Tag Archives: Environment

Climate Change – the Biggest Human Rights Challenge of Our Time

 “Climate change is the biggest human rights challenge of our time” says former Irish president and UN Human Rights High Commissioner Mary Robinson following the conclusion of the recent UN Climate Summit in Doha. “It’s undermining livelihoods—rights to food and safe water and health and education. It’s having people displaced by climate, and that can [...]

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Colaiste Muire Students Celebrate Earth Hour

The dining assembly of Colaiste Muire, Cobh was a hive of activity on Friday the 30th March from 1-2. There was a sense of anticipation and excitement as the lights were dimmed, electricity was unplugged and Mrs Bilginer and Miss Ormond addressed the crowd. The community of Colaiste Muire, Cobh decided to present an ’Unplugged [...]

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Tar Sands Project Not Morally Justified

So disturbed by ruin of the region, Alberta’s Catholic bishop has written a lengthy letter arguing that the tar sands development “cannot be morally justified.” David Ebner, January 27, 2009, The Globe and Mail — The oil sands, hated by environmentalists and buffeted by plunging oil prices, now face the opposition of a representative of [...]

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Year of the Forests

  One of the most frightening things I have heard this year, the Year of the Forests, was a statement by Brian Swimme, at the District Assembly of our Brothers in Zambia. The African Province Renewal Team, who facilitated the Assembly, showed a video clip of Brian saying that, “Every wild cheetah is now in [...]

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Promoting Environmental Awareness in Kenya

Johnstone Shisanya, the ERN co-ordinator in East Africa, has reported on the support of the Edmund Rice Justice and Advocacy group for initiatives around the issues of education, children’s rights and the environment – the three issues of particular focus for Edmund Rice international. In the following article Andrew S. Lumati, the founder of Malava [...]

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Earth Hour 2010

This month we are urging members of the Edmund Rice Network to support Earth Hour.

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“Towards a Sustainable School”

Sometimes an email will arrive on my screen like a breath of fresh air. Daniel Devincenzi, from the City of Beautiful Breezes (Buenos Aires), sent me one with the refreshing title you see above. Isn’t that an idea to move the Edmund Rice Network to work? Colegio Cardenal Newman (yes, he who is moving towards [...]

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Sam under the Pohutukawa

On a flying visit to Auckland, in late May 2009, I had six energising encounters – Hayden Kingdon (religious studies, St Peter’s), Damaris Kingdon (Edmund Rice Network), Sam Drumm (social justice), all at St Peter’s, and the two dynamic communities in Queen Mary Road, the Brothers and the young lay community. The St Peter’s visit [...]

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Bhopal – the grandfather trees

In 2006, when I first visited the site of the present novitiate in Bhopal, it was an empty soggy field, with one huge mango tree and a line of magnificent mohu’a trees across it, like shaggy green elephants. Whatever plans I heard, preserving those trees were part of them. It was as if they were [...]

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Kolkata – how to cope with a cyclone

Dum Dum Road is one of the most choked arteries in Kolkata’s network, struggling with the traffic running between Dum Dum Station (north end of the Metro) and the airport, plus the usual vendors and commercial centres that line its narrow strip of bitumen. Yet immediately to the west of Dum Dum Road, behind a [...]

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