Bronze Eco-Award for St Asaph Diocese

The Diocese of St Asaph has been awarded a bronze Eco Diocese award by A Rocha UK, acknowledging its commitment to caring for God’s Creation.

The award reflects the work of churches across the diocese to make sustainable changes to their buildings, their land, the lifestyle of congregations and the inclusion of green issues in teaching and worship.  In addition, the Diocesan Conference [the governing body of the diocese] passed an Environmental Policy committing churches and individuals to “live simply, in order that others might simply live.”

The Bishop of St Asaph, the Rt Revd Gregory Cameron, said: “This is an issue of the utmost importance in our age and the church needs to be leading by example. Christians believe that we are the stewards of God’s creation.  That requires us to learn to live in the world as guests and pilgrims and not as dominators or exploiters.  I’m delighted by the commitment to creation shown by churches across the diocese.”

Along with putting its own house in order, To achieve a bronze eco-diocese award the diocese had to ensure 10% of local churches were registered with Eco-Church and 5% of them had to have achieved silver or gold. A recent count showed we had:

• 49 registered churches (26%)
• 7 Bronze churches, including St Asaph Cathedral
• 5 Silver churches

In addition, the Diocesan Office in St Asaph has bronze status and that too was one of the requirements of reaching Bronze Level.

Other criteria include embedding environmental issues into ministerial training which the Diocese has done in multiple ways including through its own training centre at the St Padarn’s Institute where environmental awareness is part in the curriculum for all those training for ordained and other ministries.

Helen Stephens, Church Relations Manager at A Rocha UK, said ‘2022 is another critical year in which to address climate change and biodiversity loss. St Asaph Diocese is clearly committed to taking action at every level, from Diocesan Conference in 2021 focusing on the global climate crisis and wholly divesting from climate damaging activities by the end of 2022, to supporting and celebrating with churches the tremendous work that’s being done at a grassroots level. It’s a direction of travel which I’m sure will see them take deeper and faster action in the year ahead.’

The chair of the Diocesan Eco-Church Group, the Very Reverend Nigel Williams, who is also the Dean of St Asaph Cathedral said: “All sorts of different projects and adaptions are being made by churches across the diocese to take care of God’s Creation in their local context. 

“There are Forest Churches starting, conservation projects in graveyards, hedgehog counts, orchards and beehives being established and churches converting to green energy tariffs. Here at the Cathedral we’re investigating in solar panel options so we can move from being a Bronze Eco-Cathedral to a Silver award.

“Churches across the diocese are often making simple changes which are making a big difference to our environment.

“Our Diocesan Environmental Policy is designed to support those changes and encourage people to take the next step.”

You can find out more about the projects which helped St Asaph Diocese achieve its Bronze Award at https://dioceseofstasaph.org.uk/eco-church/

The Diocese of St Asaph is one of the six dioceses of the Church in Wales, an autonomous province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

•  A Rocha UK is a Christian charity undertaking practical nature conservation and education with local communities and equipping others to care for the environment. Their main mission is to mobilise UK Christians and churches to care for the environment.
• A Rocha UK is part of a worldwide family of A Rocha organisations and works collaboratively with others who share the passion for the planet and our desire for its flourishing.
• Eco Church is a free online award scheme and is an A Rocha UK project.  It is an award scheme in England and Wales for churches. At a practical level the Eco Church scheme encourages churches to reduce energy use; protect open space and valuable natural habitats; reduce churches’ contributions to global warming; keep churches safe and healthy; lessen pressure on the local water supply and reduce run-off into local waterways.  https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/
• Launched in 2016, 22 churches have achieved a Gold level Eco Church award including Quaker, Methodist, Baptist, United Reformed and Anglican churches. Churches can do so by registering and completing a simple survey.