Browsing by Subject "climate crisis"

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Open Access
“All My Relations” An Ecological Reading of Threefold Christian Scripture to imagine faithful action in a time of climate crisis.
(2024) McGlothlin, Jaime Lee
This Doctor of Ministry thesis seeks to address the misapplication of Christian Scripture and its contribution to the climate crisis in which we find ourselves. Ellen Davis calls the Christian duty to delineate a responsible vision of what participation in the renewal of creation might mean the most essential theological task of this generation. This is but one small offering. The solution this thesis proposes is the recovery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the story of everything, a metanarrative which holds together God and all God has made. This ecological (relational) reading of Scripture finds all of Holy Scripture and reality to follow a threefold wisdom pattern of Creation/Uncreation/New Creation. Recovery of this lens allows us to name the time we are living in and imagine what faithful ecological participation in the larger story might look like.
The methodology used in this paper is narrative theology. Such a theology is advocated by Kavin Rowe and can also be seen in Richard Hays’ reading of New Testament texts as echoes of earlier narratives. NT Wright also suggests the metanarrative of the Resurrection of Christ in framing all ethical action and mission of the Church. Agrarian theological readings of Scripture, such as those offered by Ellen Davis, Wendell Berry, and Norman Wirzba, have also formed my understanding and hearing of Holy Scripture. I also have been shaped by the writing of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, who explores the liturgy of the Church in worship as the great cosmic story; Christ and the Church are offered “for the life of the world.”
It is this world which is the theme and concern of this thesis, and which much contemporary Christian theology has left behind. It is time to recover the story of a God who so loved the world to bring heaven down to dwell with us.
Open Access
Evaluation of Publicly Accessible Nature-Based Solutions Databases as Sources for Evidence of Effectiveness
(2024-07-24) Warnell, Katie; Olander, Lydia
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are “actions to protect, sustainably manage, or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges, simultaneously providing benefits for people and the environment” (White House Council on Environmental Quality, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, White House Domestic Climate Policy Office 2022). They present opportunities to tackle both the climate and biodiversity crises simultaneously by supporting carbon sequestration by ecosystems, enhancing community resilience to climate hazards, and providing high-quality habitats for diverse species. However, uncertainty around the performance and reliability of NBS continues to be raised by engineers, local decision-makers, grant-makers, and the insurance industry as an obstacle for widespread implementation of NBS at scale. This uncertainty indicates the need for comprehensive and accessible data on NBS projects and outcomes that could be used to develop engineering standards, assess projects’ cost-benefit ratio, and incorporate NBS into insurance premium pricing. This report evaluates the NBS data currently available through publicly available databases relative to the information needs described above. In total, 27 databases with publicly available, structured information on NBS research studies (6 databases) or individual projects (21 databases) were assessed for their utility as well as geographic and topical coverage.