Building Communities of Climate Resilience and Sustainability Across Asia: The Inter-Religious Climate & Ecology Network & INEB

INEB & the ICE Network: Solidarity and Action for Climate Justice
By Emilie Parry

Splendid views of the Himalayas from Deer Park Institute

“Bandh! Bandh! Bandh!” Ajay, my taxi driver for the past 12 hours, shouts out to passing lorry drivers who will only have to turn around and follow our tracks, once they discover for themselves: the road ahead is ‘bandh!’ or closed, blocked by a massive pile of earth and boulders delivered by landslide just a few moments prior. It is 1 AM, raining.  No one will pass through until somehow bulldozers can access this stretch of hilly, twisting road, and begin the work of clearing it. This will not be happening tonight.

Here we are, two souls in a night taxi on its way to Deer Park Institute in Bir, Himachal Pradesh.  It is telling that the first Hindi word I learn, my first night in northern India, has to do with landslides and closed roads.  We are, after all, in the age of anthropogenic climate collapse, and I’m seeing yet another symptom, close up and personal.

Earlier in the night, Ajay explained to me that the reason he was speeding wildly over the mountainous hairpin turns, around foot and vehicle traffic, was to avoid the landslides he knows will come with this heavy rain at the foot of the Himalayas. I think of racing through rain on my bicycle.  In the end, instead of avoiding, do I manage to catch every raindrop as it falls? Will we be racing to meet every landslide as it crashes down the mountainside?

“Are you scared?” he asks.

“No, just alert. I’m alert.”

As we make our way onward upon one diverted road after another, hitting impasse after impasse due to a landslide or a washed out road, we pass great lorries perched upon the precipice. They line the edge of the narrow roadway, sharp downward drops just inches from their parked tires. Their drivers inside, also alert, appear deeply vulnerable to me.  What would it take to tip vehicles and human cargo tumbling down into the deep and twisting ravine below? Very little, I sense. Trapped on the mountainside with no other option, they must wait it out until morning.

Since sleep has no chance, my mind begins to wander. I find myself remembering the 2012 INEB Inter-Religious Dialogue on the Human Drivers of Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss at the Islander Center, Sri Lanka.  The conference was organized in a visual and interconnected manner. During the first day keynote and introductions, we were provided an overview of anthropogenic climate change and climate science as it directly relates to the Asian continent.  We were given a map from the high Himalayas, stretching across Asia down to the Asia Pacific islands, examining the 3 interlinked eco-systems and their experiences with biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and the impacts and vulnerabilities of climate change.  ‘Mountain Ecosystems,’ ‘Plains and Agriculture,’ and ‘Marine and Coastal Changes’ workshops traced the climatic changes, vulnerabilities, risk and impacts from mountain to sea of the Asian continent.

Rising global temperatures and ‘black carbon’ have caused accelerated ice and snow melt of Himalayan glaciers and mountain tops, resulting in landslides, flooding and disruptive and extreme climate patterns (including rain in places like Shimla, where rain used to be a rarity), and all the ensuing interconnected biodiversity loss, climate risks and disasters.  Flooding below increases in places like Bangladesh, as snow and glacial melt flows downstream.

As planetary eco-systems are increasingly imbalanced, extreme drought and extreme flooding in the plains and agricultural stretches across southern India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and other countries of this region manifest. From flooding we trace the continent to the oceans and island nations, where regional sea level has been rising at rates faster than predicted. Island nations of Tuvalu, Fiji, and Kiribati are becoming engulfed by the rising sea levels, entire nations turned climate refugees, while cyclones and floods rip through the Philippines and Indonesia, and the Mekong Delta countries struggle with protracted drought followed by intense rains and flooding.

At this point in time, in 2015, none of the above should be any news to the reader.   During the 2012 INEB conference, the focus quickly became about what actions and influence can this broad span of religious and community leaders take together, collaboratively.  It was decided that the Inter-Religious Climate and Ecology (ICE) Network would be formed, in order to leverage the experiential and skilled knowledge of its affiliates, to facilitate and support the climate change education of monastics/clergy and other spiritual leaders, to create platforms for Asian communities to have a voice in the regional and global climate discourse, and to support collaborative climate/environmental problem solving and applied learning exchanges across the network.

This past April, the ICE Network held its 2nd conference in Seoul, South Korea, with pre-conference programming of a JNEB Japanese visit of Fukushima, nuclear activists, and eco-temples and alternative energy cooperatives in Tokyo; an A-Z climate change workshop for faith leaders in Seoul; ‘exposure trips’ around South Korea to see the impacts of dams, environmental degradation, nuclear power and displacement around the country; and the efforts of communities to counter these threats and to create sustainable solutions.

***

“You are here for a reason. You are here for a reason. We are here for a reason!’  So rang out the words of Mr. Nadarev Yeb Saño, former official representative for the Filipino government to the United Nations Forum on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) and the Conference of Parties (COP) Climate Talks, in his keynote speech at the ICE II “Climate Change, Sustainability and Resilience” interfaith conference in Seoul, South Korea.

The ICE Network, in coordination with the Asian Civil Society Conference on Climate Change and Ecology (ACCE) in Korea, facilitated a gathering of spiritual leaders, diverse faith practitioners, and community activists--from Buddhist to Muslim, Hindu to Christian, Animists and Shamans, and a broad inclusive swath of belief systems joined to engagement with many facets of Climate Justice.   In its own Small-is-Beautiful way, the ICE Network is seeking to respond, not just philosophically, but in applied conscious and intentional action, to these climate-change induced existential questions of our anthropogenic era.

Spring-boarding from this conference, several working groups have been formed to strengthen and facilitate concrete actions to reflect the awareness and education programs, and the heightened capacities of network affiliates created by joining together within a network.  One such working group is a Climate Change Yathra or COP 21 pilgrimage working group, which has been formed to support and facilitate network affiliates’ climate Yathras for education, awareness and messaging toward the Paris Climate Talks this winter at COP 21. It functions in cooperation with Yeb Saño’s People’s Pilgrimage to COP 21 Paris, the We Have Faith African Caravan Campaign to COP 21, and the broadly reaching ‘people’s platform’ for COP 21 messaging, Our Voices. This climate Yathra group may coordinate with the Education Working Group, which is exploring ways to regionally expand the A-Z Climate Change workshops for faith leaders.

Another working group is initiating support for building eco-temple and sustainable sacred spaces across network affiliates, including sustainable energy systems, water management systems, sustainable harvesting and building, chemical-free buildings, permaculture, biodiversity restoration and organic farming or food forests. The Eco-Temple Group may also collaborate with the Disasters & Climate Working Group, to incorporate eco-temple and sustainable or natural building with permaculture for climate adaptation and mitigation/disaster risk reduction rebuilding following a disaster.

Climate Change, or climate disruption, collapse, or crisis as it is more often referred to of late, immediately issues a ‘call to purpose’ within a call to action, and an existential examination of who we are as beings on this planet. What and who do we treasure or hold to be sacred? Where and how do we find or create meaning?  What is our role, as spiritual beings, as accountable humans whose species have instigated-- and are perpetually intensifying- our own planetary environmental collapse? How have we arrived at such an urgent point of ecological and existential crisis? Why are we here?

Like the great lorries on the mountain roads, we as a planet are perched upon a precipice, in danger of existential suicide.  According to former NASA climatologist James Hansen  (‘The Point of No Return,’ Rolling Stone, 5.Aug.2015), we may have already been tipped off this precipice, and are now tumbling down the slippery, rocky terrain of a forever-changed planetary ecosystem.  Hansen, with his team of climate scientists, suggest that mean sea levels could rise 10 feet by 2065, or 10 times more quickly than previously predicted. They warn that, if emissions aren’t cut,  “We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization." (Holthaus/2015)

For quite some time now, most vividly since the 1970’s, climate scientists, indigenous leaders, community activists and environmentalists have been warning us that we if do not change the way we live and relate to the other beings on this planet, we will reach a point of no return, where we cannot salvage and restore our sacred ecological balance. Resilience, as one defines it within ecology and social ecology, is the ability to restore the balance of an eco-system following a severe trauma or shock.   Once we pass the point of no return, it may be that resilience is no longer an option--only transformation.

The question then moves towards how we will engage in and guide this transformation. What will I do for my part to collaborate with this living planet to transform, heal, and find a new balancing point?  And you? Why are we here? What will we do?

Here we are, a multitude of souls perched on the precipice, on small surface patches of the great blue planet.  We’re in a bit of a difficult situation. We are about to fall—perhaps we already are falling -- and it is going to hurt each time we bounce and tumble.  Can we go through this compassionately, with love, with respect and protection for the wellbeing and care of all beings on the planet?

***

As Ajay and I bounce along the potholed, pitted mountain roads (smooth only 3 days before according to Ajay, now wearing the damage of falling rocks), I contemplate the value of an ‘interfaith Kalyanamitra,’ how important it is that humans actively join together in solidarity, compassion and care as we navigate a planet in crisis.  INEB and the ICE Network are planting these ‘seeds’ for another, more balanced way of living, of compassionate coexistence for all beings on this planet, within a context of rapid, unpredictable and disruptive climatic shifts. These efforts emerge in order to mitigate and adapt, yes, but also to forge relationships that can help carry us, with informed intention, through the many challenges on the road ahead.  You are invited to join in solidarity, to engage together in community creating a new path.

Playing in a loop in my mind until we reach safe haven-- the warm, solar-sourced lights of Zero-Waste, organic and off-the grid Deer Park where my INEB/ICE Network friend greets me-- is this song:

"If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, or the mountain should crumble to the sea-- I won't cry, I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me."  --Ben E. King

*This article first appeared in the INEB publication Seeds of Peace (vol. 31, No. 3, September-December 2558 -or- 2015, 'Sustainability & Resilience.')  This is a terrific issue, full of important stories and examples of building community support and engagement around climate resilience and sustainability.  I encourage support to the publishers, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists or INEB .