Club to the University of Detroit, and from the Farmland
Trust to Transit Riders United—not to mention nearly a thousand
citizens and pastors trained and united to form this coalition—staff
connected with an amazing array of partners all united in the goals
of the Transportation Equity Project.
The first objective of the project was to create public support for
a tax hike to fund a new public transportation system. Despite
a significant setback (the outgoing Governor vetoed a transportation
bill) the educational efforts may still pay off—even the mayor
of Detroit now talks about regional equity and the need for a top-rate
regional public transit system. However, another key policy
goal for the project was met: the governor established a task force
on land use and equity.
The Inheritance Project began
in response to a massive Army Corps of Engineer
water project considered by many to be harmful
to the Everglades. The water project
never came to pass so the key leaders shifted
their focus to address a broader array of
water problems in all of Florida. Through
educating Catholics and developing a broad
coalition of interested organizations, including
government officials, many more Floridians
are now much clearer about the urgent
environmental concerns around water and water
quality.
A key early success engaged young people in a contest to name the
state-wide project and design a logo. Next, through a series
of exploratory meetings, many other citizens and government officials
joined the effort and began to explore workable solutions to water
quality and sustainability issues.
As The Inheritance Project continued, a seven-member state Environmental
Justice Committee was convened under the auspices of the Florida Catholic
Conference. The focus was still on water resources, specifically,
aquifer depletion and other water quality issues. Through the
development of a networking coalition of government agencies, water
experts, and secular and faith-based environmental advocacy groups,
the state committee has gained a greater understanding of the use
of Aquifer Storage and Recovery Units, the need for new and renovated
water treatment plants, the threat of emerging contaminants in water
supplies and their impact on public health, and the continued need
for understanding of better growth management and sustainability practices.
As a result, the Inheritance Project has begun to implement a three-fold
approach toward responding to the pertinent issues: (1) The
Florida Catholic Conference is becoming more directly involved in
environmental legislative advocacy, particularly as it addresses public
health issues and low-income and marginalized communities. (2) The
bishops of Florida will update and re-issue a pastoral statement regarding
environmental stewardship which will include a primary focus on Florida's
water concerns. (3) Several diocesan representatives developed
and began implementing educational initiatives for parishes and schools
in their communities. As a result of a recent state conference, this
educational component has expanded to include environmentally sensitive
landscaping and building practices in three of seven dioceses (Pensacola-Tallassee,
Venice, Miami) individual parishes and, in the case of Pensacola-Tallahassee,
resulting in diocesan policy changes where construction and land development
is concerned.
As a result of the strong first-year education efforts in Central,
Southeast and Southwest, the Inheritance Project helped stimulate
efforts to develop and/or renovate water treatment facilities, which
have subjected marginalized and fixed-income communities to substandard
drinking water quality. In municipal and regional forums relating
to water supply, the Inheritance Project joined other advocacy groups
in expressing concerns over how increased water rates will impact
low-income communities resulting in discussion of the development
of community collaborations to enhance these targeted areas. The
Florida Catholic Conference also is taking a closer look at Brownfield
development projects currently before the state legislature and has
taken a leadership role in many of the environmental issues in the
state.
The Los Angeles project focused
primarily on the important moral consequences
of uncontrolled sprawl, unsustainable development,
and economic inequality in this enormous
metropolitan region. In the first year,
Cardinal Roger Mahony, a recognized major
community leader—and spiritual leader
of over 3 million Catholics—provided
a vision of how the Los Angeles area can
begin to address the serious environmental
issues facing a very crowded metropolis. He
did so by convening major stakeholders to
initiate a serious dialogue around environmental
and economic equity. The Archdiocesan
Office of Peace and Justice continues to
engage community leaders to discuss issues
about regional economic equity, sprawl and
associated environmental issues in light
of Catholic social teaching.
Over three million active Catholics in the Los Angeles region are
a potent force for change in this sprawling metropolis. The
impact of sprawl has created many problems in the area including:
diminishing the amount of available green space in undeveloped land,
increasing the spiraling cost of housing—making it unaffordable
to low-income residents—increasing the number of poor working
families, stressing the ability to sustain the area’s natural
resources, and fragmenting government structures and services. These
issues, as well as sprawl’s impact on health care, education,
and social services, were surfaced by policy staff when invited as
a respondent to a seminar convened by the University of Southern California’s
Urban Policy Center.
The project has place a primary emphasis on the development of a
school curriculum on environment and sprawl issues. This curriculum
flows directly from the mission of the Archdiocesan Justice and Peace
Commission which is to educate, advocate and build a constituency
for justice. Focusing the curriculum on poverty, pollution
and participation, created a vision which clearly links justice and
the environment.
Two Catholic high schools in the Los Angeles area, and with the inspiration
of the environmental awareness curriculum, identified concrete issues
within their own communities that link environment and justice. As
they gathered information about which issues strike the deepest chord,
they came up with innovative, community-based solutions to address
the problem.
The possibility of a pastoral letter on environmental justice in
Southern California continues to be discussed among members of the
Peace and Justice Commission. They envision a process that:
1) identifies concrete issues that clearly demonstrated the relationship
between social and economic justice and the environment; 2) facilitates
listening sessions in each of the five pastoral regions throughout
the Archdiocese to hear the lived experience of the diverse communities
around these issues; and 3) the production of a pastoral letter that
contains specific public policy recommendations to respond to the
ethical dimensions of the regional environmental justice issues facing
Southern California. The Commission believes that this
process is as important, if not more important, than the product. The
listening session process will promote broad institutional engagement,
as well as build a constituency around environmental justice issues. The
product will connect Catholic social teaching to these issues and
will inform and influence the public policy debate. The pastoral
letter should have a positive impact on ensuring that the poorest
members of the community do not suffer disproportionately from congestion,
pollution, unemployment, lack of recreational opportunities, and segregation.
Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton: With
the support of the bishops of these three
dioceses, a project is underway to study
and convene stakeholders in a major project
to create more dialogue and less vitriol
about California’s scarcest resource:
water. Recognizing the tremendous water
needs of people in expanding urban centers,
of farmers in the country’s “salad
bowl,” and of developers trying to
address the housing and business needs of
the nation’s most populous state, the
Church will assume the role of bringing all
parties together so that more understanding
and appreciation of the many facets of water
in California’s Central Valley can
come to light.
Santa Fe: The Archdiocese of Santa Fe received a substantial
grant from another foundation to organize the Catholic dioceses of
Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Gallup, and the New Mexico Conference of
Churches in an Eco-Justice Task Force. The task force partners
formed a “Stewards of Creation Training” program and funds
Cummings Foundation has enabled the program to continue expand recruitment. The
first training session involved 18 participants who continue to meet
bi-monthly to share ideas and projects. One positive result
was the development of an environmental responsibility curriculum
for middle-schoolers using water as the theme. This training
program is a direct result of the pastoral statement on the environment
issued in May of 1998 by three bishops of New Mexico and the ensuing
River Stewardship Conference in Albuquerque.