The World Council of Churches and the Pacific Conference of Churches hosted a webinar on the Reweaving the Ecological Mat program conducted by the Pacific Theological College, the Pacific Conference of Churches and the Oceanic Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies, University of South Pacific. The REM program was a three year program that explored how our ecology, economy, and cultural wellbeing could be a viable and tangible way to account for our future.
If climate change is the greatest threat to our existence on this planet, what the REM program did was to offer a solution on how to reverse climate change and pollution while promoting wellbeing and development for our region. This was done not by asserting another top down program demanding our consent, rather, through a bottom up program that respects and values people and planet.
Dr. Reverend Cliff Bird discusses the Oikonomics, a return to the ecological, economic, ecumenical and cultural relationship from which these terms derive;
Dr. Elise Huffer introduces the cultural and wellbeing factors necessary for any Pacific development scheme;
Arnie Saiki lays out what is behind the intermerate accounting scheme; and
Daphne Kiki, provides a view of the role our Pacific youth will need to play to shape our way forward.
What I think is clear is the role our churches and other religious institutions are going to need to perform to promote a new accounting framework if we are to survive the greatest existential challenge we have ever had to make.