Biodiversity

Lord Bishop of Blackburn Excerpts

Wednesday 28th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Blackburn]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for initiating this Question for Short Debate.

It is not uncommon for biodiversity to concentrate on the more photogenic species but I shall concentrate on the local picture. My diocese of Blackburn may be thought of as an industrial area suffering from economic turbulence and decline. However, around 75 per cent of the area—the diocese is the Church of England in Lancashire—is classified as rural. Given that background, biodiversity is vital. If the rural economy is to flourish and to continue to provide more than 100,000 jobs in the whole of the north-west, we must maintain the habitats that we have and ensure that they do not decline any further. It is important not to let this issue slip away. We in the church have played, and will play, our part in ensuring that that does not happen.

Recently, there was a conference held at Lambeth Palace of all the environmental officers of the Anglican dioceses. By sharing good practice and working closely together, they are making large strides to promote a healthy environment. We already have ecocongregations around the country and we will soon be launching the ecodiocese movement alongside it. Schools are involved. In my diocese, St Christopher’s Church of England High School in Accrington hosted a very successful ecofair in June, and we hope that many young people will be involved in a bioblitz at Cuerden Valley in early August, where they will be encouraged to get involved in a ladybird project, among other events.

It is fitting that I should concentrate on the young people. I want to echo what the noble Baroness said about education. The young people, of course, are the ones who stand to gain or lose most if we do not take care of the diversity that we have on this planet, which we borrow for such a short time.

Some noble Lords will be aware of a few of the activities undertaken by the Church of England in support of the UN International Year of Biodiversity. In many urban areas, remember that the churchyard is often the only green lung for the community. The rural churchyard can often be a haven of biodiversity surrounded by acres of monoculture. If all our churchyards were placed side by side and end to end, they would form a huge national park. The church currently has over 12,000 churchyards throughout the country taking part in biodiversity projects. Last month, many of them took part in the Cherishing Churchyards initiative, as part of the nationwide project run by Caring for God’s Acre and supported by the Church of England’s national environment campaign, Shrinking the Footprint.

For example, at St Peter & St Paul with St Andrew’s Church, Flitwick, in Bedfordshire, more than 100 species of wild flowers have been recorded in the churchyard. All Saints, Odell, in Bedfordshire has won an award from the Campaign to Protect Rural England for its community-led conservation projects. Even in London, St Andrew’s Church, Fulham Fields, has a dedicated section to its churchyard called the Fulham Fields wildlife garden. Although not a churchyard, the garden at Lambeth Palace—the home of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is not in his place today—hosted an open day in May as part of International Biodiversity Day, run in conjunction with the National Gardens Scheme. Lambeth Palace has one of the oldest and largest private gardens in London, and has been occupied by the archbishops of Canterbury since the end of the 12th century. Its garden has a vast collection of plants and animals within its walls, including an historic white fig tree originally planted in 1555 and its own beehives.

On 22 September, heads of state will assemble at the United Nations to discuss the biodiversity crisis, and the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity is encouraging the ringing of bells all over the world on that day as an urgent call to rouse the world to action. We have already heard from a bishop in Uganda who, while having no bells in his diocese, has suggested involving the drummers of his parishes. I have already invited churches in my own diocese to be part of this worldwide call to action about the importance of biodiversity.