Make your Congregation a Carbon Covenant Partner
Congregations, Diocese, and other faith communities (such as schools) can become Carbon Covenant Congregations by making a long-term commitment to help one particular project achieve success. A faith community may do this by raising funds within the congregation, organizing a trip to the project to help with the tree planting, bringing a speaker out from the Carbon Covenant project to help educate their community, or making a direct donation.
Being a Carbon Covenant Partner offers the opportunity for building relationships and understanding building between faith communities, and learning from cultural exchange. Many parishes in the U.S. already have historic sister relationships with parishes in Africa, but are looking for ways to revitalize and renew their partnerships. Carbon Covenant is a great way to expand the “new mission” model, in which faith communities undertake a task together which would empower sustainable community building in communion with each other and their shared value systems.
This program could offer a new project within an existing sister relationship, while also offering the opportunity for “double bottom line” carbon offsets (offsetting emissions while achieving social justice goals).
Carbon Covenant Sister Congregations
Through Carbon Covenant relationships, people of faith in the U.S. are supporting faith communities on the front lines of global warming in the Global South. These faith communities have initiated projects to mitigate climate change and support their communities by addressing the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in the developing world: deforestation. They are protecting forests, fighting illegal logging, providing alternative livelihoods that are sustainable, and reforesting degraded lands.
Interfaith Power & Light congregations and individual supporters are encouraged to support at least one of these inspiring projects. Carbon Covenant provides direct support to and solidarity with the people on the front lines of climate change impacts, while curbing greenhouse gas emissions in a very concrete, measurable way.
